~ FAIR WARNING ~
There's a lot of graphic violence and gross stuff in this chapter!
You have been warned, and therefore I am no longer legally responsible! :D
Chapter Eight: Blue Lips
The pictures in his mind arose, and began to breathe…
And all the gods and all the worlds began colliding on a backdrop of blue…
He'd never exactly been one to pray.
His father was a religious man, and he had encouraged Cole to follow him on that path. When Cole ran away from the dance school his father had sent him to, all of it fell by the wayside. Any problems that he encountered had to be resolved in the then-and-there, not placed in the trust of any almighty forces.
He was drifting around, and he didn't have time to wait for miracles. If he didn't have money one day, he found a way to make it fast. If he couldn't find some place to stay, he'd make a little fort out of whatever he could find – sticks, leaves, anything – and hide in there for the night. If his father sent a letter asking about how school was going, he'd immediately reply with some made-up dance move names in case he didn't see the mailman again for a long time.
Out on the road, living every day like it was his last… well, he didn't really have a need for prayer. He was relying enough on random chance to get through his days anyways. He'd made choices, and he'd either suffered the consequences or reaped the rewards.
If Sensei hadn't found him on that mountain when he was fourteen, he might have stayed that way forever: struggling to find fulfillment out in the wild, eating whatever he could get his hands on, working odd jobs to make sure he still had options, sleeping near strangers' houses or at the bases of trees on cold winter nights.
Cole remembered an especially cold night when he was twelve and freezing to death on some elderly couple's doorstep. He didn't know how they'd heard him, but they came to the door and found him sitting there, dirty, wet, bruised, and nearly suffering hypothermia with little more than rags to protect him from the cold.
They'd let him take a bath. They'd let him sleep on the small couch in their living room. For just a few hours, he was no longer a homeless boy, wandering the world without a destination; he was a foolish little grandchild who had almost been locked outside at night.
He went on his way the next day, but not before the old man gave him a huge, warm, old brown sweater. The sleeves hung almost to the ends of his fingertips, but he didn't care – he loved it. He hugged them goodbye and they waved him off.
He had kept the sweater in decent shape over the final year and a half before Sensei found him climbing the mountain. He'd been very careful to avoid tearing it, or getting it wet or muddy; usually he kept it tied around his waist, or to one of his legs. The first thing he did as soon as Sensei left to find Jay was to start patching up the rips in the old thing. It didn't feel right to throw it away – it was a piece of his history, a reminder of how the worst things could lead to the best.
He couldn't stop thinking about that sweater now. He still had it, somewhere – he remembered that he had worn it when he took the Academy kids on their field trip to Ninjago City several months ago, and had passed it off to his friends as something that he'd found at a low-end department store.
He couldn't stop thinking about the sweater, and he couldn't stop thinking about what had happened on the night that he nearly froze to death.
Did he pray?
Time had slowed down back then, and it had certainly slowed down now. Each second was an hour, a billion racing thoughts. Sounds were stretched, distorted, and utterly incomprehensible madness. He didn't know when the slowing would end, when everything would come back to reality, but it didn't matter, because he didn't want it to end.
He didn't want to die.
It was supposed to be an easy win. There was supposed to be no way to lose. The Tournament was supposed to help them find Zane and get them all back together again. Maybe they'd get banged up, maybe they'd lose some ground, but it was all just supposed to be fun and games.
Just fun and games.
Foolish, that was what he was feeling. Foolish and ashamed. Foolish, ashamed, and not ready to die.
For once in his life, he prayed.
He looked up at his friends, and his last coherent thought was that he hoped he'd get to see them again someday.
But not soon.
Maybe he waved goodbye, but maybe it was just the wind playing with his fingers like he was a rag-doll. It didn't matter.
His shoulder hit the lava first and he opened his mouth to scream and then his mouth, his lungs, his ears, his eyes, all of him was burning, burning, burning, burning, burning so hot that he was freezing and he was twelve again and he was sitting on a doorstep in a blizzard with forty-degree wind-chill and he was sure that he was going to die.
And then the heat abated slightly, but he was still choking, drowning in the lava, burning his throat and dissolving his lungs and baking him from the inside out and everything was on fire and he was blind and he was deaf and he was scared because he could feel his skin melting.
