#tiwtw

The shadows created by his tiny flame cut stark figures on the walls, the floor, and both their faces. They were far too sharp to be natural, too unsettling to be ignored. Kai was getting sick of the agitation thrumming under his skin.

This room they'd found was nice and all, especially considering the door had a lock, but they couldn't stand around and wait for safety forever. The longer they stayed put, the longer they risked getting well and truly lost. And seeing how Karlof had been lost when Kai'd found him cornered by the spirit, that was definitely a risk.

Kai twisted the knob and pulled.

The door stayed put.

Frowning, he tried again. And again, tugging more harshly. Still nothing.

They'd just gotten themselves locked inside the room. Did it lock from the outside or something?!

Frustrated when persistently pulling at the door did nothing, Kai yelled and punched it as hard as he could. A moment later, hissing and rubbing his knuckles, he realized that was a mistake.

"Let Karlof try," the other man said, buckling up to attack and slamming the door with all the force he had. Both of his gauntlets hit the wood with an impressive, booming 'thud', but the door held. Kai squinted — were there even any cracks on the thing?

"Uhh … do it again," he suggested hurriedly. "Maybe if you keep at it, it'll start to crack."

And Karlof did take a few more spirited swings at the door standing in their way. No good; somehow the door was still in one piece. Not even anything other than hairline cracked. (Just how did a stinking door manage to be stronger in the face of Karlof's punches than him, anyway? Ouch, his ego.)

"Doesn't make sense! How is door not broken already?" Karlof asked, absolutely dumbfounded.

"Great question! Wish I knew." Petulantly, he threw his leg back and kicked. Unsurprisingly, it did nothing, and he was left glowering at the door as his toe throbbed briefly. The last bit of the flame in his hand winked out as he lost his focus, and he had to generate a new one. (Blast their weakened powers.)

Okay, so this was an exasperating turn of events. But hey, they could find another way out. Kai's free hand flew to his chin as he thought about it. Maybe they didn't have to break the door …

"Hey, Karlof. Maybe if you use your metal powers to rip off the hinges. You think we could get the door off that way?"

Karlof just stared at him for a second.

"Karlof don't particularly care."

Hold on, what.

"Walked all day just to get to stupid mansion, then ran around forever just to get away from ugly monster. All Karlof want right now is some rest."

"Tell me you're joking," Kai hissed. "We can rest once we get back to where we were! Unless you wanna be wandering around lost."

"Breaking down door takes energy. Karlof don't have energy right now. Plus, if we can't go out, monster can't come in," Karlof pointed out.

He had a point. Kai remembered what the others had said about the magic surrounding everything. It leeched their energy, didn't it? Karlof looked pretty wiped. He was loathe to stay away from the others any longer than necessary, and he hated how everything about this place felt, but it'd be just mean to deny the guy a chance to rest. He liked to think he wasn't that much of a jerk.

Karlof grimaced after a moment. "Also … maybe pulled leg muscle while running. Don't know for sure."

"Oh, and of course you save that for last," Kai groaned. "Okay, fine. We'll stay in here a while. You're just lucky the door's locked."

"What I wouldn't give for a working camera right now, to capture the look on your face." Cole shook his head and chuckled.

No one had counted on the passage from the clock workshop taking them right back to the room they were staying in — least of all Jay and Skylor, who had their first taste of the passages from a bewildered posse of ninja stumbling out of the wall. They'd both jumped nearly clear to the ceiling; poor Skylor had actually almost fallen off of the bed she was sitting on trying to scramble to her feet.

"Ohh, shut up! The wall just opened up out of nowhere and spit you out; what was I supposed to think?! You would've have been just as startled!"

"Whatever helps you sleep at night, zaptrap."

"It was pretty funny," Lloyd said, smile muted but genuine.

"Helpful," Jay huffed. "You wouldn't happen to have found them, would you?"

Cole shook his head and gestured at the empty space to his left. "What do you think?"

