Chapter Text
Morro withheld a furious scream as he realized he’d gone in another circle. He looked wildly around, recognizing the shape of the tunnel, and the way some of the loose rocks were arranged on the hard, bumpy floor. Sinking to his knees, he breathed in a shaky, panicked breath and pounded a bare fist against the ground. He felt it cut and begin to bleed almost immediately as it rocks, but he didn’t care. Trying not to tear up, he looked desperately around again, looking for a neighboring tunnel, but he found no route he hadn’t already checked. He was lost.
He was beginning to understand the name Caves of Despair . He was going to die here.
Trying to keep calm, Morro sat down properly, breathing deeply in and out. The stale, dusty air of the cavern picked up suddenly, reacting to his breath, and a gentle breeze began flowing past him. He’d taken a break multiple times to freshen up the air. The caves he’d explored were humid and dry, and the temperature had only risen the deeper he went. He had a feeling that if he ventured deep enough, it would become difficult for him to produce a wind current.
The problem was, he didn’t know which way would lead deeper, and which way would lead him back out to the surface. He had entered the caves from an abandoned mining tunnel, and he’d explored it for what he estimated to be about a day. When he had decided to turn back, he realized too late that he’d lost track of the way he’d come, and sure enough, hours of backtracking had led nowhere. He’d rounded this corner of the caves perhaps three times already, and he was back again.
Morro coughed harshly, raising a fist to his hand. When the spasm stopped, he glanced worriedly at his hand, which was now covered in dark, syprupy saliva. That probably wasn’t the ideal appearance of spittle. He needed to get out of these caves fast.
Standing again, Morro kept breathing in and out calmly as he began exploring again. He wasn’t an idiot- he knew sitting still would do nothing, and so he would just keep looking, even if he made no progress. He had food rations in his pack that would last him another week or so, but he by no means intended on being down here for that long. Stepping over boulders and maneuvering around stalagmites, he scanned the cavern high and low for any route he hadn’t checked yet. He had to keep looking.
“I should’ve brought breadcrumbs,” Morro mumbled, picking a loose rock across the tunnel as he went, thinking about an old proverb Wu had read to him when he was young. He was being sardonic, but the idea did have some merit. He certainly should’ve marked where he’d been somehow.
Morro began up the path weaving right, checking the narrow crevices as he crept up the wider path. More coughs rose up, prickling at his throat until he had no choice but to indulge them or risk choking. Some of them were short, but others came in long, painful spasms, and left his innards aching. And again, his spit was that ugly black color, as though his respritory system was slowly absorbing the ancient dust and grime of the cave with each breath he took.
Actually, that’s probably exactly what was happening. Regardless if that was the case or not, he knew it wasn’t good, and he needed to get fresh air quickly.
Morro had a lot of time to think, trapped in the labyrinthian caves all alone. Now that he’d determined the Realm Crystal probably wasn’t here, he needed to pick a new location to look. He’d searched here because it was a place his former master, Sensei Wu had seemed interested in. Prior to storming out of the Monastery and leaving his mentor, Morro had poked around in his room for scrolls and maps, anything that would lead him in the right direction. And in doing so, he’d come across a map covered in notes written by Wu’s own hand.
A number of locations had been circled, the Caves of Despair being one of them. Others included the Fire Temple, Hiroshi’s Labyrinth, the Floating Ruins, the Spirit Coves, the Glacial Barrens, the Golden Peaks and various other significant places in NInjago. Above the map were the words Possible Hiding Places . Morro had been certain after reading it that Wu had been theorizing, like himself, where the Realm Crystal was hidden. There was a chance, of course, that Wu had actually been plotting out places to hide something himself, but Morro figured that likely wasn’t the case.
Morro had recorded those locations before setting off on his journey. He’d done some additional training before setting out, honing his skills and collecting gear he’d need to survive on his own in the wilderness. He had already searched some of the other locations on the map, the Fire Temple, the Spirit Coves and the Golden Peaks. After finding nothing in those three places, he’d trekked to the isolated Mountains of Despair. Altogether, his journey around Ninjago had taken him five years. He was now seventeen, five years older than when he’d left Sensei Wu at the age of thirteen.