And then he was cold, he was so very cold, and he was sinking, and he was drowning again, and the liquid fire was still burning even as freezing liquid poured down his throat too, and he was dying and he couldn't breathe.
So he stopped struggling.
He stopped resisting, and he stopped breathing, and he waited for death to take him away.
He found himself in darkness, lying on something uneven and slightly damp. It felt like… wet leaves?
He sat up and waited for his eyes to adjust. After a few minutes, he was finally able to identify his surroundings.
He was in a forest that seemed strangely familiar. All of the trees were dead, and they looked like they had been burned. Ashes and charred leaves from burned plants littered the ground, but they were wet.
He didn't like it here. It didn't feel safe.
He stood up and jogged away from the spot nervously, but the burned-and-wet forest continued as far as he could see. The leaves made squelching noises under his bare feet, but it didn't bother him as much as he expected it to.
Time passed, but he didn't grow tired. The forest eventually offered a light, and he ran towards it.
He emerged into a large, open area filled with dead grass. It was surrounded on the edge by trees, except for one side. He approached the edge cautiously, and finally found the source of the light: a deep canyon filled with lava, stretching in a straight line across the horizon. A rickety wooden bridge led across the canyon into a bright, misty glade, beyond which he couldn't see anything.
He didn't know what he was supposed to do. He didn't like the side with the dead forest, but crossing the bridge felt like a confession. Forbidden.
He turned around and walked back toward the center of the clearing, and that was when he heard it.
There was a snake.
It was impossibly long and impossibly narrow, and it looked sickly. Its scales were dark purple, almost black, and accentuated by tiny gold and silver circles. One round eye was gold, and the other silver. It was coiled in a thick, round pile, and it was watching him very carefully.
It hissed at him again, like it was testing him.
If he remembered anything in that moment, he remembered that he hated snakes.
He took a step back.
The snake lunged at him, opening its mouth to reveal its extremely sharp fangs. He turned and ran, back to the bridge, back to the forbidden crossing, and the snake followed him, uncoiling itself from the pile faster than it should have been possible. It was hissing and lunging, its body nearly flying at him.
He reached the bridge in little time, running, almost screaming for the misty glade, he was sure he would be safe –
But his foot landed on a board the wrong way and it snapped. But suddenly he was standing on nothing and falling until he fell on his face, half-way to salvation. But suddenly the snake, with a body made of night, was suddenly there, staring down at him with an almost pitiful look in its eye.
It bit one rope in half and then he was left hanging on the boards, holding on for dear life as the bridge began to twist.
He needed to get back to solid ground. He couldn't fight the snake out here.
He started moving along the boards, gripping the ends of them as hard as he could and desperately trying not to fall.
But the snake caught him again, and this time it finished the job.
The snake threw him off the bridge with an evil gleam in its mismatched eyes, and he fell into the lava.
It didn't hurt this time, but he didn't know why he thought that.
Instead, he found himself in an open field. When he looked up, the lava and the canyon were gone.
Instead, a figure cloaked in darkness was staring down at him under the midday sun, muttering gibberish in groans and hisses. It reached out a hand to help him up, and he accepted it with only a moment's hesitation. Its hands were small, scaly and clawed; the claws accidentally cut into his wrist, but it didn't hurt. The figure grunted something – perhaps an apology – and then, still holding his hand, helped him walk.
Once they had moved a considerable distance, it said something again in a series of noises that he didn't understand. He looked at it and noticed that the cloak had finally disappeared, but he couldn't remember what it was supposed to be called…
Serpentine. The word came and went out of his mind, but he knew now. It was a Serpentine.
The Serpentine brought him to a small pond in the middle of the green field. It was very shallow – no more than six inches deep. Its surface was completely still, like a pane of glass. It held a clawed hand out over the water and hissed, and then the surface changed.
Shadowy ripples formed on the surface; the ripples turned into waves, and the waves slowly began to turn back into ripples. But nothing on the water itself had changed – the surface was still perfectly still. It was an illusion that the Serpentine was causing, he was sure of it.
When the waves began to turn back into ripples, he finally made out a shadowy object in the bottom of the pond that had not been there before. He wasn't sure if it was a part of the illusion, so he just watched.
Another shadowy figure came out of nowhere from behind him. The Serpentine didn't acknowledge it; it was merely staring off into space. The figure stepped right up next to the edge of the pond, and after a moment, dived in.
