So you are warriors? Do not get cocky.
"Jay, look out—"
Jay looked up, eyes huge, and scrambled to his feet. He managed to leap back just before the spirit materialized and attacked.
"Ohh man, oh man. This is so not good! We gotta … Cole?"
He couldn't even be angry at the recklessness that had gotten them here in the first place. He was too preoccupied with his tightening chest and the fact that each breath was an effort. Any thought other than the raw, overpowering urge to flee just flew out of his brain.
But he couldn't. He couldn't run and hide, not now. He'd promised himself he wouldn't. He'd sworn to be better than that; he owed it to the rest of them. And right now, he owed it to Jay (who had drawn his nunchaku and gone for a fierce swing admirably quickly). Even if his terribly stupid idea had landed them in this mess and it was all his fault Cole was feeling like this right now. He had to ignore the grating moans and voices against his ears and the goosebumps rising on his skin.
He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to loosen his breathing. Steady, now. In, out.
Then he jumped onto the top of a cabinet and leapt, swinging his scythe forcibly. The blow landed hard, right on one of its eyes, and the spirit screamed against his ear.
A cacophony of noise exploded inside his head.
He fell clumsily, the impact knocking the air out of him, and scampered back on his hands, breath coming in shuddering gasps. His resolve fell away in pieces. The flashlight lay forgotten on the floor, casting odd beams of light throughout the entire room.
What was that? The deafening moans and screeches and growls had a strangely human quality even before, but never before had he caught what he had now — words. Disjointed words being screamed and whispered and wailed in overlapping voices, so many that they were difficult to make out, enveloping him, suffocating him.
"Help please! Help us help us —"
"Intruder intruder intrUDER—"
"Never escape—"
"How dare, trespasser—"
"NevER ESCAPE, NEVER ESCAPE—"
"DIE! DIE DIE DIE—"
"No … no no no no, what do you want from me?" he whimpered, curling in on himself. His trembling hands flew over his ears, trying to block it all out. It was so overwhelming! He couldn't do this, he couldn't do it, he couldn't—
"Cole?" Jay struck the spirit over and over, prompting another onslaught of voices. Cole winced and screwed his eyes shut. "Cole." He sounded a lot closer this time, and pretty worried, too.
"Hey. Cole, come on, look at me?" His voice was pleading now. Reluctantly, Cole opened his eyes; Jay was in front of him, expression grave, but it was soon replaced with a relieved smile.
"There we go. Easy. Try to breathe with me." Jay's hand was on his shoulder now. He tried to focus on how it felt, firm and solid compared to everything else. For several seconds he could do nothing but gasp; eventually he drew a fleeting breath and let it out, then another, head pounding like someone had taken a hammer to it. When he looked up, Jay beamed with relief. Cole wanted to resent him, but Jay was familiar and the only thing between him and that thing and it was all he had, so he was going to take it.
A shadow cast over the both of them.
A whimper tore itself out of Cole's throat. Jay's eyes widened, and he turned, hitting the spirit with both lightning-charged nunchaku and lightning straight from his hands. Again a barrage of voices…
"Get out! Get out get out!"
"Please … !"
"NEVER get out! Never escape! Never never never …"
"We're gonna die here," Cole whimpered. The ugly myriad of voices shot numbingly cold panic through his core, and the conviction took root and refused to budge.
"No we're not."
"But, but you said—"
"Oh, come on. I'm the one who's always overreacting, you're not supposed to listen to me!" Jay exclaimed. 'I know what I said, but you were right. We'll make it out of here, we just have to hang in there."
"Until what? It always comes back."
"It can't do that forever. We'll figure out a way; we always have—" Jay yelped as the spirit shook off his earlier attacks and took a swipe at him, barely missing his head and knocking a cabinet down instead. It hit the ground with a crack and Cole recoiled, finding himself hidden in its shadow.
"Hold that thought!" Jay struck out again, pushing it back with a persistent stream of attacks.
How naturally it came to him. How confident. Not held back by a fear he couldn't even properly place. Not like Cole.
"Why? Why? WHY?"
"Keep out … why didn't you keep out …"
"Go AWAY!"
The voices rose, becoming a deafening chorus of screams. Jay shouted something. It was drowned out in all the noise. The room went very cold.
(A chill ran down his spine.)
For a tense few minutes the air was rife with noise: the whistle and crackle of attacks being exchanged.
