YAY! FINALLY HAVE CHAPTER III FINISHED! WOO HOO!

Okay, can't really respond to reviews right now, but thank you guys sooooo much for your support on Chapter II! Shout-out to SwimmerNinja13, JAYA AND PERCY, JayFan67, LiaLia15, JayaForever421, ponygirl009, MasterofCupcakes, The Mayor of Ninjago City, 1234, and KittyKat for your reviews on Chapter II! :D It really means a lot!

One weird thing I just realized: I love writing WishfulThinkingShipping. What is that? One-sided Delara x Jay. I don't know why, but I love writing that! XD You'll see why I brought that up eventually . . . ;) But please don't guess; I don't want to spoil it for other people.

Gotta run, but here's the chapter name translation: Fate Decided. Welp, gotta go! Valere, and I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Chapter III: τύχη Αποφάσισε

Ed paced restlessly around the room. "It's not like Jay to be out this late," he voiced his thoughts aloud.

His wife, Edna, nodded in worried agreement. "It's nearly midnight; he should have been home hours ago!" She glanced out the window, and at the sight of someone approaching the house, narrowed her eyes at the figure. "Ed, come quick!"

As Ed joined her at the window, her look of relief changed into one of confusion as the figure came closer. "It's not Jay," she said, frowning. "It's Ziliaris."

"Isn't his house in the other direction?" Ed asked, sharing a puzzled glance with his wife.

Regardless where his house was, Ziliaris stumbled up to the window where the couple was standing. "Ed, Edna, I'm so sorry!" he gasped, falling to his knees in front of them. "It's my fault; I asked him to!"

"Slow down, sonny!" Ed exclaimed, more baffled than before. "You'd better come inside and tell us what's going on."

"No, I'm all right," Ziliaris insisted, refusing the offer to come into the house.

"Do you know where Jay is?" Edna asked, anxiously wringing her hands.

After taking several deep breaths, Ziliaris began, "I asked him to help me look for something around town, and then we went into the Apagorevméno District - that was completely my fault, he didn't want to, honest! And then a pack of wild jackals came tearing into the District, howling like banshees! I tried to pull Jay out of the way, but . . ." He held out a slightly battered cherrywood flute. "He was carried off by the jackals. This was all I could get before they ran off into the woods with him."

Edna took the flute with trembling hands, eyes welling up with tears. Ed gently put an arm around his wife. "Thank you for telling us, Ziliaris," he said quietly. "You should be getting home now."

After one final apology, Ziliaris took off.

"It's okay, Edna," her husband said softly. "Jay's in God's hands now. He'll be protected."

~*the next day: about mid-afternoon*~

"Wakey wakey, Sleepin' Beauty!"

Jay yelped as he was rudely awakened by a bucket of cold water right in his face. His muscles were sore and aching, and he couldn't feel his hands or feet. His arms, wrists, and ankles chafed painfully against the coarse ropes restraining them.

The snakes who had doused him burst into raspy laughter as Jay gasped and spluttered, trying to shake water out of his hair. "Nice to see you up and about, pretty boy," one, a Hypnobrai, sneered. "Though that'sa little inaccurate seeing as yer tied up an' all."

"What happened?" Jay coughed, still slightly groggy, despite his wake-up call.

"Ya fell asleep, all tuckered out," a green-and-red-scaled Venomari explained, baring his fangs in a derisive grin. "We brought ya back here, made ya nice an' comfy, and once dawn cracked, we were off! On'y reason we stopped was t'wake ya up so you can stop lazin' about and get movin'."

"How could I have been 'lazing about' if I was asleep?" Jay protested.

They ignored him. "Up on yer feet," a Constrictai ordered. Jay tried to obey, but only succeeded in flopping his partially limp body helplessly around like a fish out of water. The watching Serpentine sniggered at their captive's distress, and the teenager felt his face burning with embarrassment and humiliation.

Eventually, one of them, a red-and-white-scaled Fangpyre, caught him by the waist and forced him to his feet. Then he slashed through the ropes binding Jay's ankles and arms with his dagger. "Are we s'posed t'untie his wrists, too?" the Hypnobrai piped up.

"So long as we keeps an eye on 'im, I don't see why not," the Venomari shrugged. He turned his four yellow eyes toward Jay, narrowing his already slits of pupils at him. "Ya don't move a muskle, ya hear, or I'll do a li'l trick wit' yer neck and me blade."

Jay bobbed his head up and down in frightened affirmation. "I swear by the God I serve I won't run!"