He didn't understand what was happening anymore. The waves intensified again as the shadowy figure struggled with the object on the bottom of the pond which suddenly seemed much deeper.
It was… trying to move it…?
Something shifted on the bottom of the pond, a tiny detail that he shouldn't have been able to see, and then the object was rocketing out of the water in the grasp of what looked like a sea serpent.
The serpent set the large object on the grass next to the pond and then changed shape. It became the shadowy figure that had jumped into the pond, and it climbed out smoothly, grabbed the strange, floppy object and began to drag it across the grass towards a dark complex that he hadn't seen before.
The sun was now setting, bleeding orange and pink and purple on the distant horizon. The Serpentine pointed him in the direction of the dark complex, but he couldn't move – the grass was dying and turning to quicksand, sucking him under with every movement he tried to make.
So instead, it dug its claws into his hand and dragged him through the mud, through the sinking sand, through the sea and the sky and the death and the memories, and then onto cool tile among white walls.
He could stand again, so he did. He stood and he didn't bother brushing off the grime because it didn't matter anymore.
The Serpentine guided him through the strange halls, following a path that seemed simultaneously memorized and unknown. It led him to an empty room with no light inside and told him without telling him to step inside.
He refused, and it threw him inside instead.
He landed in the middle of the floor. The Serpentine slammed the door and it locked with an echoing click.
He sensed he was not alone. There was something else in the room that he couldn't see in the complete darkness.
Something bit his arm. He tried to rip it off of him, but the more he pulled, the harder its bite became. Something else slithered up to his throat, inside his mouth, and ate its way down through his lungs, devouring everything in its path. Another decided to bite his back and sink in just underneath his skin.
He couldn't scream because his lungs were filled with snakes and his heart was being devoured and his skull was a snake nest and his skin was flayed open by sharp teeth and pulled back together with stinging, burning bites. More and more of them were upon him; he was being wrapped by hundreds of snakes, thousands and thousands of them were devouring him alive and he didn't care if he couldn't scream because he tried anyway and –
– A feeling settled somewhere inside him and he couldn't struggle anymore. He lay there with his eyes frozen open, unable to move as he drowned in a sea of snakes.
He was awake, but he wanted to pretend he was asleep.
He was lying on soft grass that smelled like rain and sunshine. Sunshine didn't have a smell, it was just pleasant and warm, but the grass was sweet and warm and smelled like ancient rain.
He breathed in the smell of the grass again, tasted the sugary scent with his mind, but something else was underneath the grass smell this time: something that smelled impossibly old, like ancient stones and fallen monuments, like bleached art and forgotten history and stolen suns, like the salt of the sea and the flowers of the jungle and the deepest corner of the darkest cave…
Something that smelled like gold and gods and snakes…
"Are you dead or dreaming?"
His eyes shot open as he scrambled away from the voice. This was wrong, he could not trust it, it wasn't –
It was right in front of him, staring down at him where he was crawling on the ground like an animal.
"I said: Are you dead or dreaming?" it repeated, staring down at him with large, amber-colored triangular eyes.
He hesitated. "I… I don't know," he finally said. "But…"
"You should recognize me," it said, finishing his sentence for him.
It offered a hand to help him up: small and scaly, reddish-brown, shiny black claws with sharp tips…
The way that the claws cut into his wrist when the Serpentine helped him stand…
"You were there," he realized. "You led me to that pond... and then –"
"Which brings us back to my question," the Serpentine replied. "Are you dead or dreaming?"
"…I don't know."
The Serpentine nodded, but it seemed lost in thought. After a moment, it turned its gaze to him. "Let us walk."
The two of them walked – or, rather, one walked and one slithered – side by side across the field. He didn't know where they were going, but he had a strange feeling that they weren't going to the pond this time. He didn't know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Instead, the landscape shifted slowly: the grass became sparser and thicker, like grass on a seashore, and the rich, dark soil that had dominated slowly morphed into sun-bleached sand.
And then they came to the sea. The sea was turquoise and shimmered like a precious stone. The sky was a vibrant shade of purplish-blue that lightened along the horizon. White clouds smeared the sky like splashes of paint.
"This was where we began," the Serpentine said quietly. "We crawled out of a hole deep within the earth, and the Creator told us that the first to come to the island out at sea would become a great king."
He looked back behind them and saw the sun-lit entrance to a cavern. It hadn't been there before – he wondered if this Serpentine was interfering again.
