Void - Ninjago x Female Reader

Chapter 17: Haze

(Second person POV)

Eyes snapping open, you found yourself gripping the handle of your tsurugi sword as a flurry of green began lunging in your direction, the sheer speed of their movements too fast for you to properly decipher what exactly they were. Moving on instinct alone, you slashed at the blurs, hearing them flop to the ground through muffled eardrums. Finding the indistinct shapes to be razor-sharp vines weaved in the shape of a drill, you felt a lump build in your throat as you chew on the inside of your cheeks, finding those creepers oh so familiar.

Suddenly, you felt the right side of your face prickle with pain, something warm and wet dripping off the skin. Gently touching the moist patch, you pulled your fingers away to examine what could be coating your face, only to see red-red-red. The sting in your face suddenly hits you like a truck, making you wince while your dominant arm cries out in angry pain from overuse. You've been slashed like this before, and you know it. You can't remember when though, and it confuses you.

Feeling your body move without your command, you could only watch in fearful confusion as you clapped your hands together as fires began to form on your palms. It wasn't the calming warm licks of flame that you got from using your elemental power. No, it was a searing hot wildfire that swallowed your fists, burning through both you and whatever you touched without a second thought.

Before you realised it, you had set the remaining vines alight, the strikingly familiar scent of burning plants stinging your nose as you tremble in your own body. No, right now, it was more a cage than a vessel for your spirit. You weren't in control but was conscious nonetheless. Suddenly, the bonfire that had ignited in your hands disappeared as quickly as it came, making let out a sigh of relief that you weren't about to spontaneously combust. 

However, the feeling was soon replaced with fear as you picked your sword back up. It didn't have the familiarly warm pulse that the Void Vanquisher had, feeling dead and cold in your grasp. Despite seeing your teacher's bell hanging on your left earlobe, the soft chiming of the ornament that once bought clarity (hence why you called it a 'Clarity Bell') now sounded eerie through your troubled hearing.

Leaping off the cold cavern ground, you flew towards a large metallic object in the distance, your body twisting out of your control as the pained screech of steel against bronze sliced through your dreary haze. The noise was agonisingly clear, catching you off guard when everything you heard before was muffled and murky.  The sound was comparable to listening to nails on a chalkboard with your ear pressed right up to the source, leaving your sensitive ear drums howling in torment. You were so full of fear that it makes your soul hurt in an indescribable agony as you tried to cover the delicate muscle with your hand but only to find yourself unable to move, further fueling your sense of alarm.

Panic floods your veins and you hear your heart beating so, so loudly in your head as you saw your vision slowly clear up. Though you got one of your six senses back, the action only fills you with more horror than before as if you were little more than an empty shell serving as a cup for the poison known as fear. You struggle to maintain your ragged breathing as your eyes wildly take in the scene in front of you, not wanting to believe the organs as you struggle to do something — anything — only to fail fruitlessly. You can't scream no matter how hard you try, and for a moment, can't breathe either.

Everything hurts when it shouldn't. You weren't the one being decapitated after all.

But it felt that way as you watched your tsurugi blade slash into Kusho Sensei's bronze body, your own hands slaying the one person you called your teacher.

Your chest and throat are sore from your failed attempts at speaking, a pounding migraine knotting in your head as you struggle in powerlessness, your hands hurting from how harshly you were gripping your weapon's handle.