Kai woke up in a curiously colorful house. No fresh breeze was in the air, and the only light stemmed from dimmed lamps someone had fixed on the wall. There was a lot of noise outside, like a constant babbling like you could hear it in a small city. Painstakingly, Kai turned his head to the other side, where he suspected a door. There really was one, but much more worrying was the stool next to it. Or rather, who sat on the stool. "Scales?", Kai asked, dumbfolded. The snake snapped out from the dim slumber he seemed to have been in. He put on a pair of glasses. "Ah, you're awake. So, how are we feeling?", Scales said, in the voice of a doctor and a friend at the same time. Kai stuttered: "W-Where am I? And why are you here? What did you do to the othe ones?" Scales sighed audibly and stood up. His doctor's coat was buttoned down, but his tail still slithered over the ground. "They didn't have time to tell you, huh? Your ninja friends had to go on a mission, and, well, without any intent of insult, you're dead weight."
Kai looked shocked. "Where did they go? Why did they leave me here? What was so urgent? Also, what happened to me?" Scales sighed again. Kai decided to make a mental list. One. "In order: I don't know where they went, you won't be able to go on missions for the next few months, they want to find an old friend of yours and you burned the skin on your arm clean off. You already had gotten a transplant when you got here, but I had to fix it up a little. Hectic and everything. Oh, and if you're wondering, no, I didn't choose whose skin you got, it was, as I said, urgent." Kai looked at his arm. It patternhad blue scales instead of skin. "We snakes regularly shed. Most of us use it for making ritual clothes and other customary items, but I personally always donated it. I mean, it can't hurt, and I'm a doctor after all." Kai was still staring at his arm in disbelief. The yellow-orange pattern that pulled itself over the blue seemed strangely hypnotic. "Wait. Which old friend?"
"Lloyd." Nya was speaking to the wind and to herself, yet it seemed like a talk with an old friend. "I don't know if you can hear me. I don't even know if you're in any afterlife. But if you can hear me, we're going to get you back. We'll save you." The wind took her words far away, and the waves below her crashed so loud that she could not hear her own voice. Nya sighed and stepped into the ships belly. From there out, she went aft until she reached Harumis cell. It was time to get her out. Knock. Knock. The knocks on the door were like the ticks of a clock so many years ago. The celestial clock was sounding again, but this time it ringed in Lloyds return. "Come on, Harumi. We don't have all day. You're getting out of your cell if you lead us the way. That was the deal, remember? Now get out, the door is unlocked."
Harumi stumbled out of the door. Her eyes were drowsy and she was wearing a nightgown. "Give me five damned minuted to dress myself, will you?" And so, Nya waited. After ten minutes, Harumi strided out of the door like the most confident emperor to ever have ruled the world. Nya chuckled. She just couldn't get the image of drowsy Harumi out of her head. "Now, to the deck. I'd say wheels up in five, but this ship doesn't have any." Harumi seemed to try her best to not look amused. When she stepped onto the deck, the rivets on her clothes seemed to glisten in the sun. The prisoner stretched herself, then she pointed southeastward. "That direction. I'll tell you more when we reach the labyrinth." Nya wondered for a second, then she asked "Do you mean Hiroshis labyrinth?" "What else?" "Harumi, that's crazy. That labyrinth is not only the most dangerous maze in the world, its also been inhabited by hundreds of beasts since Hiroshi died!" "Relax. We're only passing by it. Believe me, I don't have a deathwish."
Kai had a deathwish. Well, maybe he was just overly dramatic, but the medication that was given to him combined with the fact that he still couldn't feel his arm made him pretty moody. Scales listened to his rants with the patience of a doctor, but Kai could see that he had in fact started napping. A membrane under his eyelids gave the snake away. So, Kai decided to lay down again. But then he got an idea. He put his left arm to Skales shoulder and shaked him through. "Huh? Oh. Forgive me, I must have napped away. Please continue your fascinating story about the biology of horses." The horses had been four stories before. "Actually, I've got a better idea. You see, I thought I could tell you what happened in the past few days, basically what led up to me burning my arm. Maybe it might help with the treatment?" Scales nodded unenthusiasticly, and Kai began.
When he got to the Great Devourer, Scales immediately stopped him. "It's back? Dear Arcturus, why didn't you tell me? That could mean destruction for all of us!" Kai smirked. "He's dead, Scales. Or at least it's been imprisoned again." Now, it was Scales turn to be dumbfolded. "How did you defeat the Great Devourer? I mean, no offence, but you had a lot of problems last time." "Well, we got lucky. I managed to melt some daggers in its neck. But also, it wasn't fully on its height. Instead of fluid snake-motions, it was spasming all over the place." Scales eyes widened. Kai had never seen someone this afraid before. "We're all dead. Dead." The usually so controlled snake started shaking up and down in his stool. "Hey. Hey, Scales. What does that mean? Shouldn't you be happy that it's dead?" Scales looked up to Kai with eyes that offered all the secrets of the universe and all its dangers, too. "You don't understand. My worst fear has come true. The spider is coming."
Nya was standing on the ship's prow and looked into a binocular. "Harumi. I can see it. It's about a mile and a half away from here. Now where?" Harumi looked at Nya with the utmost composure. "Have you ever heard the saying that Ninjago looks like a dragon in fetus position? Well, we are going to the tail." Nya looked at Harumi like one usually looks at a lunatic. "Harumi, I don't know if you know, but that's the basically unpopulated half of Ninjago. That's the half where the spirit coves are. That's the half" Nya shuddered "where gods go to die." Harumi chuckled, and Nya was again convinced of her insanity. "You have been on the dark island. You have fought the root of all evil and the sum of it. But you're afraid of a bit unexplored land. Laughable." Nya could take people being disappointed in her. She could take them talking down to her. She could take most insults. Coward was not one of them. "P.I.X.A.L! Set course for the southmost part of Ninjago!" As the sea roared beneath her, Nya asked herself if she had made a mistake.