Five years had passed, and he’d made no progress. But he wouldn't let his lack of success discourage him. He had to prove his Sensei proud. He had to find the Realm Crystal. He had to prove that he was worthy of the Green gi.
Morro moved up the same twisting path he had twice already, throwing long glances down each adjourning tunnel he passed. Then, he paused, frowning as he realized one of the paths to his left forked, going two different directions. Had he already taken the left path, or only the right one? His breath quicked with excitement, and he almost stumbled and tripped as he moved quickly down that path. Could this be it? Was this the tunnel he’d missed? Why was the air here so blurry?
Interrupted regularly by hacking coughs, Morro’s breath turned shallow with anticipation as he passed under a tunnel with a lower roof, and he stooped until he reached an opening into a wide chamber. An open cavern of dark stone, the chamber had a very high ceiling riddled with stalactites, and alongside stalagmites, the floor of the cave was covered in strangely smooth, bubble-like rocks. Running a hand over one of the smooth-textured stones, Morro tried to remember whether or not he’d come this way. All of the caverns were starting to look the same.
Hit by another sudden cough, Morro swept a hand in front of his face, realizing that the air was blurry because it was filled with haze. A faint, green mist hung in the still, musty air of the cavern, and it only made the pain in his throat worse as he inhaled. And as he stared longer, he noticed tiny black flakes in the air, like dark snow. Lowering his gaze, he found the same substance littered all across the floor like a single, fragile blanket. Ash?
Morro looked forward, toward the back of the chamber, squinting as he spotted a wide, circular hole in the ground. Coughing, he approached it slowly and stared over the edge. To his surprise, there was light at the bottom. Very, very distantly, a fiery glow emitted from an otherwise perfectly pitched black shaft. This must’ve been a geyser, but one that wasn’t currently active, since the magma was so low. As he stared, his face stung with heat, and something flickered right in his eyes.
Morro screamed suddenly and scrambled back from the pit, raising his hands to his face. His eyes burned as though on fire, and his vision went red. Stumbling, he fell on his back and remained there, panting and rubbed at his irritated, useless eyes. He could feel his heart rate increasing, his breath becoming quick and shallow, tears streaking down his face in an effort to resuscitate his eyes. He coughed again and again, struggling to breathe and still unable to see a thing.
Desperate, unsure what else to do, Morro trusted his powers. He focussed on his element again and reached out toward the air, pulling it and commanding it to bend to his will. A strong, cold gust blew over the cave, and he heard the rattling of a hundred pebbles as they were sent flying and scattering. Morro breathed in a deep gulp of the chilly breeze, but it was replaced almost immediately by more scalding itching in his throat, and he was unable to breathe again.
As if things couldn’t get worse, he heard a terrible sound. A low, heavy grinding like the mountain above him was groaning in agony. Then, he heard shrill grinding as stones slid against each other, and he felt a shower of dust, joined by a few stray pebbles landing on and around him. The rumbling went on, and he jumped as he heard a heavy crash somewhere behind him. Blinking irritably and forcing his eyes open, Morro rolled onto his side and looked up through the tears and ash in his eyes.
A stone had fallen from the ceiling and landed on the ground, and more were still falling. Rocks ranging in size to his fingernails to his torso were pebbering the ground, dust cascading down as the grinding and rumbling continued. To Morro’s horror, the stones were falling most plentifully around the doorway he’d come through, and the path was slowly being covered.
“No!” Morro shrieked, stumbling to his feet. He was scraped, bruised and bleeding everywhere he’d fallen on. “No, no, no!”
Getting on his feet, Morro limped forward, but a rock the size of his head broke from the ceiling and landed in front of him, and he was moving too fast to stop his momentum. His knee collided firmly with the fallen stone, and he crumbled to the ground with a scream that covered the sound of his cracked, broken leg. On his back, Morro clawed desperately at the ground for a handhold, his vision fading and his throat clogging, and he heard more and more rocks fall as a result of his wind gust.
