Chapter Text
There’s a sudden heaviness that grows in his eyes as the world closes around him. The Source Dragon of Life had said the mist would take a heavy toll upon his mind to prove his worthiness. He didn’t think being asleep for it would be part of that toll.
Oh what a fool he was. As the darkness closes over him he finds himself standing centre within an eternal void. Purple veins pulsate amongst a liquid like ground so clear that Lloyd can see his own reflection staring back at himself. He looks up to the pitch black of the void eliminating any semblance of boundaries to exist within there. Odd he had thought, I’ve faced odder, going through Oni smoke and coming out with horns and a tail do not count his mind unhelpfully supplies.
Just when Lloyd decides he isn’t above asking questions into the void in a last ditch effort he’s taken aback by a shining light, emerald light covers him in hexagonal shapes that shift and shimmer.
His eyes begin to shift pupils shrinking into thin slits as they begin to make out a figure in the light, and then it charges. Searing pain explodes across Lloyds face as a blade slashes forward and his mind becomes full of memories he had long thought buried.
There’s a slight gasp that escapes him as he turns to see Gene in the corner of a classroom in which he now sat in. Pathetic he thought he wasn’t eight he was the Green Ninja he had fought the overlord three times and come out alive.
The memory though settles into Lloyd’s mind and the horror that rips through him dissolves his reassurance.
Gene laughed as he fiddled around in his pockets and two arms came at Lloyd from each side and held him down as he began to scream.
No, no not here why right here, I had buried this place.
His internal pleads went unanswered.
Of course they did half breed.
No… not you.
“Gene what are you doing” he quivered as his body had spoke without his control as if it were an entity separate from Lloyd entirely. It wore his skin, spoke with his voice and yet the actions this body made were not his own, no.. no this was, this was just like him. Grandfather so help him if this body could let him move he would be on his knees begging freedom from this prison once more.
“I hear your father bleeds purple, Lloyd” a small blade appears in Genes hand. A sob shudders through Lloyd’s small body “Shall we test that theory,” he stalks forward. “Gene No!” He hears himself unwilling beg and the blade slices across his face.
He’s pulled out into the void of cold and darkness and then the second slice comes across his back.
He collapses to his knees and a new world falls into place one where he falls against a stone bobbing atop lava.
This was when his father had showed how much he loved him, he had abandoned just for a moment his pursuit of power for the sake of his sons life. Yet Lloyd had nearly had him and Kai killed.
His sweater grows heavy thick with sweat and tears. He can feel the heat begin to cook his skin. Skin that would one day be covered by the golden form that cursed his blood. It’s visions he tells himself but the pain across his face does not fade, the sting of the blade across his face is still fresh and the burning heat against his raw skin FSM it feels so real. The lava bubbles and spits just inches from his own face and he cannot help but think within this moment how quick it could have been.
How many people would be saved from the pain of death and ruin if he had not made it out of here. His skin is beginning to burn just like it had back then, Kai’s body erupts into flames as Lloyd is pressed against his chest.
The only relief Lloyd finds is the burning embrace of his brothers flames before they too betray him and shove him through fire back into the cold of his void.
The third slice finds him laying on a sandy beach as the bone and flesh of his leg surge in pain. It’s almost terrifying to Lloyd to think that at one point that had been the worst pain of his life. Terrifying for he was so weak. The sand between his fingers slip through and he pushes away back into the void before the next slice comes. He knows what memory is next.
“Please he begs into the unknown “don’t make me do this again, don’t make me live through those memories again” he yells.
The next slice comes from behind, across the small of his back.
A gasp rips through him as he falls to his knees hitting metal floor. Hands bang against glass, his hands punch with all their might for the hope of the tiniest fracture to be made. That might was slipping though.
“So weak…. Another useless halfbreed… just like your grandfather”
The overlord hisses yet Lloyd can not find it in the core of his soul to care.
It’s not real none of this is real.
But it was real at one point wasn’t it? And so was this pathetic pain, the voice whispers hoarse and grated.
It’s not real he mutters, yet the growing weakness that filled every ounce of his body was no illusion. It felt as though the very core of his life was being ripped from him. Like the very power that was encoded into his DNA was being stripped.
Just like before the next stab comes, hitting in the centre of his chest. He awaits to open his eyes to magic, instead the crushing weight of a gold tail curled around him rips his eyes open and a figure made up of sand looks down at him.
It was him, tears begin to prick the edge of his eyes. Then his consciousness is ripped from his body, every bone within his mental state is broken and shattered he’s a prisoner once more in this body it had taken him so long to accept as his.
He wished now more than anything these visions were of his father of every moment he had felt his abandonment sting, every time he felt the shame of his father blood course through him anything to escape this moment in which his body is not his own in which the boy in his head whispers he was an abomination of nature
He hated Morro more than words knew how to describe for what he did to him.
The final slice comes across his neck. His fathers body lays below him Purple crystals glimmer around him creating an amethyst veil of shimmer that stretched out into the city below.
Rough, bloodied hands grip his and go limp in his lap Beneath him he knows his father lays alive, his mind knows it! Shouldn’t this change something It should but he knew the cycle by now. He remains completely aware as his body moves like a puppet on strings filling out a script for a play he had already lived through. The tears that prick his eyes do not feel as foreign, not detached as if separate from his own consciousness.
The Overlord begins to speak, all Lloyd feels is the rage begin to rush, this was all his fault, wasn’t it? If he had never had the devourer bite his father maybe, just maybe his father could have been good. But yet it was he who possessed his father who freed him only to kill Zane.
A quest to free Zane that results in his fathers death that robs him his own autonomy for the wants of his Uncle’s child. Harumi would never have been able to hurt him, trick, lie to him! Twist his father into an unrecognizable creature if it wasn’t for the Overlord, if it wasn’t for the devourer if it wasn’t for Pythor if it wasn’t for him.
