Chapter Text
The former pirate was dressed in the colors of her old crew, with simple green clothes and bright red belts wrapped tastefully around her person. A leather breastplate was fitted over her chest, and a buckler strapped to her waist dangled over her sienna breeches. She looked the very picture of a warrior of the high seas, the impression diminished only by the fact that she stood on pink-red dirt rather than a wooden deck, and that the spear she held pointed at Nya looked more ornamental than combative; it was polished and gilded and just a bit too comically large and long, and by the way Delara held it, the tendons in her wrists standing out and her hands quivering ever so slightly, it must have been heavy. Still she kept it raised guardedly, even when she flinched and her striking eyes widened a bit in shock.
“You know my name…?” she said in a hushed voice. Then her expression changed again as she, like Nya, put two and two together. “Wait. I know you. You’re that girl! The one whose body I awoke in when my beloved wished me back to life! But then he…” Outrage filled her voice. “He was shot! By that traitor, Flintlocke! And now…”
As she’d spoken her hands had dropped the spear a bit, but now she raised it up again and jabbed it at the air in front of Nya’s face. “Where is he? Where is my king!”
Nya leaned slightly away from the point of the spear, her hands still raised, but she didn’t step back. “Woah! Look, lady! I’m just as confused about what’s going on as you are, okay? One moment I was being crushed to death – which hurt way, way worse than dying by spider venom but still not as bad as dying by lava, by the way! – and the next moment I wake up here in…” She paused as she glanced around, hit by another realization. “Is this Djinnjago…?”
Her gaze swept back to Delara, who was watching her cautiously, but less like she was going to stab her. Then a horrible thought came to Nya.
“Oh. Oh no. No no no no no…!”
“What is wrong with you?”
“This is…” Nya gasped. “Is this the Departed Realm? Because I… I died… And you’re here… But…!”
“This is not the Departed Realm.”
Evidently having decided Nya had no more useful information than she did, Delara finally lowered her spear with a sigh. Nya tentatively dropped her hands.
“How do you know for sure?”
“Because,” said Delara, hesitant, “until just recently… I was in the Departed Realm. And it was nothing like this place. It was more… peaceful.”
“Yeah, ‘cause it’s real loud and chaotic here,” said Nya sarcastically. “Way too many people.”
“It is hard to explain. But I am speaking the truth. This is not the Departed Realm.”
Nya wasn’t sure she believed her, but she felt the tightness in her chest loosen despite herself. “Okay. But that doesn’t change the fact that you are dead, right?”
Delara looked away wistfully, gripping her spear with one hand. “I do not know. But I did die. That I know for sure.”
“Which means it’s not impossible that I’m dead too. But… But I went back before. I came back to life again when…” Now it was Nya who spoke with outrage as she pointed accusingly at Delara. “When you stabbed me! It was you! Why would you do that?”
“What do you expect me to do?” said Delara irritably. “I wake up in what looks like my home realm without knowing how, and suddenly a stranger appears–”
“So you just attack first and ask questions later?? Wait, I forgot. You’re a pirate. Of course you attack first.” Nya shook her head. “Whatever. Point is, after you killed me while I was unarmed and my back was turned,” (Delara rolled her eyes) “I woke up back outside the pyramid. And it was like everything that’d happened before didn’t happen. And I was the only one who remembered…”
Nya slowed as her own words helped her realize what the situation reminded her of.
“Like I went back in time…”
Delara looked at her sharply. “You say that as though it is possible.”
“It is possible. I’ve done it before. And I died that time too…” She gave Delara a pointed look. “When I was being held hostage by your creepy fiancé.”
The slight was ignored. “Then… perhaps this is all happening because of Nadakhan.”
“Can’t be…” said Nya slowly. “He’s still trapped in the Teapot of Tyrahn.”
“He is?” Distress colored Delara’s proud features. “How can that be?”