"Some of them swam, but all who tried to drowned – the sea sucked them under and pulled them to the bottom," the Serpentine said. "So I built a boat and carried my people home."
The sand underneath them began to shift. He didn't know what to do, but the Serpentine was not afraid. Soon, what was buried beneath the sand began to reveal itself.
The surface was made of sticks – driftwood. Between the gaps he could see the wooden supports underneath, which both held the ship together and kept it afloat. A trireme.
The boat shot across the water at a terrifying speed, but he wasn't afraid of it. It merely moved to its destination faster. Shadows like echoes of forgotten times shimmered around him: a storm, an angry sea with waves of death, terrified people holding on to hope…
And then the boat hit sand, and the shadows disappeared. The Serpentine still standing next to him moved towards the edge of the boat to disembark, and the shadow-echoes around the Serpentine dispersed as soon as it touched the sand.
"I saved my people, and so I was called the Guardian," the Serpentine told him. "Arcturus."
"I know that name," he said. "It's… it's not a star, it's…"
"A comet," Arcturus said. "And within it, I dream. But this story is not over yet."
The sky became dark. A shadow rose on the horizon over the jungle: it was huge and round, sickly green, pink-eyed and scaly…
"Our trials were not finished," the Serpentine said. "The Corruptor changed one of our own to create the Great Devourer for us to worship, but if we were to survive, we needed to remain true to the Creator. With the Creator's help, we entombed the monster in a magical prison. The Creator named the place Ouroboros, as the cycle would repeat itself."
He followed the Serpentine off the boat and the two of them walked into the jungle on the island. As they walked, their surroundings changed: first the trees disappeared, replaced by logs and stumps, and then wooden houses started appearing, and then the wooden houses turned into rock buildings. Finally, they reached a central arena, surrounded on all sides by stands and focused on a large snake statue.
"The Creator blessed us and blessed the land, and then left us alone. He blessed me to be the ruler, and gave me the ability to see what would come for the Serpentine. He gave me prophecies of the Great Devourer's return, and of the Corruptor's future incarnation as the Golden Master," Arcturus continued. "But the people were hungry for an empire, and so I gave one to them. We grew our city as we expanded our territory. We mined out the earth for gold and jewels. We farmed the fields to feed our growing empire. We explored to the horizons and beyond; before the human Hiroshi stole our maps and claimed it as his, the jungle far to the east was known as the Serpentine Garden."
The Serpentine raised a hand, and he followed it as it wiped the sky. Destruction followed in the hand's wake: the buildings outside the circle collapsed and turned to sand, which began to bury them. He looked at Arcturus for an explanation, but the Serpentine only blinked at him.
"But I began to have visions of the fall of the Serpentine, though I did not share them with my people," the Serpentine said, staring off into the distance. "To preserve our culture, I entered the Great Devourer's tomb, and allowed it to consume me. My spirit did not die – instead, it latched on to a comet traveling nearby, and I began to dream for the Serpentine. The Creator chose me to live forever, and so I became a spirit of dreams and visions, bringing warnings and hopes to the Serpentine whenever they needed it."
They were buried by sand slowly, and eventually left in darkness.
"But on the day I entered the tomb, the Last Rain of Ouroboros fell, and the sea that had kept our capital so prosperous began to dry up," Arcturus said. "After several hundred years, the sea around the city had dried out, leaving only a desert behind. The capital was no longer inhabitable. The Serpentine split themselves among the Five Great Cities: Nisi, the Island-City; Pagos, the Ice-City; Telma, the Swamp-City; Spilaio, the Cave-City; and Tafos, the Tomb-City. They became the Five Tribes, and their fate was sealed: to be locked within their Cities after losing the Great Wars. But one of the tribes was different."
Light appeared again, slowly but surely. He and the Serpentine were floating high above an island. Ships were coming towards it; they cut across the shining water like knives.
"Some of the Anacondrai had a different ability, and were able to get away from their punishment using their cunning. While the rest of the Tribes nearly died out on the mainland, they started a new empire and began a new prosperous age," Arcturus explained. "They changed what they remembered of history to suit their own purposes: they wanted to be the Chosen People, and they wanted me to be their wrathful god who would give them new life without humans… and because I was dreaming, I could do nothing but comply."