"An' how good is th' word of this god ya swear by?" the Venomari asked warily.

"As good as that of the most honest man in the world and better!" Jay stammered.

Apparently satisfied, the Venomari gestured for the Fangpyre to undo the ropes holding Jay's hands behind his back. "Hold on to them ropes, Fang-Suei," he said, "you'll need 'em when it's time t'bring 'im to Pythor."

"'Oo died an' made yew Gen'ral alla sudden, Spitta?" the Constrictai demanded.

"No one, but Gen'ral Acidicus tol' me t'pick a coupl'a snakes to wake up Fox-Fur over there," Spitta responded, thumbing at Jay, who was now fervently massaging his arms and wrists, trying to restore blood flow. "I don' recall Gen'ral Plumpy askin' ya to, Snike."

He and the other snakes burst out laughing as Snike shrieked, "Yew li'l venom sh-pitter! Yew dare call Gen'ral Skalidor Plumpy?!"

"Looky who's callin' who little," the Hypnobrai jeered. "Yer shorter than Spitta, Snike, an' that's somethin' fer a Constrictai!"

That must have been an inside joke on the part of the Serpentine, for Spitta, Fang-Suei, and the Hypnobrai hissed in more raucous laughter at the fury of the Constrictai Snike. "Yew'll pay fer that, Rattla!"

Jay had just barely managed to massage his ankles back to health when Spitta turned on him. "You've 'ad enough time to thaw yer limbs, Foxie! Gimme those ropes, Fang-Suei!"

Once his hands were once again tied behind his back, Jay was roughly escorted to a makeshift tent where Pythor and the four other tailed Serpentine were in apparently deep discussion.

"You want to know what I think, Skalidor?" the green Venomari spat contemptuously. "I think you're getting a little big for your scales, and that's saying something!"

"Say that to my face, Acidicus!" the admittedly heavy-set black-and-orange Constrictai snarled. "No, don't, you'll get your filthy venom in my eyes!"

Snike smirked at Spitta, who merely muttered, "Not a word."

Pythor noticed the four Serpentine with their captive standing in the doorway of the tent, Fang-Suei and Rattla pointing their spears at Jay's back and Spitta and Snike holding their daggers close to his throat. "Ah, I see our guest has awakened!" he said with a satirical smile. "You snakes are free to go." He waved his hand dismissively to the four Serpentine.

They went, off, Snike and Spitta still heatedly bickering while Fang-Suei and Rattla placed bets with each other on whether or not the two of them would fight, and if so, who would win.

The Anacondrai guided Jay to the four other Serpentine, who eyed him with distaste. "Have I quite properly introduced you yet?" Pythor directed his question to Jay. "These fine snakes are General Skales of the Hypnobrai, General Fangtom of the Fangpyre, General Acidicus of the Venomari, and General Skalidor of the Constrictai."

The youth didn't say anything. His only response to this information was a skittish fidget at Pythor's cold-scaled touch. The red-and-white scaled Fangpyre, who alarmingly had two heads, appeared to be slightly amused at his silence. "What's the matter?" one head inquired. "Cat got your tongue?" The other added, yellow eyes narrowing as they followed Jay's gaze, "It's not polite to stare."

Jay shook his head and barely squeaked out a "sorry." But he could not tear his eyes away from the two pairs of ivory fangs which Fangtom's twin heads alternatively licked with their forked tongues. Their bites, which carried mutating effects, were only a foot away from sinking into his face, and he did not want to get on the bad side of those reptilian teeth.

The one clear part of his brain, that one section not clouded by fear, wondered, How do they eat if everything they bite turns into a snake?

"So, how are you enjoying your new accommodations, dear boy?" Pythor queried.

"What accommodations?" Jay asked, puzzled. "As far as I could tell I was probably sleeping on the ground for the night."

"You're a clever lad, aren't ya?" Skalidor sneered. "Takes a wit to figure out somethin' like that so fast."

"Oh, be quiet," the blue-white-and-yellow-patterned Skales snapped irritably, pressing one white-scaled hand to his forehead. "It's bad enough hearing you and Acidicus quarreling all the time, I shouldn't have to hear your poor attempt at mocking the merchandise." Acidicus's smirk of triumph immediately faded into a sulky scowl.

"Mercha-what?" The word was slightly difficult on Jay's tongue.

"Merchandise," one of Fangtom's heads replied. "Pythor prefers it over more commonplace terms such as goods or products."