“Because Jay, my boyfriend – well he wasn’t my boyfriend then but he is now, in fact he’s a little more than that–”
“Get to the point, silly girl,” Delara snapped.
“Well, he wished that no one had ever found that teapot. So everything got reset to right before it was found, so that no one would. Up till now, Jay and I were the only ones to remember anything about Nadakhan and the Sky Pirates and Ninjago almost becoming Djinnjago.” Nya looked at her doppelganger curiously. “But it seems like you do too…”
For the first time, Nya saw fright cross Delara’s face, which paled a bit. Her eyes raked Nya head to foot, as though she was only just seeing her properly. “Time has passed since then,” she noted quietly. “How long…?”
Nya hunched her shoulders, feeling weirdly guilty. “Several years.”
Though her brain automatically filed Delara under the ‘enemy’ category, Nya’s heart still clenched with pity when she saw the pirate girl sway on her feet from shock, propping herself up with her spear, her lip trembling and her eyes growing round and staring at nothing. Nya gave her a moment to process everything, then tentatively stepped towards her and put a hand on her shoulder.
“Listen… Maybe you can help me.”
Delara startled and looked at her with something like offense (Nya pulled her hand back quickly; she couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t bite). “Help you?”
“I keep dying and ending up here, and then repeating everything. And you are going to help me figure out why.”
“Am I now?”
Nya waved her hands around at the opulent but dead silent courtyard. “You have anything better to do? This place is clearly empty. What were you doing while I was gone, anyway?”
Delara crossed her arms somberly. “Trying to find a way to leave,” she pouted. “I searched all around this place, top to bottom. Once I found none I sat there.” She pointed to a few feet away, near the center of the courtyard. What looked to be a tiny gazebo was built there, only fit for one person to stand under the shade of the trapezoidal roof, but when Nya walked towards it she saw that the brass-painted circle of bricks beneath was not a seating area, but the rim of a low well, surrounded by a ring of steps, which she climbed to peer down into the depths. The water did not go very deep at all, only three rows of bricks down from the top. The surface rippled very slightly even though there was no breeze, and it showed an unnatural blackness – the bottom and sides of the well beneath were completely obscured, even though, when Nya dipped her hand inside, the water came out crystal clear.
“I was watching you,” said Delara, who had quietly followed, standing on the bottom step. “This well… It seems to show what you see. You said you were in a pyramid. That is what I saw in the surface of the water as well.” She cocked her head. “It must be dark now because you ‘died’ and cannot see anything anymore.”
Nya pulled away from the well and walked backwards down the steps, goosebumps prickling her arms.
She took a deep breath, and turned to Delara. “Our fates are tied together. It’s in your best interest to work with me so we can untangle them.” She held out her hand. “If we can figure out how to stop me looping and coming here, then maybe that’ll help get you back to the Departed Realm.”
Delara eyed the offered hand for a moment, frowning as though she wasn’t sure what she was meant to do with it. But then, slowly, she switched her spear to the other hand so she could take Nya’s in her own.
“It is a promise, then,” she said. Her lips curled up mischievously. “A pirate’s oath. I will help you to break your curse and free myself from this gilded cage in the process.”
“Deal.”
They shook hands. The tips of Delara’s fingers were dyed in henna. Nya couldn’t help thinking they looked cute. She’d have to look into trying it out herself someday.
“Alright. So. First thing’s first, we should review what we know, and what we need to find out.” She held up a finger and counted. “One, if I die in the ‘real world’, I wake up here. Two, you can see what I see in the real world through the well, and remember everything I can. Three, when I die in this world, I go back in time to the real world, right outside the pyramid.”
“This pyramid that is full of deadly traps,” clarified Delara, arching an eyebrow. “That you ninja went inside willingly in order to…?”