The scene shifted into a massive dark cavern, lit by a large fire in the center. An echo of thousand-year-old noise was coming from the fire.
"They began to sacrifice some of their own to me, believing that I would raise all of them on the Last Day and create a new world for them. They had chosen to forget the most important part: I am merely a servant of the Creator, and if I destroy the world, I cannot create it again," Arcturus said.
Before the scene faded, he finally realized what the strange noise was.
They returned to the grassy field, but the sun was setting.
"Fate and Choice will let you make your decision," Arcturus hissed, staring at the sun. "I can win this battle with or without you, and they will not force you to choose any option. You will not know the consequences for they can interfere with the decision. Your heart will point the way, for it is the slave's compromise: to be truly free, a choice must have only one true option."
Arcturus turned to him slowly. "I wish you the best of luck," the Serpentine whispered. "No matter what you decide, I will see you again soon."
The image disappeared in a puff of smoke, and he was in darkness.
He had been standing, but now he wasn't. He was lying on something crunchy and hard…
Ashes and wet leaves.
The burnt forest wasn't safe. Something was lurking within the trees, though it was far away. He could smell its scent: rotten flesh, maggots, tiny parasites lurking under the skin…
He picked a direction and ran. He knew he would find the clearing, though he didn't know how he knew. He ran away from the stink of death towards something, anything…
And then the light appeared. He ran towards it as fast as he possibly could: whatever the smell was, it was getting closer and closer…
Into the clearing with the dead grass and the trees and the canyon and the broken bridge. He didn't know what to do, but he didn't have much time: the strange force that stank of death and dying was approaching at an ever-increasing speed.
He looked across the bridge, but he didn't know whether he wanted to risk running on the collapsing bridge. The missing element finally hissed behind him, and he turned around to find the snake.
It wasn't as threatening this time; the death-smell in the forest, the evil he didn't know was stranger and more powerful. But the odd-eyed snake seemed like it wasn't even trying to be a threat. It began to uncoil and expose itself to him, and suddenly he knew what to do.
He picked up a section of the snake's long body – it was surprisingly light – and bit it in half.
As soon as he started the bloody rip, the snake changed, exaggerating the wound while simultaneously healing the torn muscles and bones. It split itself down to its tail and up to its head, and suddenly there were two snakes: one with a silver eye, and one with a gold one.
The snakes began to eat each other's tails, one bite at a time. As they devoured each other, tiny snakes would form from the bitten pieces, each with one silver and one gold eye. The tiny snakes intertwined with each other and bit their parents in turn. The parent snakes stopped biting and began to slither toward the edge of the cliff.
The monster was closer now. He could hear it roaring as it ran toward the clearing. He could smell it. He wouldn't have enough time.
The snakes used their strength to flip over to the other side of the canyon, to a ledge right under the top. A path was opened.
He ran across without hesitation. The monster was right behind him now, if he tripped, if he fell –
But then the light of the lava began to destroy it. The beast roared in pain as it disintegrated into nothing, and then everything was dark.
Cole woke up just as a door began to close. The light behind it was reduced to a crack, and then to nothing as the door locked him inside the darkness.
He had to get out of here. Dreams weren't supposed to cycle like this. They weren't supposed to shift and change tiny details like this. They weren't supposed to keep happening like this.
Snakes were in this room again. Cole was sure of it. Snakes were in this room and he was going to die if he didn't escape first.
He got up and moved awkwardly in one direction. His legs weren't working right, why weren't his legs moving right –
He ran into the edge of the room, though his eyes finally began to adjust to the complete darkness. The room was empty – even the outline of the door was flush with the wall so that he couldn't see it.
He smelled the air and then he could smell something that didn't appear to be there.
Cole could smell snakes.
He wondered if it was an Anacondrai, sitting invisibly in a corner waiting for him to tire so that it could devour him.
He circled the room in a frenzy, trying to find his invisible attacker. He checked every corner and all along the walls and in the center of the small chamber and found nothing.
But on a chance of a glance back behind him, Cole finally found it.
The tail.
He leapt at it, but his legs still weren't working right – he tripped over himself and fell backwards. It clearly startled his attacker, who sunk their claws into his side. He retaliated by aiming for the tail again, and this time he met his mark: he clawed at it and dug deep into the flesh, but the attacker had done the same. His attacker was mimicking his actions like some sadistic mime, transposing them back so that he felt the damage he dealt.