Smacks and thuds as furniture hit the floor.
Jay panting, yelling with exertion and fear.
Above all, the inhuman screeches of the monster hunting them down.
Cole covered his ears and drew into himself, trying desperately to breathe as another spike of panic gripped at him, crushing his ribs and sending a wave of nausea through him.
He was weirdly grateful for the felled cabinet right now. It provided good cover to cower behind.
The pressure ebbed momentarily. Cole kept trying to steady his breathing, taking note of every detail on the cabinet, every piece of furniture, forcing himself to not to give his thoughts to the large, bloodthirsty monster snapping at Jay's heels. The worst of it was gone, the icy-cold fingers loosening their grip.
The spirit's hand smashed into the floor now, hard enough for him to feel the vibrations in the decaying wooden floor. Cole heard Jay's yelp and the hiss of fading lightning as the blue ninja scrambled to avoid its fury.
Cole peered over his makeshift hiding spot, checking that nothing had happened to Jay. The blue ninja stumbled for a moment before he found his footing and righted his stance. His gi was slashed up and stained dark with blood. The details Cole couldn't make out, he could fill in with his imagination, from years of fighting alongside Jay: the zippiness of his attacks, the nervous noises when a claw or mouth of teeth came too close, the way he muttered to himself to stay calm.
He looked wiped.
Cole only thought for a second before he moved. He had to do something.
Strikes flew back and forth, lightning and nunchucks against spiritual vengeance, the face-off lighting up the whole room with blue and purple and the sickly glow of the dead.
Cole placed a hand on top of the fallen cabinet, mindful of shattered glass, and gingerly tested his legs. They remained a tad shaky, but he could stand. That was fine. He'd gone into battle with worse handicaps than "a little shaky and a little scared." Ninja did what ninja must, after all.
Jay deflected an angry arm, running back with nunchucks hanging out of his hand. For a second, an uneasy impasse as they both caught their breaths. The spirit caught Cole's eye with one of its own, and the malice glimmering in it made his stomach violently lurch.
He couldn't crouch back down, he had to help Jay or they'd both get hurt, it would rip him apart if he moved past the safety of the cabinet.
The spirit, ghost, whatever its true identity, felt straight out of a horror movie, not real life, not here and now, trying to ruthlessly stomp out the lives of Ninjago's protectors. It was from another world, one where no amount of careful strategy and strength and willpower was enough. Where the only thing that would ever win out was chaos.
The speed of its next attack startled Cole from where he was, but Jay was faster. Sprinting towards its back, Jay shocked the being until it could do nothing but stand there and glower, rumbling bloody murder.
"Go awAy! LeaVE LEAVE LEAVE!"
"So scaaaaared. SCARED SCARED SCARED!"
"Never never never, nEVEr ESCAPE."
Last time the supernatural had turned against them, it had ended in catastrophe.
Catastrophe for him. He didn't regret what he'd done, then or now. There had been no other option; it was all worth it for Lloyd's life.
But it was a very hollow existence, toeing the line between alive and dead. That was how it felt when the panic finally started to recede: hollow.
The fury behind each attack they took threatened nothing good for them, and it was too familiar to push away.
Where had all his steadfast strength gone? He needed it, but he tried to pull from his element and received only scraps.
"Cole! Get down!"
Jay's scream broke him out of his thoughts. Before he could even fully process enough to ask why he would need to get down, they were both behind the cabinet as the room shook with the force of something exploding behind them. A rack lost its balance and fell against the wall, precariously leaning on it in a slant and casting a long shadow on them both.
"What -"
"I think it's magic," Jay panted, eyes still fixed on the spirit. "Like Zane said."
"More magic?" Cole huffed. Breathing had become a possibility again, but butterflies danced their delicate encore in his stomach with a mind-numbing intensity. "Starting to get real sick of it."
The spirit's attacks were more aimless now, the overlapping voices starting to sound more tired and afraid than anything. Maybe they had tired it out?
That couldn't be.
" … I'm sorry."
It had been so quiet, Cole almost hadn't heard it over the rumbling onslaught of screams and whispers and pleas, over the crash of breaking furniture and his own ragged breaths. But Jay had unmistakably said it all the same, and it caught him so off guard he couldn't do anything but blink.
"What?"
"Cole, I'm so sorry." Finally Jay took his eyes away from the spirit, turning to face him instead. A faint, eerie glow reflected off the new scrapes on his cheek. "I wanted so bad to fix my mistake that I made another stupid one. And I never should have dragged you into it!"
