Chapter 20: Blood rain
Chapter 20: Blood rain
Tahu was breathing heavily, his body was lying half in the water half on cold stone. He was slowly gaining back his strength to pull himself out fully. Where was Rui? He was leaning against a giant stalagmite close to him.
“You alright, fire-spitter?” His voice sounded rough.
The ruby Toa tried to answer but it ended in a cough. The salt was burning in his throat.
“Where … is Lewa?”, he finally managed to say.
Rui just shook his head. “I was only able to get to you but I didn’t reach him anymore. I hoped he was still close to us…”
Tahu’s head sunk back to the floor. Why? Why had he ordered to jump?
“He isn’t dead”, he heard Rui’s voice again, sounding as if he was talking more to himself than to the red Toa on the ground. “He’s the Toa of air. He can’t drown that easily. Maybe he just couldn’t hold on the rocks we were…”
Tahu got up. “Which means we have to follow that tunnel. Maybe the river crosses it again.”
Rui silently nodded and stood up to follow him.
~~~***~~~
Can I ask you something?”, Tahu broke the silence after what seemed like hours of waling. They just knew they didn’t go in a circle because they met no more rivers.
“Don’t ask for asking, just ask”, was the answer that came back.
The fire Toa just had to smile about that sentence. Was Rui always like this? Easy going yet responsible. Somehow he reminded him a bit of Lewa right now.
“Was Lewa always like this?”
“Like what?”
“Well, I mean, childish the first moment and then only a second later more mature than Kopaka could ever be.”
“Yeah, well, not exactly, no … He was ‘childish’ as he still was a child and while growing up he got more mature of course but then there was the time he became Toa and started with that …. with his strongly staggering emotions. I think it as a kind of self protection. But I can’t tell what the real Lewa would be now. The carefree or the serious one. I’ve sworn to protect him but I can’t get through to what he’s hiding deep in his soul…”
Tahu could remember. He once promised the same, but had failed in about everything.
And Lewa’s personality had had a drastically change. He sometimes acted too serious, too bossy to be himself. The fire Toa desperately hoped that this wasn’t Lewa’s true nature.
He felt Rui’s gaze on him.
“Don’t reproach yourself.”
“I don’t.”
“You look like you’re doing.”
“And what should I reproach myself?”
“Dunno, you just look like it.”
Yeah, why should he? Maybe because he couldn’t protect him from the Rahi, the Bohrok, Makuta, the Rahkshi, the Ikuta… Because of his failure the wounds of the younger one’s soul grew bigger and made him act the way he did now…
“Don’t you sometimes feel the same? That you should have done better?” he asked the mix.
“Are we still talking ‘bout Lewa?”
“If you want so, yeah.”
“Sometimes, but then again I think there’s not much I could do about how the things happened.”
Sure, Rui would have had to protect him against his destiny, Tahu just against creatures, what made his failure even worse.
The next few minutes they walked beside each other covered in silence, everyone wrapped up in his own thoughts but still hoping the same: Lewa had to be alive.
“Hey, look!” Rui disturbed the silence.
Tahu shook his head to snap out of his nearly vision-like thoughts and looked up.
Their tunnel ended in something what seemed to be a giant hall like the one Onu Koro was built in.
“I think this could be Onu Aro.”
Were all cities in this world after the same scheme?
“I don’t think we will meet any Matoran there”, the ruby one said.
“No, don’t either, they’re the Ikuta’s slaves now or they have fled to Le Aro. But we’ll have to get through there nevertheless. There’s no other way if we don’t want to return to where we started and swim our way back.”
~~~***~~~
They’d awaited everything but not that… They were wading through pools of blood, passing ruins of a city once full of life…
Tahu knew during the time of the Bohrok attacks half of Lewa’s village was exterminated. Another cruel thing his little one had to bear but the fiery Toa himself had never seen dead and destruction of this kind before. He felt awfully sick. Rui was walking beside him as if he was in trance.
Until now they hadn’t found any dead bodies, neither Nektann nor Matoran but they also didn’t want to know what happened to them.
“Who can do cruelty like this?” Tahu whispered.
“Can’t you figure that out?” With disgust the mix looked at a deep bloody scratch on a ruin wall. “The sign a harpoon left. The sign of a Nektann.”
Yeah, he had thought about this but still he couldn’t believe a Nektann could be that deadly. Sure Tupua had warned them that they were dangerous, but on the other side, infected Rahi were dangerous too because they could infect you too, made you change to Makuta’s side. Dangerous but not deadly.
Tahu’s legs felt wobbly but he tried to walk straight. Never stumble. Never fall into crimson.
Rui laid a hand on the ruby Toa’s shoulder but it was unsure who he wanted to calm down. Himself or the other Toa?
