The Kingdom of Spiders welcomed the visitors from the city of Dark Magic with snarls, contained by muffling thickets of webs, decorating in greyish terrors the hidden dimension of Nepal. Guarded, as all other kingdoms, by the Immortal Weapon they called the Bride of Nine Spiders, it was she who fell responsible of seeing the Crane to her Master. There was no way to cross this cities passage, were you to pose a threat and not be welcomed and only half the citizens forming a casket of whispers around the cobwebbed paths knew their own way down in the valley.

A colosseum of stairs laid below and at its center, underneath the translucent roof of braided webs, the strongest material this past-army dressed into for eons, under all the corpses rotten of curious people stumbling when the dimension open upon their secret existence, waited the council with its hive mind, the Master made out of nine brains and nine separate bodies. 

"You come seeking war, we know," the Master Spider hissed, as Master Crane and his champion stopped at the center of the room, in the middle of all those high chairs, while the Bride took her place on the steps to one of the thrones. She pulled out a needle from what seemed like thin air and started playing with it. 

Dai Lim could not tell if she was interested in studying him as an opponent or she was simply annoyed by his presence there, her eyes were deceiving and sharp, but the important details of an expressions were cover once by a mask of silk over her lower half of the face and second by the cover wrapping her forehead and head around. Dai Lim swallowed at the quickness with which she twisted and swirled the needle, but knew, no matter how terrifying the Immortal Weapons who he'd have to fight were, there was something which ultimately, would guarantee his win.

That's what Master Crane has told him they were there for.

"I've come with the knowledge and confusion as to why you would let a destroyed Capital go unnoticed, unpunished and still, ruling over our actions."

"Young you are, we know," the nine spoke at the same time, repeating the same words, as always to the end. Were it not for the conjoint past of their two Capitals having united before as the most ruthless army against enemies of other worlds, Crane would have never considered this drop of mercy to ink down the purity of his plan of pitch black rage, tipping it over the top. "Young and stupid."

The last word echoed against the webs, they vibrated its ice coldness. Spiders survived under any condition, in humidity, in dirt, in darkness... They had no use for sentimentalism in their world, so they showed none to their friends and enemies alike; their source of strength was drawn from honesty to thoughts, values and oneself.

"K'un-Lun's warrior has won the last Tournament and the rules we abide by declare that it is K'un-Lun whose jurisdiction we follow."

"And if there's a war?" Master Crane kept his composure when he spoke over the choir of nine voices in his own darkly tensed tone. "The rules say the winning Capital will be the only one to demand the union of our armies and therefore acknowledge the presence of a danger to the higher knowledge we hold. But how can a city which has fallen by the hands of enemies it has created warn us about the danger they couldn't avoid?"

The Nine hesitated, their glassed eyes waited so Master Crane grinned and continued, right hand grasping his left fist behind his back. "We must hold the Tournament early and let there be another, still standing, Capital at charge."

"There is no war," far less certain and demanding, even less terrifying than before Crane voiced his belief, the Nine Master Spiders noted the truth they have been aware of. "This catastrophe you are theorizing about does not exist, we know."

"The Hand," Master Crane took a step forward. Dai Lim noticed the Bride inch close to getting up, her needles stopping, and in their stillness, becoming almost invisible in her hand. Master Crane did not budge to threat, for he turned now to try and face each of the chosen Nine, elders of this once strong city, now subdued to K'un-Lun's soft rule. "How long until they have had enough of their city's taste of immortality and they decide they wish to come for your silk and poisons, the Crane's library of dark spells? What would stop them from trying to find the keys to the Eight Realm?"

"The Hand was reduced to one finger, their immortality is as fake as their morals, we know."

"Then how about what's happening on Earth?" Master Crane allowed himself to express the rage he felt inside as a boil through a shout. "Mutants are rising, kicking over stones, drawing attention from other worlds. Thrice we have already been threatened with mass extinction out there and none of us have been announced about it-"

"Because perhaps the Iron Fist has not considered it a danger worthy of our powers to be revealed. The Heaven have not opened to help the human in a long time and since we are all still standing, still alive, we reckon K'un-Lun's champion was right. There is no war, we know."

"No war," Master Crane mocked them in a whisper, bowing his gaze and studying the mural drawn on the circular ground, barely lit, if at all. Were it not for the cobwebs, capturing light in them and reflecting it around, this kingdom would have been a pitch black hole. "Do you think Danny Rand knows what a war looks like? His training is not complete-"

"You cling to chaos, we know," the Nine interrupted, enraged in a gradual crescendo. "But Daniel Rand is the last standing of K'un-Lun and the ancient rules are clear. Until the Tournament, years away from now, comes around and someone new wins, the current Iron Fist alive will decide when the war is real. You will leave now, we know."