And yet you did, he thought, too weary to properly resent it. "Maybe should have thought of that before you pulled us into this, then, huh?"
"I know. I know it wasn't okay. I forced you to walk right into a fight you weren't ready for."
"Wasn't ready for?" Despite himself, Cole barked a bitter laugh. Twice in two days he'd lost control to panic attacks, and if things stayed this ugly there would be plenty more in the coming days. He had been so sure he was over everything related to ghosts and haunted houses that had befallen him; suddenly it was being thrown back in his face worse than ever, repeatedly ramming into him with the force of a truck and he didn't have any clue why. He was no stranger to persevering when the going got tough, but there was tough and then there was this mansion.
He was already so tired.
"Jay, it's so much worse than 'not ready for'. Yeah, so you walked me into an ambush and endangered us both even though I've never once fought this thing! Fine, no big deal; everyone does that to their best friend at some point, right?" He really shouldn't have felt any sort of satisfaction when Jay's eyes widened with guilt, but he registered a shred of it anyways.
"But not only is it a fight I'm not expecting, it's against the giant spirit monster we know nothing about, when two of our friends are missing." Despite himself, his voice was starting to shake again, developing a bitter edge. Had he been more awake, more calm and clear-headed, he might have even been properly angry, because did Jay deserve it. "And as the real icing on the cake, just being anywhere near it is a guaranteed ticket to feeling like we're all going to die here before we can even find any hope of escape! So just in case I wanted to put up an actual fight and be useful or anything crazy like that, I can kiss that idea goodbye! Because I'll never win."
Cole stopped and took a breath, desperately trying to collect himself. He had to pull himself back together now, or it was all over. Any moment now the spirit would stop lashing out at the furniture around them and remember they were here, and Jay could not possibly hold them off on his own.
Jay had stayed silent until Cole cut himself off. Sensing that Cole wasn't about to keep talking, he tentatively spoke up, looking down at his hands.
"I had no idea it was that bad."
Cole wanly raised an eyebrow but swallowed any comment.
The spirit was starting to sound angry again, a seething buzz against his ears, and the room went from a languid chill to properly, menacingly cold.
"Where … where, where, where?"
"Chase away! CHASE AWAY!"
"Drive them off …"
"I know I shouldn't have made you come with me and it was stupid to even suggest it. But that's not true—the part about not being useful or able to win, I mean." Cole was snapped back by a pair of hands gently wrapping around his wrists. He looked up, and Jay's eyes were pleading. "You're so much stronger than you're giving yourself credit for! Maybe alone it's impossible, but Zane and I beat it as a team. We probably just need to keep buying time until we find a way out! And so long as we're fighting together, we'll be okay. We survived everything else we went through."
Snatches of see-through hands and a green-tinted world flashed through Cole's head. Not everything, he resisted the urge to say.
Jay had a point, though. There was a cause for their current circumstances, whether it was the spirit, the mansion's past, or something else. Just as they had every other time, they had to get to the bottom of that cause, and get out the minute the door stopped trapping them inside. If they stuck together, they could keep fighting the spirit back and find their way out. Or so he hoped.
"You think we'll hold out long enough to escape?" Missing friends, injuries quickly piling up, obvious stress tanking their morale—there was a good chance that they came undone for the spirit to pick away at them, one by one.
Jay smiled nervously. "What choice do we have?"
We of the woodlands have warriors as well, you know.
Cole resigned himself to the pit of dread roiling in his gut. After all, it was probably going to become a very familiar guest over the next few days. But he owed it to everyone else not to fall apart on them. Block out the voices, use every last piece of information he could to plan, maybe even try to fight, as long as he had the other ninja at his back to pick up his slack.
Maybe it felt impossible right now. So had every other fight. There was always a way to make it out alive, they just had to find it. He hadn't made it out of Yang's temple by giving up, so it certainly wasn't an option here. He just had to trust that they would be okay, or else he'd be trapped in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"Where are you … where ….?"
"Die. Die, DIE, DIE —!"
"Run. Run. Run."
Cole suppressed another shudder; it didn't go unnoticed.
"Let's get outta here," Jay suggested, grabbing his nunchaku. Having tired of waiting, the spirit had rebuilt its strength, and was now barreling towards them as fast as a being its size could. "You were right, it was a mistake to be out at night in the first place. Maybe if we make a run for the passage, we can shut that thing here and go back to the others!"