Cole felt the blood run down his side, but his attacker was bleeding too, so it didn't matter. He grabbed at the tail from behind and maimed the tip of it: he tore it to shreds with his fingernails. Again, he felt the pain somehow, but he was sick of this strange Serpentine's little joke.
He chomped at the shredded flesh and nearly cried out in pain. Instead, he bit harder to silence himself. He bit and clawed and scratched at the attacker's tail and everything else he could find, but the sickening mirror did the same to him.
He was bleeding and it wouldn't stop, but the onslaught continued as he retaliated in his own confused pain. He growled and hissed and spat and roared even as he became weaker and weaker and as the broken record in the back of his mind blared that nobody could lose this much blood and live.
Cole screamed instead. He made a final push to kill his attacker, but his own blows came back on him instead and he was very certain that he was going to die.
Suddenly his eyes were flooded with light and he was nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Brown hair, purple skin, red stains, black claws, teal hands, fuscia eyes. Everything was everywhere and nothing was real and he saw himself bleeding out on a gurney.
He was a snake, and he was going to die.
(A/N): You guys are getting this update about two hours earlier than you normally would because EARLY RELEASE DAY YAY~
I'm going to post something on my writing Tumblr with explanations of a lot of the headcanons that I've put in this because if I put it here everyone would die. :)
Anyway, a quick little Q&A:
Q: WHAT THE FUCK.
A: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Q: Seriously, what happened here?
A: It's somewhat complicated, and will be explained in later chapters. Cole's arc focuses on disconnecting from reality, to a certain extent, and part of that is through dreams.
Q: Okay, but what happened to Cole, then? Is all of this chapter a dying dream or something?
A: Yes... and no. He was very, very close to death before Fate and Choice - the snake with heterochromia - intervened on his behalf. Everything that happens in this chapter is happening in two places at once: the dream, and reality. But because it will be very, very vaguely explained in future chapters:
Cole fell off the bridge and into the lava. Below the lava was Turner's base, which had a pool of water in the center of it (I'm not sure if I've described that detail before - I can't remember). Anyhow, Turner heard a huge splash in the water and came to check it out. He finds a body in the bottom of the pool, and then realizes that he has to take ~drastic measures~ if he wants this kid to live. Said drastic measures are taken. Cole wakes up in a dark room with snakes for what seems like the second time, but it's the first time outside of a dream. I think the last line explains itself. :)
Q: What's up with that stuff about religion at the beginning of the chapter?
A: Ah, that. When I put this chapter up, I actually debated taking some of that out, but I think it takes away the impact of the scene if I do that (not to mention a lot of the word count). So here's the headcanons about general religion in Ninjago that I'm using in this fic, because I think this rant/explanation is significant enough and about a sensitive-enough topic that it deserves to be on the FFN copy:
Religion in Ninjago is complicated. S3 jossed a lot of S1/S2 canon, especially on this subject (especially concerning Serpentine religion(s)). However, it's a bit easier for me to justify and explain the Serpentine, so I'll start with that first. In the beginning, the FSM created the Serpentine, yadda yadda yadda, a lot of this is explained in the chapter. Arcturus was the last of the 'Generic' Serpentine, based on that weird painting in S2 with the reddish-colored Serpentine General that had a mix of all the tribes' traits. (My Arcturus doesn't look exactly like that painting, but he definitely isn't an Anacondrai.) He's the last of the Generics because he outlived all of the others (as the FSM made him semi-immortal, similar to Wu and Garmadon). Over time, the Serpentine tribes evolved and became the five (technically six) tribes of today. (The Anacondrai seen in this fic are technically a different tribe, as they have a very different ability from Pythor: they can shapeshift.)
After Arcturus sacrificed himself and became the Serpentine deity of dreams/the future/protection/etc., he becomes part of whatever pantheon of other religious figures the Serpentine have (most certainly including the FSM). Eventually, however, the small, generally nomadic tribes of humans start fearing/attacking the Serpentine even though they've done nothing to provoke them and have for the most part ignored them (the humans attack them mostly because of 'big scary snake empire o crap' - think of the Roman Empire, for instance). The Serpentine are forced to strike back and try to crush their rebellions, and the FSM is thus forced to protect his new creations. This forces a long, long war (we're talking centuries/millenia here) with the humans, which ended the same as how Garmadon describes it in canon: the five Tribes were locked underground, and Chen's entourage (the secret sixth tribe) shapeshift into humans and get a lesser punishment of being left on an island.
