Chapter Twenty Two: Pieces of the Past

Cole and I got far enough from Zane and Jay to stop and take a quick rest, giving me time to process what has just happened. I let it all race through my mind: there's a new villain who turned out to be the Master of Shadows, she did something to Zane (which was what happened to be what she did to the snakes three weeks ago), and Jay stayed behind to stand up against Zane and who know how that's gonna end. I was worried for his sake, along with Zanes, and wasn't sure what was going to happen. What if the shadows got to Jay too? A better questions was, why was one taking over Zane? Why was he so important that one possessed him? I took a deep breath and ran my hands through my hair, my eyes shifting to look over at Cole. "I-I can't believe what just happened. With Zane... And Jay."

"Same," he admitted, putting a hand on my shoulder. "Come on, we need to find the others and tell them. Sensei needs to know about this, he's bound to know what this is about. He always does, there's almost nothing he doesn't have an answer for," I had the feeling that he was scared or doubtful because he would have summoned his elemental dragon by now so we could move faster, but he didn't. He was smart, so he would have thought of that. He didn't ask me to try because I couldn't.

"Yeah, right," I nodded as we continued to run. We weren't even sure where we were going, we had no clue where the others were. That was why we needed a dragon so that we could search from above, it's raise the chances of finding them. I was scared myself, but I knew that I couldn't let the fear overpower me. I was just as determined as I was scared, maybe even more, and determination could always overpower the fear. I tried to focus in attempt to summon my dragon, it was the only thing that I was thinking of. I wasn't sure about Cole but I could see a dim purple light around me, I couldn't believe that it was actually working. "Hey Cole," I spoke up when a huge dragon former under me. "It's about time we left on a dragon."

He stopped and looked at me with shock, probably from surprised of me summoning the dragon. It was big and a nice dark shade of purple, with grayish vain like things going down its back. "How can you do that? Aren't you scared?" He questioned. I shook my head, accepting that I was scared. The trick that I saw was you needed to control the fear. You could still be scared but if you set your mind to something you can control it and summon the dragon.

My dragon stretched its wingspan, releasing a gust of wind on us, before relaxing them. "Come on, you gonna summon your dragon or what, cake boy?" He nodded and slowly summoned his own. Our dragons roared at each other before going back to their own business, what ever elemental dragons did. "Okay, let's go," I let the dragon fly, followed by Cole, and finally got a good glimpse of the city. Some other parts were covered with shadows, but a majority was cleared of them. We flew for a few minutes before I spotted the other group. "Down there," I pointed down and we landed near them.

They all looked at us, and Lloyd spoke up "Where were you guys?! We've been searching for you for a while now!" I could tell that he, along with the other three, were worried about us for reasons I didn't get, we weren't gone that long. "And where's Jay and Zane?"

Cole and I exchanged looks, and he was probably wondering what to say to them. How could we just casually tell them what happened, and that they were both probably in the hands of Kiara or something along the lines of that. "Uh," I tried to think of what to tell them without freaking them out, but at this point that was close to impossible to accomplish. I just frowned "The shadows got to Zane, and Jay stayed back so we could tell you something important."

They all looked at us in shock, and their facial expressions soon turned into worried looks. "What?" Nya questioned, concern evident in her voice. I could tell that all four of them were both confused and concerned, most likely processing what I just said. "Did you see what happened to Jay?"

"No," Cole shook his head. "We did what he wanted and came to find you guys. Last we saw he was ready to hold back Zane, we have no clue what happened to him," hearing him say it made me feel worse than I already was. What if something bad did happen to him, or worse, he got possessed by one of those shadows like Zane did? Either way, I was afraid to find out what. We need to get back to Sensei and tell him everything, though. Cass and I will go, you guys finish up here and stay alert. This girl Kiara can control the Shadows and make them take over you," Cole advised them.

We created our dragons again, and looked on the others. Before we were ready to go Kai stopped us. "Be careful yourselves and the Sensei everything you know," they looked at each other until they exchanged nods and the group ran off.