I’m going to die . Morro’s brain was an absolute mess, trying to sort out the pain in his bruises, cuts, eyes and his now broken leg, but that thought came across loud and clear on top of all the others. He’d thought it multiple times throughout his lost wandering in the Caves of Despair, but this time he truly believed it. He was losing his breath, his sight, his ability to move, and his only way out was being buried in a rockslide. I’m going to die .
Morro tried getting to his feet above, but a rock the size of his fist fell somewhere to his right and skidded across the ground into his shoulder. He howled out again, hardly able to keep track of where the pain was as it spread across his body. His useless cries became fainter as the breath was squeezed out of him, and his vision grew blurrier and darker with every blink. He reached out to the wind again, trying to pull himself up and away from the pain, but he got no response.
His elemental power, his only faithful companion throughout his journey, had abandoned him.
Horrible feelings closed in on Morro as he laid there dying. Not just pain, but anger. He was stupid. Why had he come down here, thinking he would find his destiny amongst all this rock and toxic gas? As his throat closed and his breaths shortened until he could barely hear them, he glared up at the ceiling, wanting to scream if he had the strength. None of this would have happened if Sensei Wu hadn’t turned his back on him. He wouldn’t be here if he’d been made the Green Ninja.
“I can’t die here!” He pleaded. He turned his mind to the First Spinjitzu Master, the father of his mentor and the god of Ninjago, praying for deliverance. “Please! Help me!”
No response. Losing his last breath, Morro’s eyes shut a final time as his body spasmed like a useless puppet, and he begged anyone listening to him in the Departed Realm for mercy.
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Morro awoke to the sound of wind. It was a sound he was used to hearing, but not now. He jerked into an upright position in a panic, instinctively taking in a deep breath and looking around. He remembered the cave-in, the toxins that’d choked him and the rocks that'd fallen over him, but he couldn’t see any sign of that here. In fact, he couldn’t see much at all.
He was surrounded by a deep, greenish fog, and though it resembled the gas that’d almost killed him in the Caves, he felt no pain breathing it here. He was sitting in shallow, murky gray water, only it was so thick he wondered if it was liquid at all, or instead some kind of slime or mud. He was surrounded on all sides by strange white pillars that curved like fangs, and the surrounding horizon and sky were blank, an eerie shade of dark, sullen blue.
Confused, Morro looked down at his own body, gasping. He saw no sign of blood or cuts, or of broken bones. But what he did see was the mud under him. His body, which had taken on a horrific green glow, had become translucent. He could see the curves and lines of his limbs on every side, as though they were made of glass. He could even see through his clothes, the tunic on his torso and the trousers on his legs, and the shoes on his feet.
Panicked, Morro grabbed at his chest, and the hand went straight through, as if he were a mirage. Holding his breath, Morro went completely still, sure he was dreaming or simply going insane. What bothered him most was that he didn’t release the breath he was holding. He wasn’t breathing anymore at all, and yet, he was perfectly fine.
“What in Ninjago . . ?” He whispered, his voice shuddering. His eyes rose to the world around him, trying to find someone or something in the dark, desolate expanse of nothing.
“Not Ninjago, lad,” Another voice answered. A husky drawl of a voice. “Welcome home.”
Morro yelped and looked over his shoulder, spotting a silhouette gradually becoming solid as it appeared beyond the fog. Morro crawled backwards, inching away from the person in the swampy muck. His eyes widened as the person came into view, and Morro saw that he had no legs. Instead, his body came to a gradual, wispy tail that hovered over the slimy ground.
The man wore clothing that seemed to be woven from hundreds of tattered ribbons, and his arms and torso were wrapped in chains. He wore a mask that covered his head and mouth, leaving only his malicious, shiny eyes visible. Morro noticed that the skin visible around the man’s eyes was wrapped in bandages, like a mummy. The man had what looked like a whip holstered at his belt, the chain dragging in the slime behind him.
“Who are you?” Morro snapped, his voice shaking. “Where am I?”
The man laughed raspilly. “The Cursed Realm, of course. Were you sent, or did you beg?”
Morro didn’t answer, too taken aback by the man’s response. The Cursed Realm, to his understanding, was the purgatory where wicked spirits were sent before they could move onto the Departed Realm. What was he doing there? What he had done to deserve this?
