Disclaimer: I do not own Ninjago or the lines from the episode Krag's Lament

Chapter XVIII: Krag's Lament

On a very high mountain near the Fishing Village, Cole was now fighting the yeti known as Krag. They were both throwing punches at each other, Krag's a little angrier than Cole's until the yeti finally gave up on punching him and just picked him up. He then ran through the snow, using Cole as his shield before throwing them both into a pile of snow. Cole, with his incredible strength, managed to kick Krag off of him and get out of the snow with ease. There wasn't even a scratch on him!

"That's right, Krag! I'm sure you've terrorized all kinds of travelers, but you've never faced a ninja before," Cole told him. "Ninja go!" he screamed as he jumped up into the air and did his spinjitzu. When he landed, Krag practically flew back into the mountain from the force.

"I came here to find the Traveler's Tree, and no overgrown ape is going to stop me," he said as he blocked some of Krag's attacks.

He then punched the yeti into the mountain again, but Krag noticed a tree branch growing there. He ripped it off of the mountain just as Cole was running up to him again, and in turn, hit Cole in the head. The earth ninja fell backwards, unconscious, before a bunch of snow fell over top of him.

Meanwhile, Jay and Nya were on their own climb up the mountain to help Cole. They had left Kai to protect C.J. and the village, but the entire way up, the two were left terrified by the sound of Krag's roaring.

"That has to be the creature those villagers called 'Krag'," Nya told her yin.

"Yeah. That's a bad sound. Every time I hear a sound like that, it's big with lots of teeth!" Jay replied.

"And I'm betting Cole got himself into some serious trouble. This is partly our fault, you know."

"Oh, I had no idea how sensitive he was about losing the Traveler's Tea."

"Even if he was sensitive, he shouldn't have run off by himself."

"Oh, I hope we aren't too late," Jay said as he began running to catch up with Nya. Suddenly, he realized something. "Why didn't we bring weapons?"

Cole didn't know how long it had been when he woke up. One moment he was fighting a giant yeti, the next-Oh, no. Cole gasped as he jumped up from where he was on the cold, hard floor. A quick look around the room, and he realized he was in a cave, but "Where-?" Cole asked as he continued looking around the cave. After a while, he looked down only to see a giant footprint! No doubt from Krag. "Oh, no!"

Cole turned around to make his escape but stopped suddenly when he heard the sound of Krag roaring. He looked towards the sound to see the shadow of his kidnapper coming towards the inside of the cave.

Seeing that he didn't have much time, he turned around and hid behind some rocks, waiting for the right moment to strike. It came soon when Krag made it to where Cole was laying only seconds before. He ran up to the creature and jumped up into the air, kicking him into a wall of the cave. He then began running away, but he slipped on the ice below his feet and hit his head on a big, icy stalactite.

When he turned his head back, he realized that Krag was still chasing him. So he used his earth punch and hit his fist to the ground, causing some icy stalagmites to fall down on top of the yeti, trapping him.

Seeing that his captor was now trapped, he began running away to another area of the cave that was filled very big bunk beds.

"What? Bunk beds?" Cole asked as he looked them over. "How many Krags are there?"

But there was only one made bed. The rest were completely bare and empty.

"Huh. I guess just one."

Cole walked over to an empty corner of the room to see if he could find a door, but it wasn't as empty as he thought. In the corner, there were a bunch of piles of dirt. After studying them for about a second, Cole realized that they weren't just piles of dirt.

"Burial mounds?" Cole asked. He then realized something. "He's the last one."

With this new information, Cole began to feel horrible. And hearing Krag groan under the weight of the stalagmites didn't help.

Suddenly, Cole spotted a back door in the cave. At least, he thought it was a back door, but he stopped again when he heard Krag's pitiful cries for help.

Cole sighed, trying to push those feelings of guilt down. What if Krag really was just a monster. For all he knew, those weren't for his family, but for whoever lived here before Krag took over. It wasn't smart to trust him just because he felt bad. That's, like, villain 101!

"Don't do it. Just keep going," he tried to walk himself through it. "That's the smart thing. To keep going."

He stopped a moment longer, but he couldn't even hear Krag this time. What if-?

"Oh, darn it, Cole!" he exclaimed as he ran back to the yeti, who was still straining under the pressure of his trap. He looked at Cole with the most pained expression on his face. Cole sucked in his breath and looked down, trying to avoid his gaze, but when he did, he noticed a tree branch that Krag had brought in with him. He took off one of the pink berries that were growing on the branch and noticed that Krag was trying to communicate something with him by pointing to his own mouth.

