Departed

Chapter 24: Family Trees

Kai's POV

     I shouldn't have been surprised by this, but Zane found where we needed to go within a matter of seconds.

     "North of Ninjago," he told me, weaving an Elemental Dragon into the air, "there is an old temple. My sources say it used to be for the writers of the Cloud Kingdom to send pieces of Ninjago's future to the citizens. There were all kinds of scrolls with prophecies, family trees, and vague hints about future that were being sent to the temple for the people to decipher."

     I watched the ice harden into a distinctive form. I hated riding on Zane's ice-cold dragon, but I was in no position to make one myself. I was told that I was still recovering from Malevolence's poison. I tried to deny the fact, but Skylor made the unbeatable argument that it had made me weak enough to pass out after one blow from the Overlord. I would have ignored all of this and insisted I was fine, but Skylor had made some threats on what would happen if I set back my recovery any further which I was too scared of to dismiss. She was the only one I would have listened to anyway.

     "After some amount of time all of the hints stopped coming, but those are for reasons no one on the internet seems to know."

      "How does that help us?" I felt itchy just looking at the freezing figure.

      Zane handed the ice dragon our luggage. It gracefully tucked the bags against its chest, purring as Zane rubbed its horns. "Scholars would map out family trees to try to connect the prophecies to. There are hundreds of them still lying around in the temple. Maybe they have our family trees mapped out."

     "Which would make looking up our ancestry so much easier." I caught on, messing with my hair.

     Zane slung himself onto the dragon's back. "Can you get on yourself or do you need a boost?"

     He laughed as I scowled.

     Flying was the easy part. It was cloudy where the old temple was, and the caretakers were reluctant to let us in. About a half mile walk away from the temple was a small town called Eolas. Zane was able to buy us a room for the night at a small inn. The room, like the town, was lacking in high-quality technology. The room's lights flickered every now and then, and there was no phones to call reception about luxury room service. I was appalled at the aspect of not being able to overpay for an abundance of spicy chips, to which Zane just shook his head and sighed. He insisted it was fine to the confuddled innkeepers, so we dropped off our luggage and headed out.

     The Cloud Kingdom temple was massive, built with towering golden spirals and rounded domes scattered across the roof. It looked faded by time, almost unimportant, especially since there was an obvious lack of guards surrounding the premise.

     "Once they bought out these lands, the leaders of the Elemental Houses only let those with their direct permission enter the temple." The caretaker explained in a monotone voice as he walked us up to the entrance, gesturing to the thick woods surrounding the temple. He never mentioned his name, nor did he act like he wanted to have this job. Apparently, the temple was maintained by taxes coming from the residents of the small town, Eolas. The caretaker probably didn't get paid much, with the size of the town in mind. "This land used to belong to House Nature." He waved around him like it was obvious. "But they disbanded years ago, leaving this temple in our care."

     "Elemental Houses?" Zane asked. "My databases are only picking up that they were nobility before city living became popular."

     "You know how you all go around using your magic in the main city?" He waited for us to nod, though I had to note how unimpressed he seemed by our presence. We must not have been as popular in the rural areas of Ninjago. "Yeah, that was basically it. The houses were filled with people who could use those magic powers, and they used it to get to the top of the social scene. If you had a different power, you belonged to a different house."