Before he could voice any more of the questions buzzing around in his head, he saw three more people moving in the fog and backed up again. Like the first man, they had ghostly tails instead of legs, and they were all translucent and green, like him. Morro began to panic again, realizing he was about to be outnumbered and overwhelmed.
“Stay back!” He demanded, scrambling back, still on the ground. “I’m warning you!”
“My, my,” A feminine voice hissed. It was a hoarse, high whisper, like a long, raspy exhale formed into words. “He’s young. She will be very pleased.”
The figures came into view. The speaker was a woman wearing blood red clothings under rags, wearing armor and a hood like the first man. A pair of sinister, jagged green swords were sheathed on her back, and her eyes were eerily wide and pale. Beside her was an older-looking man with a quiver slung across his back and knives sheathed along a bandolier. The final figure appeared to be a skeleton, bare bones visible beneath his torn clothes, his face a floating skull with a slack jaw. He wore a straw hat atop his skull, and a spiky green scythe was held in limp fingers, dragging in the slime.
“Who are you?” Morro asked, trying to keep his voice from shaking as three newcomers fanned out, circling him. “Answer me or get away!”
The skeletal man laughed bombastically, his deep voice uneven and primal, like a monkey attempting speech. “They all say! You scared. You sad! Ghoultar like you!”
“Don’t tease him,” The archer reprimanded, gesturing at the others to quiet down. His clever, cold eyes regarded Morro calculatingly. “What happened to your eyes, son?”
Morro blinked, unsure what the man meant. He glanced down at the mud in search of a reflection, but it was too thick and dark. He placed a hand on his face, cringing as the two passed right through each other. “I don’t know . . . is this really the Cursed Realm? I’m not supposed to be here!”
“Oh, sorry, we’ve made a mistake, then,” The first man cackled, earning laughter from the woman and the skeleton. “We’ll just send you back to the Caves of Despair to rot in peace.”
“How do you know . . .?” Morro swallowed, trying to make sense of everything happening so quickly. “Answer me, please. One at a time. Who are all of you?”
The archer gave a harumph and folded his arm. “We’re the Preeminent’s emissaries. You can call me the Soul Archer. The Bow Master.”
“Wrayth,” Answered the first man, picking up the chain dangling behind him and wrapping it around one of his arms. “The Chain Master.”
“Bansha, the Blade Master,” Supplied the woman. “And this is Ghoultar, the Scythe Master.”
“Ghoultar want!” The skeleton bellowed, surging toward Morro suddenly. Morro gasped and scrambled back, but the skeleton was stopped by a commanding gesture from the Soul Archer. “Ghoultar hungry! Ghoultar need eat!”
“This one’s not for eating, Ghoultar,” The Soul Archer said. “The Preeminent wants him for herself.”
“Preeminent?” Morro shook his head, trying to focus on one thing at a time. “Why am I here? I thought you had to be cursed by a sorcerer or a spellbook to end up in the Cursed Realm.”
“If that were true, you’d hardly see anyone here,” Wrayth chuckled. “I asked you before if you were sent, or if you begged. Some can be sent here by magical means, but most find their way here because they refuse to accept death. I take it that’s how you got here.”
Morro went silent, the implications of that leaving him speechless. So, he really was dead. Only, instead of ending up in the Departed Realm, his prayers had been answered after all, to some extent, and he’d ended up here. His pleas for escape had landed him in the most infamous realm in the universe.
He was dead. It took a moment for that reality to sink in. He trembled slightly, and though he felt no pain, he felt as though he was slowly being consumed by the crushing darkness around him. He was dead. He would never see Ninjago again. And given what he’d seen of this realm, he’d never see light again. No sun, moon or stars, not even fire. The gravity of being dead made him want to curl up and drown, but he figured that wouldn’t work. He couldn’t die twice.
“How did you know where I was?” Morro asked in a hollow voice. “The Caves of Despair.”
“Our Queen sensed you were coming,” Bansha replied. “She senses when someone in the living realms is about to fall into her domain. It’s why we were sent to collect you.”