The Bride hummed from behind her mask, understanding she had to get up and escort the visitors back to their portal way home. Master Crane has already turned towards his champion, his young boy, Dai Lim, the only hope he had for these rules to be abolished. The war was there and no one was seeing it but him that they couldn't afford letting the pacifism be the doom of their entire world. Dark Magic came with knowledge none of these fools could understand.

Sadness still clung and scrapped to Master Crane's expression, gaze lowered until it raised in cold. Dai Lim knew the look: he was about to get a tough order. 

No one knew their real power, the wonders of Dark Magic have been kept even from the Sorcerer Supreme on Earth. They knew better... Master Crane's hatred faded back into the narrowing of his eyes, "Kill them all."

Dai Lim hesitated, but that light in him was snuffed out by the duty and loyalty demanded by the practice, his new home. His fingers bended, hands twisted and scrunched across symbols that conjured the shadows, hellish molded torches of darkness. Dai Lim learned how to control the magic into being subjugated to his will, especially because of how much he grew to despise the physical aspects of his training. 

The spiders, warriors covered in armored silk came through webs and faced the strong tunnels of magic Dai Lim let exude from his hands. A massacre was what Master Crane turned from, hearing the gasp which dimmed his smile into confusion. Someone fell over and the sound, though unusually echoed, got his attention.

Sierra thought it was all a dream, all until she fell and the pain of scraping her hands on the rocks was real. Her cry got the attention of the man missing fingers and the fact that he was looking right at her was another percentage added up on her fear meter, registering new numbers which ultimately just made her freeze in spot.

She couldn't move before either, when she was just the observer of a feverish dream, so why should she bother trying now? Master Crane lifted his good hand and a senseless wind came under Sierra's back, swiping her off the ground and carrying her neck right into his grip. The wind dropped and he held her with her fingertips above the surface.

"What are you?" Master Crane watched her crippling fear with the border of curiosity, passing into endless, mindless anger. No witnesses was the key to this plan and that thought alone made him squeeze his grip. 

Sierra gasped herself awake, realizing she has fallen off of Danny's couch, now drooling rather on the carpets of his office. No mater the aches and the dizziness of such a realistic dream, she set herself relaxed on the carpet and realized just how much light was reflecting on her, through the glass table she must have pushed aside by mistake during her fall. 

Only few specks of dust shone like glitter in the morning sun, bathing an entire office, twice the size of any apartment she's ever had, into warmth. Then she had the unfortunate instinct, while closing her eyes in an elongated bat of her eyelashes, to sniff in. Her borrowed clothes from Luke were smelling of the sewer, which reminded her of the weirdest Lizard and the Spider-Man swings, overall just gaining her groan.

"Are you awake?" The cheerful voice she could not locate made Sierra push up on her knees, even her left elbow kicked the table even further away, knowing over the second decorative candle standing. "Good morning," Danny Rand greeted her from the little coffee making corner next to his desk he has barely gotten to use for true business of this world lately. Ward left for him stacks of documents to approve or disapprove of by tomorrow afternoon, when he was made aware he'd have to clear schedule for a board meeting.

Getting to love the Rand Enterprise as much as his father mattered for Danny, but until then, he turned from the coffee maker with tea instead and focused on his only important meeting at hand: the woman getting off his floor. "I'm sorry I let you sleep there. You fell off the couch and kept on sleeping and I was afraid lifting you back up would only cause you to rest less. I have some chamomile tea, gentle start for the morning, might help with the pain of that fall."

"It's fine," Sierra mumbled, sitting on the right end of the couch after Danny handed her one of the steaming cups of tea. He kept one for himself and sat down on the same couch, just at the opposite end. "It's a surprisingly comfortable couch though, so thank you for having me here after last night..."

Sierra noted that Danny looked nothing like she imagined he'd look like the first time the voices in her head starting ruining her life with weird dreams and even weirder circumstances of happenings. He was not bald, but sporting blonde curls of hair and even a beard; he was not dressed in the attire she saw the monk at the entrance to the tunnels the other day, but now was wearing a suit with a slightly messy tie, accessorized with his running shoes.

"Of course, it was no bother," Danny was eager to get the conversation going towards his inquiries, but he wondered where his politeness was going to have to draw a line if he didn't think his words through. Jessica told him how Sierra has been wording her search for him, but how much did she really know?

"Did Spider-Man bring you back without any incidents?" he asked instead, still pondering his more important questions. Danny sipped from his tea, seeing Sierra nod. 

"Did you... catch the Lizard?"

Danny also bowed his head. A certain awkwardness suddenly reminded them both that despite the lies or the fate stringing around their hands, they still were not the acquaintances they have claimed to be, not even more than mere strangers with interest in the same topic. "Jessica said something about a message you had for me...," Danny cleared his throat with a cough, greased and softened through the warmth of the tea, settling in him like the fire of the dragon.