"Run past that?" Cole exclaimed. "It's got five different ways it could hit us before we ever make it back to the entrance!"
"You go, I'll hold it off!" Jay pulled himself over the cabinet, and sparking streaks of lightning, casting the room in a dim blue glow, found purchase all over the spirit's viscous body just in time to keep it from demolishing their fragile cover. It roared angrily again, and Cole's hands twitched with the urge to cover his ears.
"That is a terrible plan!" And Jay had had plenty of those to last them all a month.
"Have you got anything better?" Jay retorted, jumping back into a crouch to avoid a cold, purplish streak of an indescribable dark matter—magic—zipping above his head. "I'll hold it off long enough so you can run for the passageway, then close it the minute I follow you."
Cole, his breath catching in his throat at the abrupt attack and the subsequent chill, needed a second to respond.
A second was all it took. Jay smacked a greedy arm away with a well-aimed nunchaku strike and jumped up to rain lightning down on it, but he mistimed his landing. His ankle buckled from the odd angle it hit the floor, and with a pained cry, he dropped like a stone. The upper hand had been precariously theirs, but the spirit, rumbling and screeching like a feral animal going in for the kill, snatched it. Jay was fast, but not even he could do anything besides skitter away on his hands and knees as countless claws on shapeless dark arms reached for his soul. The terrified light in Jay's eyes matched the percussive pounding of Cole's heart as he leapt to his feet and trembling fists dropped his scythe.
No matter what Jay had done, Cole had to help. He had to pull himself together and protect every last one of his friends, because no matter how awful the mansion was, it would be infinitely worse if he lost them all to the monster zeroing in for its kill. Cole refused to be dead weight because even if he was terrified, he could sit back and let it destroy everyone he knew, or he could fight it with everything he had left in him. Jay was in trouble and Cole was so, so scared— his stomach danced with butterflies, his eyes pricked, his chest burned—but one thought stood out above the rest: protect Jay.
His hands tingled with a warmth that seeped into his heart and coursed through his veins. With singular purpose, he crossed the distance between himself and the spirit. Before he could falter, before the cries of its voices and the chilling panic it sent through him with its presence could break his focus, he swung a powerful fist into a lava-powered right hook. The monster stopped hard in its tracks. Another swift, forceful swing pushed it back a few inches.
"No no no help—"
"DIE. DIE, DIE."
"PAY FOR WHAT YOU'VE DONE!"
Discordant howls knocked him back out of his focus. Weaving patterns of molten rock melted smoothly back into skin as his fear spiked again.
Jay had rushed himself to his feet with Cole's first punch. They looked at each other for the briefest second, eyes gleaming in the unholy darkness of the room. Then, before Cole could give himself an opening to think, to be afraid, to crumple again, he grabbed Jay's wrist and ran.
Not even they could prevail.
(A/N): Apologies for the wait! It's been a busy, soul-sucking year, and I've been thinking a lot about how my future is going to look. In light of that, I have a disappointing announcement:
I am discontinuing That is Where They Wait.
I'm really sorry to anyone that's disappointed by this decision, and I sincerely thank every single person who's taken the time to read, commented their thoughts and feelings, and even shared this fic with others. You've all meant the world to me, and frankly I would have thrown in the towel sooner if not for all the love I've received. I just do not have the energy to commit to writing something as long as I planned for this to be, and I think I need to let this go and move on.
However, I hope I can satisfy you guys a little with knowing that I'm not just leaving it hanging here! With the precarious situation these guys are in, this fanfic's premise has a built-in kill switch, and I'm taking advantage of it. Essentially, I'll upload everything I've got written already and forgot to upload, and work up towards the bad ending; ergo, there will be death, and violence, and some gore, and general darkness ahead.Given that I'm still rather attached to the plot I had in mind, once I finish the bad ending, I will be uploading notes and hopefully a somewhat comprehensible summary of what I wanted to happen. This way, I can bring TIWTW to a close, instead of leaving it hanging, but I can also share some of the work I put into planning this fic, plot points I was excited to write, OCs that contributed to the background story, and hopefully more. It'll be a rambly, uncoordinated mess, but I hope you'll still be interested! :')
Once again, really sorry to leave it on this note, but I am so incredibly thankful for the attention and interest I've received up until this point. Love you guys!