Jay sighed, expression dropping. "Thought so. … You guys mind explaining why the walls just spit you out?"

"Please," Skylor added. "If you're going to give me a heart attack, at least tell me why."

Lloyd turned to really see her, and noticed that she was fiddling with what looked to be the pieces of her crossbow. Then he did a double-take. Before he could say anything, Zane spoke up.

"Apologies for startling you, and hello, Skylor. It's good to see that you're — oh my."

"Yeah, I know." Skylor grinned ruefully, eyes obscured by…

"Those are Kai's shades," Lloyd blurted out. "How come …?"

"Ask Jay," she shrugged. "He had the idea of giving them to me in the first place."

"Hey, I couldn't dim the lamp or fireplace anymore or they'd go out, and I know Kai's always carrying a pair of sunglasses with him, so …yeah."

"They really do help, though," Skylor said. "It's easier to fix this thing" — she frowned at her broken weapon of choice — "when I can keep my eyes open."

"Good to hear it," Zane said, ever the one to keep tabs. "But hopefully you won't be needing it too soon." Skylor frowned, but didn't respond.

It was hard to figure out how he felt about this. On the one hand, heh. Of course Kai kept sunglasses on him at all times.

On the other hand, the fact that they were Kai's only pulled worse at something in Lloyd's chest. If they didn't find him fast, Skylor using his sunglasses was gonna feel more like a sick joke than anything …

He expelled the thought quickly.

Kai would be okay. He had to be.

Cole went around haphazardly patting different objects in the room until he knocked back a glass lantern on the mantelpiece shutting the passage entrance, meriting a few snickers at how silly he looked. Then he started telling Jay and Skylor how they'd discovered the passage system, but gratefully let Zane explain the uglier details. Lloyd jumped in to describe their surroundings in the open hallways and several rooms that had been explored as well, including some of the more eccentric details. Skylor, having evidently taken on the role of unofficial scribe out of sheer boredom with her current situation, reached for a notepad and started scribbling away, asking questions ever so often.

"You know what I think is going on here?" Jay said, after a beat. "We crossed dimensions walking through the forest and now we're in a horror video game. That's what happened."

"Jay."

"Listen, I'm right," Jay declared, with far more confidence than he had any right to have. "Think about it. Everything's too quirky. Too conveniently inconvenient."

"Jay, I swear to Lloyd's grandfather I will hurt you." The effect of Cole's words were mostly nullified by the fact that he was shaking his head in his hands. (And for the record, it was still weird when people swore on his grandfather.)

"Explain," Skylor said, openly giggling at the absurdity, and Zane looked as confused as he did amused.

Ahh, good ol' Zane.

Still, the fact that Jay was joking around when there were people missing rubbed him the wrong way.

"I'm serious! We just so happen to be stuck in here because the doors won't open, and they can't be busted down, and the windows are barred! Have you ever heard a more video-game thing in your life?"

"Splendid situational analysis skills right there, Jay," Cole responded drily. "A+. What do you propose we do to solve this?"

But then again … Cole had been tensed up and radiating apprehension, the entire time they were searching, to the point where it had started to make Lloyd nervous, too. He looked like he was beginning to lighten up again, as he poked at Jay's ridiculousness.

"Whoa, hey, I didn't ask for leader talk! Just saying. Not to mention, that ugly ghost clown respawns when you kill it. That's some next-level malarkey right there."

"D-don't call it that," Skylor gasped in between laughs. Evidently the pain meds had kicked in.

"And why not, huh? Are you trying to tell me it doesn't look like a clown and the Overlord had a really ugly baby?"

"Goodness," Zane remarked.

"Jay, do you ever think before you open your mouth?" Cole groaned, exasperated chuckles slipping out despite his best efforts. "Ever?"

"It's a personal point of pride to improv anything and everything I say," Jay said matter-of-factly. "Come on, you know this."

"This is why you're not group leader."

