Season 11.5 [Rewrite: Continuation]

Betrayal

I have witnessed many atrocities in the position I sit in. Countless years of pain and suffering, hundreds of millions of people slaughtered as sheep. I have seen thousands of battles fought because of that abomination, seen the tears of the victor and victim, and in the most painstaking of nights, I ask myself: Was this worth it?

Thankfully, it is only a fleeting thought. Something to forget in a matter of time. Otherwise, the agony of these sins would have consumed me long, long ago.

>_<

This, was, actually according to plan.

There was a myriad of emotions on their faces, but it was well within the range of expectations. No human being, he estimated, was to react calmly to these news, and the troubling details were to make a grown man faint.

Grace was by his side when his friends did not faint. That grace left by their expressions.

Lloyd immediately hardened, Nya, the same. Surprise snapped in her features, but Lloyd reacted more appropriately as a leader.

Cole was, stoic. Unreadable. Worrisome, but, manageable. Kai, the flaming fury he was, burst into a rage, but what stunned Zane was Jay.

Horror shattered his face, and Jay unconsciously stepped back by the sheer weight of his words. Betrayal was not a common issue for the tight-knit team, and to hear this from a friend was a sentence worse than death.

Zane briefly closed his eyes to catalogue this but an unimportant smile twinkled. These were the friends he fought to keep, and he was to harm anyone for this friendship.

"You did what?" Lloyd sternly echoed.

The promise of punishment pulled the strings above. Cautious, Zane plastered a sorrowful eye to accompany his family.

"I laid injury to hundreds of civilians across the city." Zane outstretched his hand to the five. Ice sifted out of his hands, and he endowed it with a corrupted touch.

Corrosion sang the song of death and muted any leftoever sorrows in his heart. The corrupted energy awakened a ruthlessness behind his eyes, a pharoah's wrath under the guise of a servant's innocence. "Due to the nature of my element. After prolonged exposure to the forbidden scroll of spinjitzu, it laid waste to the element of ice."

Dying chords whispered out of the ice to produce a soul-screeching sound from its touch. The souls of the damned begged for mercy, and Zane pleaded in the depths of his heart to provide it.

It would not listen to the plea of an innocent man.

His friends crowded around the forbidden truth, some daring to interact with death's hand. The most curious of them all dabbed the corrosive material, but he hissed by the contact and stuffed a hand to his mouth for pain treatment.

"To combat the effects and satiate the whisperings of the scroll, I was forced to shed blood."

The Sensei in the corner was fractured by the reasoning. That explained the deaths.

Screeches and cries of the dead tugged at his soul and ordered for reason. Justice. Revenge. Zane blinked, the damned on the brink of ravaging his soul.

He could care less about his soul. What did it matter if his friends were on the line?

"The scroll bended my will to its demands. In return for bloodshed, I was to be spared the cravings of the ice emperor."

The name pegged their focus. Recognition bombed by way of emotions, some disgust, some terror, some sadness, and most of all, fear.

"I truly apologize, my friends," Zane bowed his head to the seven in the courtyard. "It was never my intention to act in such a manner. If there was any way to avoid this tragedy, I would not have hesitated to take it. However, my hand was played, and this was the result of my act--"