The tea burnt Sierra's tongue and she set down the cup of tea. Danny watched her face scrunch to a grimace then turn to a wide-eyed horror. "I...," she stuttered, trying to frantically blink her eyes back in focus.

"What is it?" Danny worried, not yet passing the invisible barrier between them to come closer.

"I don't remember...," Sierra shook her head and closed her eyes. How could she not remember? She was so certain that information has been in her head last night, but now that Danny asked about it, the words were on the tip of her tongue, returning back down the stinging throat, intoxicated with a chamomile flavor. "Hold on!" she raised her left hand to the side to stop Danny in his little shift in his seat.

"The path...," she mumbled, remembering only random words from the riddle. "This is so unfair!" Sierra exclaimed, standing up and hitting her knee on the table Danny must have pulled back on its initial place before her matinal fall. Now that she'd think about it, it made more sense to think Danny pushed the table aside so she wouldn't hurt herself more after rolling off the couch. His kindness made it even harder for her not to feel desperate in digging out the exact words she has been hearing loud and clear before resting up and poisoning her thoughts with weird dreams.

Sierra has never been the kind to experience restless sleeps, not ever since she became a recognized adult with a job that injected literal tiredness into her veins. Her childhood may have been littered with odd dreams and nightmares, of dragons, of buildings made of hands and shelves filled with glowing books, but she grew unaccustomed to it all that now, thinking about such a complicated sleep vision was causing her double the distress.

"Hey, you know what?" Danny got up nervous. There was so much he needed to know, but Sierra was shaking grabbing onto the sides of her head, exasperated with remembering so much that his heart felt his answers were not as important as ending this torture. "Nevernind," he got up, all a smile, trying to approach her. "It's okay if you don't remember right now, we can solve something else like-"

And then he heard her whispered mumbles. "Return to K'un-Lun... your home... follow... the path..." The mumbles went on, but the first part he heard drained away all smile. Dannt Rand froze, feeling the warmth in his chest puzzle with guilt. K'un-Lun... His home... Oh, how he felt the failure he was to that land he should have protected.

"What did you say?" He asked, lost in seriousness, in regret. Sierra turned towards him, lowering her hands, shocked perhaps at how blunt the question sounded, unlike Danny's previous demeanor. Now, the voices has always made the Irong Fist sound like some warrior, and she was starting to understand, perhaps this happy man in a suit was more than met the eye at first glance.

"Which part? Uhm...," she gulped and decided simply on bowing her head, studying the carpet and saying all the mumbles of scattered words from the start, just a bit louder and slower. "Return to K'un-Lun-"

"Return to K'un-Lun," Danny gasped, tears in his blue eyes, making them brighter. "How?" he stepped forward, desperately, keeping himself in check only once Sierra leant back, fearful. He was getting ahead of himself; she looked at him helplessly lost. "Is this why you found me?" Danny continued, a bit slower, bowing his head and looking at her with expectations she doubted she'd meet. "So I can find the place to finish my training? Is K'un-Lun still out there-?

"I..." She wanted to help. That was the whole reason behind those voices hammering her old life to the ground. But how could she help him when she could not remember herself what she was ought to do for him... Sierra gasped. Danny had to catch her as he knees buckled.

He must have said something, but all she heard was the wind, which couldn't possibly be in that office, not even with window open. The wind carried a flute song and the flute song carried her on a mountain path where snow has not yet watered the soil, but rivers did.

"I see it," she gasped. Danny felt warmth in his hands, holding Sierra from falling over.

"What...?"

"I see where you must go-"

The image was swept away quickly from her and the bright mountain valley turned into cold darkness, into cobwebs and corpses, littered on the floor while shadow monsters burned into splinters of a fire. The Bride was kneeled before Master Crane a second ago, pledging her loyalty, but as soon as the next second, she got up, eyes smiling in mischief.

"Bride of the..."

"No," she shook her head. "That is the name they gave me. I shall be called Tarah, now."

"Noble," Master Crane stiffened a smile. "Going back to your roots and not forgetting the poverty you came from. Tarah, you have made the right choice, saving your City, but the war will still consume us for as long as the K'un-Lun warrior stands."

"Then," she rolled her shoulders back. "How about we go to this infamous Earth and make sure there is no grain of K'un-Lun left to endanger us all? If I fight the Iron Fist now or in the arena, what difference would it make? He'd still die by my needles..."

"It makes all the difference," Dai Lim argued back. "Master, fighting an Immortal We-"

"Not now, Dai," Master Crane cut him off. He raised his right hand and the dust swirled into a weak, but certain portal to Earth, the land of all the problems. "Go on, Tarah. Fight for peace."

author's note:    sierra 🤝 joanna
short memoryy

making THAT trailer for guiding light (in the visuals section now) really solidfied all my ideas for this book and look at it !!! I USED MASTER CRANE'S TRAILER QUOTE *evil laughhh*