I looked over to Cole. "Alright, let's go. We need to tell him as soon as we can, I want to know what he knows about this, he's bound to know a lot about it," we let our dragons take off and fly as fast as their wings could take them. For some reason my dragon was faster than Coles, probably being a wind based dragon and more in tune with the air. I kept my focus on flying and never took my eyes off of the sky in front of me. It took us less time to get back since we were in more of a hurry than we were to get to the City.

I didn't hesitate to let our dragons vanish and dash into the monastery. We looked down the halls and ran to Wu's meditation room where we left him before we left. "We've got some bad news, Sensei," Cole declared. We ran behind him and he turned to us, raising an eyebrow and waiting for an explanation. "At Ninjago City, we ran into this girl who was claiming to be the Elemental Master of Darkness. We found out that she was controlling the shadows this whole time."

"That's not all," I added. "She was telling us that she wants to resurrect some demon. She said it's name was Alvah. You have to know something about that, right? Anything at all?" He looked at him in hopes that he did know something and that he'd tell us. I wanted to know what to expect out of this, and if we didn't know anything about this then we would be off to a pretty bad start.

"I sensed something bad like this would happen," he addressed as he stood up to face us. "Alvah is the demon of shadows, one of the greatest evils Ninjago ever faces a long time ago. My father banished him to hell when he knew that he could never stop him. He's pure darkness and can put out even the greatest of light. It's said that he was consumed by the shadows down in hell, seeing his own defeat."

I looked over at Cole with a concerned expression, we couldn't let that happen. We needed to figure out how to stop her before could manage to bring him back and keep Ninjago going through hell like it sounds like it did when he was last here. "Is there anything else? Do you know how she plans on doing this?" Cole wondered. Maybe if he knew how she was, we'd have a fighting chance.

"In fact I do," he started to explain. "It's said that with the elemental essence of five elemental masters. Once they're consumed with darkness part of their elemental essence can be taken from them and used to bring him back."

My eyes widened. "Then that means," I froze. I remembered what happened to Zane, we knew that he was possessed by a shadow, maybe that's what he means by consumed by darkness. He was an elemental master and it'd make sense for her to use her shadows to take over him. She already had one, and possibly even two if she got to Jay, and that wasn't good. "She's got Zane and most likely Jay too. She only needs three more. The others are still there, we need to go and get them out of there!"

"What? They're still there? You can't let her get them too."

Cole nodded and looked over to me. "Looks like we're going back. We need to get them before she does," I nodded and the two of us ran back outside and mounted our dragons once more. I knew that we shouldn't have left them, we should have taken them with us when we had the chance. I swear to god if the same thing happened to any of them as with Zane, I'd feel guilty about it.

Back at the city the two of us started calling out for the others in hopes of finding them safe and sound. "Kai, Jay, Nya! Anyone?!" I kept yelling but it was no use. Minutes passed until we were finally able to find someone. We landed and ran up to Shadow and Lloyd. "Guys! Thank god you guys are safe. Where are the others?"

"We split up, why?" Shadow questioned, looking rather confused as to why I was panicking. I explained to the what Sensei told Cole and I and the two of them seemed just as concerned as we did. "Oh my god, that's bad! Then we need to go find them. I'll be right back, I know where they went," Shadow told us before running off at top speed and coming back, dragging Nya and Kai along with her.

"Hey, why'd you do that?" Kai pulled away from her grip and looking over at us. "You guys are back," I just got to the chase and told him and Nya what we found out to get it out of the way. It was good that we all knew about it so we could at least have a chance at avoiding getting taken too. "We couldn't find Jay."

"Damn it," I heard Cole mutter to himself. I could tell that he was pissed that they couldn't. Was he feeling guilty like I was for leaving him behind like we did? We should have stayed with him that whole time, or at least one of us so that the other could have left to tell the others. Now thinking about it that second thing would have proven to be a better plan, it made the most sense now.

We stood there silent for a second before I broke it "We need to go now. There's nothing more we can do here, and it's not worth wasting our energy. I know that we still haven't found Jay but he would have wanted us to go and figure this thing out. We can find him later, but for now we need to leave and decide what to do."