“Oh, we’re on a quest. You know, making sure our ninja skills don’t get rusty just staying at home all day. Our sensei made us do it,” Nya admitted, when Delara continued to look skeptical. “It’s just a simple mission to find out what it’s all about. Though I guess we already discovered that, after letting out that Serpentine…” Nya shook her head at the memory. How dumb would that have been, if they had actually, unknowingly released an evil villain into the world while trying to complete a simple mission? “Aspheera. I guess the pyramid is supposed to be her prison.”
“There is one thing about your third surety that is not so sure,” Delara pointed out. “You do not know if you really will go back to the same time as last time, outside the pyramid. Only another trial will confirm that.”
“True,” said Nya, eyeing Delara’s spear. “But please hold off on stabbing me for just a bit longer.”
“If you are sure that Nadakhan is not the cause of our predicament,” Delara continued, ignoring Nya’s wariness, “then perhaps the true reason is inside the pyramid. It would be worth exploring it a bit more closely.”
“Makes sense,” Nya agreed. “I mean if there was anywhere that screamed ‘anyone who enters here will suffer a terrible curse!’ it’d be that place. Which is where the questions come in.” She counted off on her fingers again. “One, what caused me to time travel? Two, what does it have to do with you? Three, what is this place? And four – most importantly – how to stop it.” She paused as she thought it over again. “Preferably after I get out of the pyramid so that I won’t die permanently…”
“That would be unfortunate,” said Delara, narrowing her eyes cunningly, “unless you dying permanently is what will release me from here.” She smirked when Nya got into a fighting stance. “Be calm. I wouldn’t want to test that theory without knowing for sure. For now it is within my own interests that you remain alive, like you said. As long as you are able to return here I have more of a chance to fix my own problem as well.”
“I’m counting on that,” said Nya, relaxing but keeping on eye on the pirate. “Okay. So, I guess, now I just need to figure out what to do on my next run. I’ll try to get us deeper into the pyramid – maybe there’ll be more inscriptions or something that can explain this ‘curse’ I’m under, if that’s what it is – and try to keep everyone alive at the same time.”
“And I will wait here,” sighed Delara, “until you die again, which seems likely.”
“Hey, normally I’m very good at avoiding death, you know. My longest streak was fourteen years at least.”
“Yes, yes. In the meantime I will observe things from the well to see if there are any clues you might have missed.”
“Great.” There was an awkward pause. “So, um. I guess if that’s all, then…”
Delara grasped her spear and pointed the end at Nya.
“Uh.” Nya raised her hands in a ‘hold on’ gesture. “I know it worked well last time, but maybe there’s a better way we can do this?”
“Like what?”
“Like…” Nya looked around, then walked to the side until she reached the very edge of the courtyard, where the floor dropped away. There was nothing to see out in the distance, no sky or sea or horizon. It didn’t even look like mist, as when Nya stretched her hand out over the edge she didn’t feel any moisture in the air, nor did her fingers disappear into the white thickness. There was just… nothing.
She sat down on the floor and let her legs dangle over the edge. She could feel gravity pulling on her, but had no idea how far a drop it was.
Hopefully it would be far enough.
“I think… this is my exit.”
She braced her hands against the floor to push herself off into the void. But she hesitated, her heart pounding with fear.
Behind her, Delara said, “Would you like me to push you?”
“N-… Actually maybe that would be easi– AHH!”
Without warning, hands shoved against the small of Nya’s back and she pitched forward into the blankness. She lost contact with the floor and she was free falling, screaming all the way, pinwheeling her arms uselessly in an effort to slow her descent. The air that whipped past her was the only sign of her downward movement, as all around her she could see nothing, nothing but cloudy white, and she screwed her eyes shut tight and braced herself for the crunching impact that was sure to come, the explosion of pain that she would hopefully only have to endure for a second before she–
But there was no crunch, and there was no pain, and when she opened her eyes with a gasp, lurching in place as she realized she was on solid ground, vertigo making her sway a bit, she saw that the world around her had changed from white to golden brown, and the air was hot, and before her, some distance away, the mysterious pyramid loomed innocently, waiting to admit entry to its surprise guests for the third time.