“We have to get through this now. Now way back … Just a few more meters …” His voice was barely a whisper.
They could already see the end of the hall. So close but still so far away.
‘If we at least could fly over this’, Tahu thought. Fly, like his green angel would do. What was he forced to see the time the Bohrok swarms were rampaging through his jungle? The fire Toa slowly shook his head. ‘Don’t think about that now. Better think about what’s lying ahead…’
Blood … That was all that was lying ahead. Ruins and blood. He forced his gaze to the tunnel. Just a few more former huts to pass, just a few more puddles to walk through.
~~~***~~~
They were stumbling through the tunnel, just a few meters further then Rui broke down to his knees.
“I feel like I have to barf…”
“Won’t stop you…”
Tahu heard the mix vomiting behind him and tried to calm his own stomach down. He stared at the stone wall. Not a single sign for the battle that had been in Onu Aro. A war that had taken place on a clearly defined location, not a single meter further. There was just a crack in the wall but it seemed to be naturally.
He knew nothing else to do so he looked through it. And couldn’t believe his eyes. There was another corridor behind it which ended after a few meters at a giant door, over and over decorated with signs. Tahu could read them but he didn’t understand the words they were telling because it was in a language he didn’t know.
“What is it?” he heard Rui’s now again a bit rough voice behind him. He looked through the crack too. “Mata Nui … Tahu! That’s it! We’ve nearly found the secret hideout.”
“Nearly? We’re standing in front of it.”
“Yeah, but we need the last key to get through this door or at least break through the wall. We need Tupua.”
“We just need Onua and he can drill through that.”
“Don’t think so. The Matoran here were miners and it would have been very unlikely that they had never dug through these walls and found this door. The Nektann normally crawl around in this cave too and it seems like they also haven’t been able to get there although they could drill through stone like Onua.”
“So then, let’s get on. This tunnel is leading just one way, maybe the way out, and I hope we will find Tupua and Lewa outside.” He turned around again. Not a very good feeling to know that they had to get back to this awful place soon.
~~~***~~~
Their tunnel ended in stairs which lead up a few meters then they stood in front of a kind of curtain made of Harakeke.
Tahu didn’t want to think about what danger could be lying there behind, just pushed it aside. He just wanted to get out of here.
“Mata Nui …”
Rui stepped out close behind him. “Yes, that would be the right word…”
They were standing in an abandoned temple full of ivy and moss. Harakeke was growing where once a shrine was, Mata Nui’s Kanohi hanging over them as if he was watching over the plants; a palm tree was growing into the temple as if it was looking curiously through the window.
But it was as dark as in the tunnel. It had gotten night again.
What the lightstones were in the caves, this were now the moon the stars.
Rui sat down and leaned against a bamboo. “We should stay here for now and wait for the daylight. I don’t think we can find anyone right now.”
Tahu wanted to protest but then he saw that it would be better and sat somewhere close to Rui where it seemed comfortable.
Had Lewa found a place to stay over night too?
He thought about Le Koro again. Visions of the swarms, a destructed village, half of the people dead, the other half under Bohrok control.
The rain is soaking me to the bone
It’s washing my insides away
I’m writhing around in a half-sleep
Wrapped up in my sheets
From the visions that are haunting my dreams
Was Rui sleeping or was he staring into the night too?
I can’t breathe the sweet oxygen
My lungs are full of blood
Can’t feel anything anymore
My spine has been severed
My soul has been shattered
The slivers of pain will cut deep
The pain will burn in my fresh wound
Where was Lewa now? Had he really survived or was it just a wish to the stars? A last bit of hope for Tahu to hold on?
I don’t know how long it will be
Until I feel warmth again in this icy heart
The darkness is seducing me, inviting me to stay
I can’t see the bright sky
My eyes are full of poison
I can’t expect you
To always be there waiting in the shadows
I couldn’t ask you to deny yourself anything
All I feel is the emptiness
Onu Koro shot into his mind. He could see the marketplace, the traders, the people who came from everywhere on Mata Nui to buy and sell goods. A city full of life. They had lost everything during the Bohrok attacks too but they managed to build it up again. And they had survived it. Every single one of them. And then he saw Onu Aro again. Was this place like Onu Koro some time ago? Pain. He felt it as if he had lost his own hometown. His own people.
My will has been shattered
The shards of glass cut deeply
The blood runs from my fresh wound
He wrapped his arms around his legs. Under the cover of darkness he couldn’t hold back his tears any longer, didn’t want to. For the first time of his life, or at least the life he could remember, he cried…
Shattered … blood in my lungs …
Shattered … eyes are burning …
Shattered … please heal me …