"Uh...food?" Cole asked. "You brought these for me? To eat?"

Krag nodded.

If Cole was being perfectly honest, he thought they were poisonous. Maybe not for Krag, but they looked poisonous. They were very pink with tiny yellow spots that looked really strange. Plus, Cole's mother had always taught him not to eat any wild fruit unless they were blueberries.

When he looked at Krag's face, though, he could see hope in the creature's eyes. But not an evil, I'm about to kill you hope. More like, a beginning of a new friendship hope. You can never be too careful, though.

Cole turned to his side and moved the berry past his head to make it look like he ate it, before stuffing it in a little bag tied to his back.

"You didn't always live alone in this cave, did you?" Cole asked the creature. "There were more of your kind?"

Krag nodded.

"Your family?"

Krag nodded again, sadder this time.

"What happened to them?"

Krag growled in anger and hatred as he shot a glare at a weapon laying in the cave.

Cole walked over to it and picked it up to see that it was one of the Ice Samurai's crossbows.

"Ice Samurai?" he asked when he saw this. This realm was filled with those guys.

Krag growled again. He was probably ready to destroy every last one of those guys.

"And now you're all alone, huh? Boy, did I misread things," Cole said as he threw the crossbow to the ground again. "I thought you were attacking me, but you weren't, were you?" Cole began to remember what happened. The cracking he heard came from the ice bridge he was standing on! It would've broken under his own weight if Krag hadn't tackled him. "You were saving me! And then I attacked you. And you were just defending yourself, weren't you?" Cole realized how terrible he had been to the creature. Just because he looked big and mean, he attacked him after he saved his life!

"Oh, wow. Way to go, Cole," the earth ninja reprimanded himself.

He looked at Krag once more and knew what he had to do. He activated his earth punch and used it to get the stalagmites off of the yeti. Krag was finally able to stand up again, but he didn't look so happy.

"Friends?" Cole asked as he put his hand out to shake, of course, he shouldn't have expected the yeti to shake back. He hadn't grown up with humans, after all, but what Krag did next still shocked him. He picked the earth ninja up and grabbed him into an extremely tight hug.

"Oh! Okay. Uh, can't breath," Cole's voice was starting to give out due to lack of air. "Put friend down." It got to the point where he couldn't tell if Krag was hugging him or trying to choke him to death.

Cole decided that Krag was just trying to hug him when he started jumping up and down and spinning around very happily.

"Oh. Oh, boy. Whoa," Cole exclaimed. "Getting nauseous. Starting to black out."

Finally, Krag put him back down, allowing Cole to stumble a bit to get over to a nearby stalactite.

"Okay. Listen, ha," Cole began as he hugged the stalactite. "Don't do that again, okay? No more squeezing or spinning, a-and listen, this is great and all, but I didn't come all the way up here just to make a new friend. I'm looking for a tree. A special tree. Do you know where it is?"

Krag didn't seem to understand, so Cole picked up the branch Krag had brought him again and held it up to look like a tree.

"The Traveler's Tree," he said carefully. "Do you know where it is?"

Krag smiled happily before running out of the cave.

"Hey! Wait up! Where you going?"

Cole chased Krag a little ways but began to lose sight of him when the yeti began jumping up the mountain to get there. Sure, Cole could do the same, but not that fast. Krag stopped when he noticed that he couldn't hear Cole running behind him anymore. He slid down the slope he had just climbed up, placed Cole on his back, and began doing the same thing again to get up quickly. As great as it was, Cole was terrified.

Finally, Krag stopped. Cole got off of the creature and was taken in complete awe when he saw the beautiful tree adorned in light standing proud and tall in front of him. It was covered in yellow flowers and pink berries that didn't look too bad up here. And it was so warm around the tree. "The Traveler's Tree."

Cole walked up to the tree and began picking the yellow flowers off of it, the tea leaves.

"Thank you, Krag. Because of you, my friends and I have an actual chance of getting home," Cole told his new friend.

Krag seemed very happy upon hearing these words and began to bang his fists on his chest in delight.

It wasn't much longer before Jay and Nya had finally made it to Krag's cave.

"This is where those creepy footprints led," Jay nervously said as they entered the cave.

Nya walked even further than Jay even dared to see the bunk beds.

"It's definitely the creature's home," Nya said as she looked around. "Look."

Jay followed close behind to see the made bed.

"That's a really big bed," Jay said. He tried to keep his fears unnoticeable but was failing miserably. He suddenly gasped, and asked, "How big do you think Krag is?"

Nya looked down at a footprint in front of Jay and answered, "Pretty big."