(The Serpentine were locked underground/stuffed on an island no more than two hundred years before Captain Soto's ship (the future Bounty) sinks, after which the 'Sea' of Sand began to dry up into a desert (aka, no more than 400ish years ago). I could talk to you about my headcanons for Ninjago's history all day trust me.)
Over these 300-400 years, the tribes locked underground modified their religion slightly: first, they began to believe that the FSM was evil, and that the Devourer that they once helped to entomb was the one who would free them from their insubordination to the humans. Secondly, they began to forget/ignore Arcturus as he became a more 'neutral' party to the Serpentine (as Arcturus fiercely defended/cared for his people, but he still liked/worshipped the FSM).
Meanwhile, on Chen's end of things, they began to ignore the FSM, villify the Devourer, and turn Arcturus into a true god by and for the Serpentine (but you'll all find out more about this later ;) ).
AS FOR HUMAN RELIGIONS: in my headcanon, there's only one, and it is belief in the FSM. The difference between the humans and the Serpentine is that the humans never had much experience with their Physical God. They didn't have as much time to interact with the FSM, and the vast majority of the FSM's time was spent taking care of Wu and Garmadon up at the Monastery before he eventually sacrificed himself to stop the Overlord (in which process his spirit merged with the land - similar to how the Overlord was stuck on/'tied' to the Dark Island before he was released by Garmadon in S2).
Due to the fact that the FSM didn't interact nearly as much with the humans as he did with the Serpentine, it's my personal headcanon that the vast majority of Ninjago's population is agnostic/atheist, due to the fact that barely anyone knows that the FSM exists. The only transcribed human knowledge of the FSM lies in a few cryptic tapestries hanging in the Ninjago History Museum. Misako only knows what those tapestries mean because she's read all those crazy scrolls.
Therefore, the only humans who should reasonably know who the FSM is/was are Wu, Garmadon, the Ninja, Misako, and some (but definitely not all) of the descendants of the first Elemental Masters. Considering that at least four of those family lines forgot their heritage over time (namely, the Fire, Earth, Lightning, Ice Masters - though it's definitely possible that Kai's father was aware of his fire powers, considering how long he worked with Wu and Garmadon), that doesn't add up to many people who would have any reason to believe that the FSM existed and/or did anything of value.
In modern-day Ninjago, it's especially easy to carry on without believing the FSM ever existed. It's impossible to deny the existence of other 'legendary' creatures such as the Great Devourer or the Overlord - those were two 'super'villains that attacked Ninjago City in broad daylight (and the Overlord did it twice). Thousands of people saw them and would attest to their existence. But has the FSM ever intervened directly in anything in modern memory?
The answer is no. The answer is a solid 'no', because the FSM has basically been dead to the world as his soul plants trees and grows flowers and does hippie stuff like that. He has done absolutely nothing to impact the plot since he sacrificed himself to defeat the Overlord. You could 'argue' that he gifted Lloyd his powers at a critical moment while defeating the Overlord, but the truth of that is that Lloyd unlocked the powers that he'd had even long before he was born at a critical moment.
Basically, it makes sense that Ninjago would be almost entirely atheist/agnostic, considering that they're on bad terms with the Serpentine, who adopted the FSM as their own deity long before humans could have. The only places belief in the FSM would carry on would be with (1) people who regularly interact with Wu and Garmadon and have known them for a long time (as neither of them are very up-front about discussing their father, especially with strangers), and (2) the descendants of the Elemental Masters who have not lost their heritage over time.
So how does this explain Lou knowing about the FSM? Simple. His wife told him.
A lot of people hold the headcanon that, because Lou and Cole have very, very different personalities and interests, Cole's mother must have been the one who passed on his elemental powers, and I definitely support this headcanon. In my headcanon, Cole's mother was the last informed descendant of the Earth Master; when she mysteriously died/disappeared when Cole was little, Lou was a believer left with a two- or three-year-old son and no way to explain his heritage to him, because the source of his heritage was gone.
Okay that was not 'quick' but END Q&A.
This chapter was Blue Lips by Regina Spektor, and the next chapter will be I'll Try by Jonatha Brooke. ;)