And since when was Lloyd the one to growl at any sign of fun when things were rough? He'd seen the way Jay's face had dropped when Cole announced that Kai and Karlof were still missing, and according to Zane he'd fought it before. If he was goofing off, it wasn't for lack of understanding the gravity — it was in spite of it.

So he'd bite. He'd pick back up the pieces of the child left over from when he'd been too small for the green gi, and play along. When they went back out to search, it'd be easier to keep his morale up if he let loose a little now.

They needed this.

"You know, Jay does have a point," he chimed in now. When everyone's attention turned to him, he grinned and clarified, "About the video game thing. Also the things in here are so … weird, they might as well be props. Like the clocks! What would anyone do with that many clocks?"

"And it does seem odd that there would be so many weapons on display …" Zane murmured under his breath.

"Yeah, exactly!"

Jay beamed. "Finally, someone sees it my way! I would bet my hand that this is all because of that dumb discount survivor Kai got at the shady store across from Doomsday Comix. I knew there was something weird about it. You should never trust a shady discount game."

"Hey, Kai got that game for you, because he was sick of you bellyaching about the Temple being haunted!" Cole replied. "Think an awful lot of me, doncha? Won't even take the former ghost's word that there's no ghosts in there."

"Uh, like I'd take your word for anything! Why don't you take this?" Jay threw a pillow at Cole's shoulder, much to their shock. They held their breath and waited for their reaction … and Cole worked his jaw for a second, then promptly picked up the pillow and nailed Jay in the face with it.

"Whoa, hey!" Lloyd cried. They paused and looked at him again.

"... We don't have nearly enough pillows for this."

Jay only blinked for a split second before grinning, balling up his blanket and whacking Cole with that instead.

Skylor doubled over laughing.

Absolute mayhem ruled for all of five minutes. Zane had been unwittingly dragged into the pillow/blanket fight that had evolved, and Lloyd figured if everyone else bar the one person who couldn't was doing it, he was definitely throwing himself into the ring. It only lasted up to Cole and Zane ganging up on him and wrapping him into a blanket burrito until he was screaming uncle. Even if she couldn't participate, Skylor was absolutely living for the chaos; she was practically munching on popcorn, tossing stray bedding into the fray (from a safe distance) for the rest of them to pounce on.

When they eventually settled down and sobered up, the air settling down on their shoulders again wasn't as oppressive. The soft afterglow lingering after they'd laughed some of their stress out made everyone feel a little more like they would be okay in the end, like they could go out and search again and they'd find everything they needed to — Kai, Karlof, and a way to escape this awful place and put it behind them for good.

But for right now …

"So. What's next?" Cole fluffed a pillow and set it back on the bed he'd grabbed it from.

"We should go back out and keep looking," Lloyd stated, grabbing a blanket off the floor and pointedly folding it in an apologetic-looking Zane's direction. Cole snorted — Zane might've felt a liiiiittle guilty about teaming up on Lloyd and accidentally knocking Jay down with a pillow, but he'd enjoyed every bit of that fight, and Lloyd knew it and he knew they both knew it.

"So soon?" Skylor asked. "You were gone for a while. Maybe you should take a break or something first …"

"Yeah!" Jay agreed, putting away his own blanket. "You were walking in secret passages and stuff! Aren't you tired? I know I'd be."

"If we do go out again, we should switch out who remains here with Skylor to prevent that," Zane said.

"Not 'if'," Lloyd said. "It's dangerous out there, and didn't you say Kai was injured? Karlof doesn't have any idea what he's up against if he bumps into it, either. Not to mention, we haven't even seen a trace of Shade around longer we wait, the worse our chances of finding them are. I say we keep looking a little longer."

Cole grimaced. He understood Lloyd's impatience, of course. He was worried, they all were, and nothing about their current situation looked good. And every second they spent trapped put him painfully in mind of another haunted building that had preyed on their fears and ended in nothing but trouble …

But the green ninja's insistence on searching until they found their missing was beginning to look near-obsessive. And while he hadn't said a word about being tired, his group had been on the move almost constantly since before they'd even arrived at the mansion. He'd fought for his life once already, and the building's magic was persistently weakening them. He had to be tired. Cole knew he was.