"Geez, it's already hard enough trying to understand you with all that hissing, you have to throw in hard-to-pronounce words, too?" Jay let his thoughts slip out of his mouth without thinking, and his face reddened with a mixture of embarrassment and fear at the looks on the Serpentine Generals' faces.

Pythor chuckled, allegedly amused by his statement. "You do have a witty tongue when you want to, don't you, Jay? Although I sincerely hope you didn't really mean that little remark, otherwise. . ."

Jay flinched as he felt Pythor once again stroking his hair with his cold dagger flat. "No," he lied uneasily. "I didn't mean it."

"Good lad," the Anacondrai purred, his blade never once lifting away from Jay's head. "Now, we Serpentine are nocturnal creatures, resting during the day and active at night. Seeing as you're to be our traveling companion for the next week, I thought I ought to alert you to this fact, as well as tell you we will be giving you some aid in, ahem, temporarily adjusting to our sleep patterns."

"So you had your goons wake me up in the middle of the afternoon to tell me that I have to sleep during the day?" Jay asked, once again speaking impulsively. "Pretty ironic, if you ask me."

Pythor didn't reply immediately. Instead, he accepted something from Skales. "Do you see this?"

Jay frowned at the strange object in Anacondrai's hand. It appeared to be a vial with a hollowed-out needle inserted in its narrow end, and a slightly loose piece of cork sticking out from its wide end. The vial was almost completely full with some sort of liquid: clear, with a slight violet tint. "What is it?"

"This is a little contraption I whipped up the other night," Pythor answered, admiring the peculiar object. "I call it a syringe. What do you think it does?"

"Whatever it does, I don't think I'll like it," Jay said, eyeing the needle with more than anxiety.

"Sadly, I'm afraid you're correct." Pythor loosed Jay's left arm from its restraint and had Skalidor hold it straight out. "When I push in on the cork, it will inject this draught into your body. Its only effect is that it will put you to sleep for a few hours, but in order to insure that you will become used to sleeping during the day, you will be receiving a double dosage of the draught until you show signs of adapting. Sweet dreams."

The next thing Jay knew, he felt the point of the needle pierce his skin, and a numbing sensation traveling up his arm and spreading across his body. Then he blacked out, collapsing into Pythor's arms.

"What should we do with him, Pythor?" Skales asked, nudging Jay's inert form with his tail.

"We can leave him here for now; he won't hear anything we're saying," the Anacondrai slaver replied, allowing Jay to fall out of his arms into a heap on the floor. "Now, since we only have one piece of merchandise with us, that shortens the usually ten day journey down to seven at the most. Then because he's young, that cuts off another day since he can go for longer distances in longer periods of time."

"We're not selling him at the market?" Skalidor said skeptically.

Pythor face-palmed. "Sometimes I wonder how you became General of the Constrictai," he muttered. "If you had been paying attention to what I had been saying before my little exchange with Jarius, you would have heard me tell you that our young captive has been spoken for by one of our patrons. When we received word from Ziliaris about returning his favor, along with the description of the youth in question, I put the offer of selling him up to our various Ninjagonian and Grecian patrons, in hope that we wouldn't have to take the longer journey to the Omeray or Ninjago City slave markets."

"And which patron spoke for him?" one of Fangtom's heads piped up. "You never got around to telling us that, Pythor," the second head added.

"As it turns out, our generous buyer Lord Nadakhan was the first to accept my offer. Rather providential, really, since his estate is only fifteen miles away from the border between Ninjago and Grecia."

"'Generous' is a gracious overstating description of him, Pythor," Skales said bluntly, his swirling red eyes narrowing in a scowl. "He's a cheapskate, and you know it."

"Yes─well─that's only because he has so many mouths to feed, what with his staff of plantation and house slaves at his two large estates to take care of," Pythor responded quickly, trying to excuse his patron's admittedly miserly behavior. "He buys the majority of his slaves from us, and less for more is often more profitable than more for less, if you understand my meaning."

The four Generals nodded, although it was clear Skalidor hadn't understood what the Anacondrai had meant. "How long will it take for that sleeping draught to wear off?" Acidicus asked, glancing distastefully down at the motionless youth lying on the dirt floor.

"It's about three hours past noon, isn't it?" The Venomari General spat on the ground, and after examining the venom, nodded affirmation. "He should be awake in about four hours, when we'll be breaking up camp and setting off for Lord Nadakhan's estate." Pythor waved his hand toward his companions. "You are dismissed."