"What? Scales, explain it to me! Why are we doomed?" Scales looked up at Kai again, and the purest state of fear looked with him. "I've told you the story of the Golden Master a long time ago. It's time to tell you the story that no outsider has ever heard before. The story of the spider." Kai asked jokingly "What, no prefix?" but then he realised that it was not the time for jokes. "The spider doesn't need a prefix. The spider is the shadow that pulls on the strings of light. She's the most dangerous being in all the realms. It is said that the Great Devourer is a finger she chopped off to wreak havoc. The Preeminent? Just her eye. The spider is indescribable. Her arrival calls forward the end of all worlds." He took a short breath. "When I was a child, I accidentally heard the story. It's not a story told to children, you know. Not to adults, either. Only the most honored of us get to hear it. I heard it when the old chief was defeated and my mother took his place. The next three weeks, I fell into a stiffness. It's like a coma, but triggered as a defense mechanism when we see or hear something we're not supposed to. So I'm going to ask you one time: Do you really want to hear the story?"
At this point, Kai had no choice but to agree. Scales nodded grimly. "Very well. I remember it clearly, as I might be the only person in the entire history who heard it twice. You see, when the world was created, the Golden Master was a loyal servant of the Ones Who Rule Above. But he rebelled. He tempted the first living beings. And they commited the unthinkable crime. When the world was young, there were three races: Humans, Serpentine and the Ikno. The Ikno are said to have been tall and slender, more beautiful than the humans, more intelligent than the serpentine. And so, the Golden Master tempted the Serpentine and the Humans to kill the Ikno. And with that first sin, only one thing remained from the Ikno. A child. The Ones decided the child to be to fragile for the world. And so they took it among them, to be taught in their ways and to be one of them. The Humans and the Serpentine were sent to Ninjago, out of the heavenly realms, and the Golden Master was banished for all eternity. The Ones were pained, but decided to give the Ikno-child a good childhood so that she could one day rule among them. But in the child was hate. She was smart, and she concealed that hate. But never did she let it go. And above all, she wanted to kill the two living races."
"The child grew, and she became an adult. No living being has ever seen her in her adult form, but it has been said that she was the most beautiful person to ever exist. On the outside. On the inside, her heart was bitter. And when her fifteenth birthday was reached, she decided to finally take revenge. Do you know what wrath a god can unleash? The serpentine know. She didn't just rain fire from the skies or make the ground open up beneath them. No. The Ikno had something more fitting in mind. She disguised herself, once as a human, once as a serpentine. And she walked among them, and sewed discord. She did so for six years, then she had the humans and serpentine riled up against one another. A great war broke out. It lasted three thousand years. At the end, the great civilizations of humans and serpentine had been crushed to dust, and the remaining few hundred were fighting with sticks and stones. Then only, the Ones intervened. They showed the survivors the errors of their ways, and two especially brave ones beneath them - The first spinjitzu master and the mother of all serpentine - created a new continent. That is the continent we live on today. After the humans and the serpentine lived in peace, the Ones decided to lock up the last Ikno in a place where she could never get out of. But they didn't anticipate her misdeeds to have grown this big. She created monsters, perverted animals and sentient species alike. She freed the Golden Master. And, lastly, she created the two greatest evils of the world: The Preeminent and the Great Devourer."
"Eventually, the Ones found her. She was hiding in a net in the darkest corner of the Realms, and she had spun her influence so wide that the Ones could not lock her up again. They had to kill her. But the Ikno had always been the smartest. She created a new body for herself, and separated her consciousness from her old one. But the Ones were smarter. They cut the connection between her and her new body, and the body was separated from the mind. Now, the body waits outside the limits of time or space, while the mind became something you know as the Overlord. She never could make a body of her own. The spider, because that is what she became, has to take a body to survive. Garmadon. The Golden Master. But she is smart, as I said. There is a failsave in the body. When a suitable time and place is found, she will be reborn. As a normal child from the outside. As a monster from the inside. She will grow up like a normal child. But on her fifteenth birthday, the mind will come back. And that is the end of all worlds."
Harumi chuckled. It made Nya uneasy. "So how are we supposed to bring Lloyd back?", she asked. "A kind of portal. There is a stone gate on the tail of the dragon. It is supposed to be the last remainder of the ancient civilization of the Ikno."
Kai tried to jump out of the bed, but immediately fell back. "Scales, it's Harumi! We have to rescue my friends! We have to..." Scales had injected him with morphium. "I want your death to be pleasant.", he said. The last thing Kai heard before drifting into sleep was a gunshot.
"So. Here we are. What now, Harumi?" Nya looked at the gate with little trust. "Easy. We walk through. I go first." "No. I don't trust you. You come after us. I don't want you to escape." Harumi put on a semi-angry face. "Fine. But do not blame me if something goes wrong." Jay, Zane, P.I.X.A.L. and Cole disappeared into the portal. It was like a plop. One second they were there, the next they weren't. Nya sighed. She went to the gate while pulling Harumis shoulder. "On three. One, tw-" Someone shoved her, and Nya fell into the portal.