For the kid's sake, Cole hoped again that they were alright. If they weren't …

He shut the train of thought down before it could set itself off. He could do without losing his composure like that again, particularly now that he wasn't as isolated.

"Ech. I was actually thinking we have lunch or something first. It's been a while since any of us ate."

"Lunch …?"

Ohhh First Spinjitzu Master he could not be serious.

"Yes, Lloyd," he said dryly, "sometimes human beings need to eat food. You know, to survive and stuff."

"I know that!" Lloyd exclaimed. "But how do you know that it's lunch time, specifically?"

Cole paused to consider it. Usually, his appetite was the subject of a fair few jokes, but here he was using it as a surprisingly reliable indicator of when they should eat, sharpened with fatigue as it was. Because he was absolutely basing this off of his appetite.

A crinkle broke the quiet. Heads turned to see nothing else but Jay, teeth already sunk into a granola bar and blinking up at them.

"What?"

Cole sighed, rummaging through his backpack and frowning when it took a minute to find him anything worth eating. He unwrapped a sandwich as he said his next words.

"First trail mix at unholy hours of the morning, now this. If you're going to keep snacking precisely when it's not time to eat, you can't turn around and wonder why you're never hungry. I mean, not to suggest there's ever a bad time to eat, but you know what I mean."

"But I'm not hungry enough to eat a full meal!" Jay protested. "Any more than this and … I dunno. Don't feel up to it. And aren't you a fine one to talk?"

"But he has a point," Zane said, concerned. "Your appetite is usually larger than this. Does your stomach still hurt?"

"Nah," Jay said dismissively, though he polished off the bar and didn't make a move to eat anything else. "I'm just not that hungry. Besides, I'll just save it for later."

Cole opened his mouth to tell him to eat at least a little more, anyway, but the last thing he'd said made him think.

Because when he considered it …

"We're starting to run low on food, aren't we?"

"Now that you mention it, I guess we are," Lloyd said, surrendering to the fact that they were eating now and pulling out some food. He didn't immediately eat it, though. "And we can't go get more, can we?"

"I have extra food in my bag," Zane offered, looking a little meek. "... The truth is, I kept storing food and snacks in it for missions and never remembered to take them out. It might not be all that much, but perhaps it could help us last a little longer."

"Hoarder."

"Hey, it's saving our hides now, isn't it?" Lloyd elbowed Jay. "Be nice."

"But I'm afraid it won't last us forever …"

"Right. We gotta think long-run," Cole said. "We have backup food, but there's …" He took a moment to count. "Five of us. Seven including the missing two. And none of us are running on full strength. This stuff's gonna go fast. If Zane's stash runs out, we've got no way to get more from outside, plus there's no way anything in here would be edible."

"Blegh." Jay made a face. "Can you imagine what it'd be like? The mold probably has mold growing on it. No thank you."

"Thank you, Jay, you're really doing wonders for my appetite." Skylor groaned.

"You're very welcome."

"Keep it to yourself," Cole said. "Just because you're not hungry doesn't mean you have to make sure everyone else isn't."

Jay harrumphed at him but didn't say anything else.

"We need to ration, don't we?" Lloyd said.

"I don't like that," Jay said. "That implies we're staying here."

"... Not that I like the idea," Cole hated it, in fact. "But again, we might have to start thinking long-term. Hopefully, Kai and Karlof aren't far, but who knows how long it'll actually take to find them. And that's not even taking into account how we'll find a way to escape …"

"Okay, you've made your point," Jay moaned. Cole followed his gaze to Lloyd, who was eating his honey sandwich with dark eyes, and sighed, feeling another twinge of worry.

"Well, this doesn't bode well for me," Skylor commented. "I didn't think we'd get holed up this long."

"Is this about food? How much do you have?" Zane asked.