Jay looked down and put both of his feet inside the footprint. It was still slightly wider, but not by much. It was probably as long as three feet Jay's size in front of each other.

"I wish Kai was here," Jay said as the two began moving back to the entrance.

"Someone had to stay and protect the village. Besides, we couldn't bring C.J. with us," Nya replied.

"I know, but who's protecting us?" Jay asked.

Suddenly, Nya put a hand over Jay's chest to stop him. He looked in the same direction Nya was to see Krag's shadow coming towards them!

"We should've brought weapons!" Jay yelled when he saw this.

There was also another shadow that kind of looked like a person in Krag's hands, but it wasn't moving.

Nya gasped. "We're too late," she said.

"C-C-C-Cole," Jay stuttered past his tears.

Nya pushed Jay out of the way and behind a nearby rock so they could hide and come up with a plan, but they were too angry to think of one.

"That monster!" Jay whispered, anger evident in his voice.

"He's gonna pay for that," Nya added. "On three. One, two, three!"

As soon as the two came out, Jay shot a huge wave of electricity at the creature. They didn't even realize that he wasn't holding Cole's body, and that the earth ninja was standing right behind him. In fact, when he shot Krag, he ended up squishing Cole on his way to hitting the wall. Plus, a bunch of snow piled on top of Cole, making it very difficult to see him.

Nya then ran up at the creature and tried to kick him like she tried doing to Wu not too long ago, but Krag grabbed her.

"Nya!" Jay exclaimed.

Krag then threw the water ninja at Jay, knocking them both over.

In his anger, Jay shot another wave of lighting at the creature, but he ducked, and it hit Cole instead before another snow pile fell on top of him.

The two kept kicking and punching the beast until he fell over on top of Cole this time. Jay was about to shoot Krag again with his lightning, but Cole was finally able to catch his breath. He crawled up from underneath of Krag and yelled, "No! Stop! Don't hurt him!"

"Cole!" the two exclaimed happily at the sight of their best friend, alive.

The three ran up for a group hug, hardly believing their eyes.

"We thought that-"

"How-?"

Jay and Nya began, but Krag was afraid that they would hurt his new friend, so he grabbed Cole up and threw a branch at Jay and Nya, knocking them over.

"Friend!" Krag roared.

"Did Krag just say 'Friend'?" Jay asked as they sat back up.

"That's what I was trying to tell you guys," Cole responded, still being protected by Krag. "He's not a monster. He's-Well, he's Krag," he then turned to Krag and said, "Krag. Nya, Jay. My friends. Krag helped me find the Traveler's Tree. He helped me get this." Cole said as he showed the flowers to his friends.

Jay gasped. "Are those-?"

"Traveler's Tea leaves?" Nya asked. She couldn't believe it.

"But how? Where?" Jay asked.

"That's what I'm telling you," Cole responded. "There's a tree. Up this cliff. I wouldn't have found it without Krag's help."

Nya and Jay walked up to the creature. All their fear and anger had washed away, and it was replaced by guilt.

"I'm sorry we misjudged you," Nya told Krag. "We heard some crazy stories, and I guess we let them get the better of us, and-"

"Yeah, I don't think he understands all that," Cole told her.

Nya thought a moment about what she could say as an apology before she held out her hand to shake and asked, "Friend?"

Krag exclaimed happily as he grabbed Nya, Jay, and Cole and began squeezing them all in an extremely tight hug.

"Not again," Cole groaned.

"Ah! What's he doing?" Jay asked.

"I'm about to explode!" Nya screamed.

"Down, Krag. Down," Cole said. "Put us down."

Krag responded by opening his arms up to let go, and they all landed in a heap on the floor.

"Krag, how'd you like to come with us? Down the mountain?" Cole asked as Jay and Nya were panting for breath.

Krag didn't seem to understand.

"Krag, come with Cole. Come stay with friend," the earth ninja simplified. "Okay?"

Krag seemed very happy to hear this as he nodded with a big smile on his face.

"Great! Well, that's settled," Nya said.

It was then that the ninja left the cave and began their journey down the mountain. They walked for a very long time. From morning to mid-afternoon until Krag stopped suddenly and turned around. Jay and Nya were about to come over to see what was wrong, but Cole stopped them, saying, "Just give him a sec."

Krag looked at the top of the mountain where he used to live for a moment before lifting his tree branch in the air and planting it into the snow. He then roared loudly, as if he was in pain.

"What's he doing?" Jay asked, more confused than anything.

"Saying goodbye," Cole replied with a sad smile.

I hope you guys liked that. Leave a review if you'd like. Next chapter should be out next week.

Have a great day/night!

#God'sNotDead