Morro gulped, his last question coming out in a shaking voice. “And who is your Queen?”
“The Preeminent,” The four ghosts said in unison, sending chills down his spine.
“The Queen of the Cursed,” The Soul Archer said, gesturing to the world around them. “We are inside her as we speak. She is the physical embodiment of the Cursed Realm.”
“And what does she want from me?”
Bansha answered next. “Your service. It’s not often an Elemental master winds up down here. You and I are the only two in recent memory. I was the Elemental master of Sound while I lived. The Preeminent has big plans for you.”
Morro stared blankly for a few moments, trying to process all of the information. It was difficult enough to try and accept that he was dead, and lost to the Cursed Realm. But now he was being told all of this other stuff, and expected to just go along with it. It was too much for his brain to handle, especially in this vulnerable moment. He’d just failed the mission he’d set himself on, and now he was going to suffer for eternity in purgatory. And these ghosts expected him to go along with this?
Morro scoffed, laying back in the mud. “I’m not in the mood for this. Leave me alone.”
Ghoultar huffed angrily. “See? He not even listen! We eat instead!”
“You’ll come with us, or you will regret it,” Wrayth warned, ignoring Ghoultar. “The Preeminent has been waiting for you to arrive. She sent us here to retrieve you and get you started on your journey.”
Morro let out a mirthless laugh. “My journey is over. I’m dead .”
“Death is not the end, young one,” The Soul Archer said gently, lowering closer to Morro. “The Preeminent has a plan for you, us, and all of the cursed. Soon, we will not be confined to this abominable prison. Soon, we will reap the Sixteen Realms.”
Morro sighed, trying to slide a hand over his face, but it just phased through it. It was all too much happening too quickly. He’d just died, and suddenly the ghosts of the Cursed Realm wanted him to join them in some insane quest? He needed time to think.
“Do not despair,” Bansha said, coming closer as well. “You will have time to gather your thoughts. But right now, you must let us take you to the Preeminent. I am sure your feelings will change once you hear what she has to offer.”
Morro swallowed back all of the furious things he wanted to shout into the ether. “Oh yeah? What could she possibly give me?”
Wrayth let out a slow chuckle. “ Everything .”
The four ghosts moved at the same time, all forming a tighter circle around him and grabbing their weapons. Panicking, Morro shot up to his feet, grasping for the power of wind and preparing for a fight. But instead of attacking, the ghosts knelt, holding their weapons up toward him as though heralding him. Hesitating, Morro spun in a slow circle, absorbing the scene. It was oddly familiar . . .
“The Golden Weapons rejected you,” Bansha said solemnly. “They were wrong.”
“The Writers of Destiny have made an error, and you are paying for their mistakes,” The Soul Archer continued. “We are here now to correct those mistakes.”
“You were told that you were not enough to be the Green Ninja,” Wrayth went on. “But we don’t see it that way. The Preeminent knows the truth, and she wants justice.”
“You are Green Ninja,” Ghoultar said in the calmest, quietest tone yet. “You take destiny.”
“As prophesied, the Green Ninja will be defended by four weapons masters,” The Soul Archer said. “We grant you our service.”
“Destiny has shunned you and let you rot,” Bansha said as the four of them stood and gave Morro a wider berth. “You will prove destiny wrong and claim the Green gi. You will be respected and feared above all others. The Preeminent has a task for you, and if you serve her, and let us serve you, we will all be free from the Cursed Realm, and you will achieve everything you have ever dreamt of. You will be the Green Ninja, and none will deny your destiny. Do you accept our service?”
Morro gulped, overcome by a sudden, confusing mesh of emotions. He was bewildered and nervous, but also warmed. These ghosts that hardly knew him already believed him more than his own master had. Their Queen, this Preeminent, believed in him. He wasn’t sure if he trusted them, but he was willing to go along with whatever they were suggesting, at least until he better understood what was going on.
Whether or not the ghosts were to be trusted, Morro knew he needed their help. He was in the Cursed Realm, and the only way out was with the help of whoever was in charge. His decision made, Morro’s eyes hardened and he nodded.
“I accept. What am I supposed to do?”