"Mm? Only about enough for a day and a half, plus snacks. And that's being generous," she admitted sheepishly. "I've only got a little more left."

"It's alright," Cole replied. "None of us were really expecting it. You can just … mooch off of Zane?"

"Well, geez." Skylor raised an eyebrow. It was pretty funny, paired with the sunglasses. "When you put it that way."

"Don't worry," Zane reassured her. "Feel free to take what you need."

"Pft. Alright," Skylor said at last. "Thanks."

"Glad we got that set straight, but what're we gonna do about water?" Lloyd brought up. "My bottle's nearly empty."

"He has a point," Zane said. "Having food is essential, but we cannot afford to dehydrate, either."

"Man, Nya'd be nice to have around for that," Cole sighed. "... But it's probably a good thing she's not here."

"It's been well over a day and we still haven't contacted her."

"Maybe longer, even," Jay sighed glumly. His eyes flickered with worry for a second. "You … don't think she'd come looking for us, do you?"

"Don't sound so hopeful, Jay," Cole warned him. "There's no way it'd end well if she did."

"It was bad enough when I ran into it," Lloyd added. "If it stumbled into her before we did …"

"Okay, okay, I get it," Jay whimpered. "Forget I said anything."

"But do we need a water master for that?" Skylor cut in. "We could try to melt ice and make do that way."

"PIXAL has the same idea. But that would be most efficiently done with a controlled heat source such as Kai's fire, and Kai isn't with us right now," Zane said. Lloyd's face darkened.

"I know, but once we find him. Because we are going to," she said pointedly.

"I suppose I could just set some ice near the fireplace and let it melt, even though it would still be slow," Zane said. "Until we find Kai, of course."

"Right," Lloyd answered before Cole or Jay could say anything. "We will." But the room felt tenser again, more quietly charged than it had before.

the Clockmaker, owner of the mansion through his wife's lineage, alluded to in Chapters 18 + 19 so far, as well as alluded to as the man in the family portrait repeatedly mentioned throughout (notably Chapters 3, 12, and 19) AND

the as-of-yet unnamed Elemental Master who the ninja learn about through their writings, as mentioned in Chapters 14, 17, 18, and 19.

Their first interactions with each other are cordial: the Clockmaker gives this EM a guest room to stay in, they help him and the rest of the Shuravansha clan build secret hideouts in their mansion to hide refugees of the war and fortify their defenses for any subsequent invasions. All well and good, nothing to write home about. And initially, that was the extent of their dynamic. They're politely distant with each other, both working to prevent the Woodlands from being attacked by Serpentine again, and then things go south for all of them when [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS].

But then. I thought about it.

The EM reveals in their diary that they've secretly brought Serpentine straight into the heart of a clan still devastated by the damage from a previous Serpentine attack. Several people, the Clockmaker included, had their loved ones injured or killed in that attack, and this person's brought more of them to their doorstep. These specific Serpentine are working as spies to end the war, of course, but ... regardless, how well does that go over if their presence is discovered?

Furthermore, there's the Clockmaker. I won't get into what he's doing, but he's getting up to some things behind closed doors that, for all his good intentions, presents a threat not just to the EM and their informants but potentially to everyone in the Woodlands, if he's not careful. This EM is willing to let sleeping beasts lie usually, but there's a little too much on the line right now to let it slide so easily.

And both of these people, for different reasons, are intelligent, guarded, stubborn and hyper-perceptive.

So of course they would learn each other's secrets. That politeness immediately morphs into an ugly tension delicately sustained by the weight of each other's secrets, a mutually assured destruction of sorts where they wait to see who's right. Until the very end, where they both meet their end with the feeling that they were both wrong.

I felt like this would be a beautiful way to flesh out their dynamic and add some meaning to their roles in how the mansion falls, and it's waaaay more fun to write. I have a whole little snippet dedicated to this and I'll probably post it to TIWTW whenever I get to revealing what the Clockmaker was up to~