In the dark of night when he thinks to hard on Arin and Sora leaving, at the utter hopelessness he has become surrounded by after years of people leaving him. He knows within the core of his being one thing could have saved him from all of this.
Kai should have let him burn
“This is all your fault!” He screams.
He had not spoken those words aloud before
He broke it.
He laughs.
Then the energy overtakes his body in a purple veil
This was what power felt like.
He hated it
And then he screams, and it doesn’t stop
Flames spread across his skin, peeling away flesh to relay golden skin. His screams echoed through the room as the world fell apart outside. Bones moved beneath his skin and tore through blood and bone to reach the surface of his skin. Lloyds head is thrown back as pain explodes through his body, the scream within his throat dies as he falls forward back into the void.
The knife stops cutting, and the blood that runs from its wounds run dry. Lloyd is left in utter silence within this void.
Silence though oh it is an idea of fiction to Lloyd an unrealistic dream of desire he can never wish to truly feel. Yet in this moment there is no sound. No distant honk of a car, no creak of floorboards, not even the quite sounds of breath entering into his lungs.
A broken sob escapes him. His throat has gone raw, lungs heave as as all the air that could have ever existed within them has long since been depletes, and yet All Lloyd wants to do is scream
What kind of pathetic leader are you, you have your long wanted silence embrace it!
No, no not that voice! Anything but that voice again
This was in some twisted way nice.
He hates it
Theres a sense of relief that begins to root in him.
This silence is maddening
Like a virus wrapping around every instinct of resistance. His
His reflection stares back
His fingers are clawed again just like they were when he faced the Overlord,The purple jagged markings run down his face and curl around his horns again . Red eyes stare back. He looked just like him. Like his father.
“Why are you doing this to me!” He screams into the void where he’s certain someone must be listening. There is no response and his knees buckle beneath him. Golden chains entwined with purple veins erupt from the ground and cuff him to the floor of the void.
“Why, please just tell me why.” He cried a body shaking sob. “Has destiny not asked enough of me, have you not taken everything from me, my childhood, my family can I even trust that this is real or am I just within another prison of my mind once more, no, no because that would be much to kind of a fate” he chuckles a broken hollow chuckle.
“Have I not given destiny everything? My body, my trust and love only for it to be destroyed, time and time again!” Lloyd yells now, he staggers legs trembling. He looks mad he thinks stumbling over his feet as he yells, chains weighing him back down to his knees. Let me be mad then.
“Or am I just a punishment for my grandfather, is that it” he laughs “ IS THAT IT! Was he to ambitious creating realms and life as if he was a god, is he not a god. Is this my punishment for daring to share his blood. Or am I just a fool that never understood the tool of destiny I was always meant to serve as who never realized that the only thing I ever did of free will was release those Serpentine! Who brought forth destruction and death. Oh grandfather I am the monster aren’t I” he cry’s, laughter creeping in between every word.
“You should have killed my father the second he was bit”
“Yes he should have” The voice replies dryly.
“Shut up!” Lloyd screams, chest heaving struggling to catch breath, the movement of feet within the corners of the seemingly endless void knocks that air back out and the figures began to whisper.
The tears stream rivers down his face. Nails claw into his cheeks, his nails, his claws, trying to wish it all away. But the voices only grow louder as they scream into his ear. Energy thrums beneath his skin like a power line ready to break. A feeling of utter lack of control he had not felt since his days as the golden ninja.
“They should have let you burn”
Energy begins to spark.
“A child in a Boys body”
“A weak Halfbreed just like your grandfather.”
The figures from the corner of his vision move closer, and the fluctuations in the voices become clear.
“Sono, hokido, bo-rock!”
Their
“You could never do it alone”
All
“Disappointment to your legacy”
Him
“Everyone is dead because of you”
Their hands now hover above his trembling form. Nor whip of his tail or emerald wave of energy radiating off of him has affected them.
“Abomination.”
The Oni kneels down and takes his chin into his hand, the grating scratch of its voice cuts into Lloyd’s blood as its words are uttered into existence.
“I am not your fear but your future”
Their hands touch his body all at once and scream from the depths of Lloyds being rips through his body.
Pain envelopes him at once, his skin singes and bones feel like their breaking and mending all within seconds, screaming is the only relief his body is capable of feeling and yet he dares himself to look up as wave after wave of pain slams through him and now he sees why.
His reflection stares back as his limbs and face shift from child to teen to sunken bones touched by death to hybrid to monster to pure energy. The limbs keep on twisting every second he blinks he’s already shifted through another cycle. Lloyd, Lloyd Montgomery Garmadon, Morro, Lloyd the son of Garmadon, the Oni, Morro, son of Garmadon, the Oni , Morro, Garmadon, Oni, Garmadon, Oni, Garmadon.
The figure reach’s out settling down into a form consisting of neon green energy. It’s fingers are supposed to be hot Lloyd can tell as such as the smoke branching off from its fingers is pulled back into the void. Its fingers are warm though, brushing over the lids of his eyes, he opens to the truth of his universe of his existence of his fate his nightmare or maybe a possibility but the eyes of the figure tether him to this nightmare nonetheless after all Lloyd could recognize his own eyes anywhere.
Yet that did not break the illusion of the nightmare from which he had awoken to broken bodies lay askew in a desert It was just like his first vision except he can see all their broken faces.
His breath goes heavy.
Faces and swords flood him.
Tears brim.
He sobs a violent animal cry.
His knees are giving out.
He shakes like a pathetic scared cat.
He gasps as if air has been denied from his lungs. Then he screams.
Just make it stop!
Something monstrous within him yells.
I want to go home!