Chapter Five

The biomechanical murderer hurtled through the jungle, dodging branches and vines. Judging that he was a safe enough distance away, he dared a look backward.

Yes, the fortress was engulfed in flames. By now, anything that had been living in it…wasn’t.

The figure turned and resumed his flight. Yes, today was proving to be a very good day.

✴        ✴        ✴

Pohatu’s day, on the other hand, was proving to be far worse.

As he and Kopaka hurried along the darkened, flesh-lined corridor behind their bizarre savior, he marveled at how surreal it all had been. After a few days of traveling with the Toa of Ice to solve the mystery of Karzahni’s murder, he had witnessed the assassination of Tren Krom, been teleported by a Matoran-turned-living weapon onto a space station, and was now being chased around by something Kopaka was refusing to talk about.

And to top it all off?

Mavrah, an Onu-Matoran the Turaga had once mentioned in stories of the past, had leapt out of the Turaga’s tales and taken on new life.

Now, after climbing down through some ductwork and escaping to another level, they had evidently bought themselves some time, and the Matoran was hastily leading the two Toa down hallways that seemed to grow darker with each turn.

Darker with each turn… too much like this adventure, the Toa of Stone thought in frustration.

Abruptly, their guide stopped and turned.

“I think that’s enough distance,” Mavrah surmised, “for now, at least. We’ll have to keep moving soon, but I expect you have questions.”

“Yes,” Pohatu confirmed quickly. “I do. Questions such as… What’s following us? What is this place? And why is my armor still orange?”

“How are you alive, Mavrah?” Kopaka asked flatly. “We have heard the story of your death. It was a very definitive ending, as I remember.”

“It seems the divine forces that govern our world still had use of me,” Mavrah chuckled hollowly. “I am paying for my mistakes in life. And what about you?”

“Definitely paying for a mistake,” Pohatu said, exchanging glances with Kopaka. “And now looking for a way out again.”

“There are no ways out. There is only one way in. And that is death.”

“We are not dead.”

“That’s what everyone says,” Mavrah laughed again. “…after they die.”

He turned and gestured for them to follow. “Come. I’ll explain on the way.”

✴        ✴        ✴

The more Mavrah spoke, the more the Toa were chilled to their core. The red star, he explained, was a realm of the dead.

For the Toa, this explanation seemed not only outlandish, but outright preposterous. As Mavrah described, ancient texts dating to the earliest days of the Matoran universe described a red star, an all-seeing eye of the Great Beings and a place where Mata Nui himself held council. Other unrelated myths spoke of near-death experiences where Matoran would visit a mysterious crimson land before being returned to their own. These experiences had never been associated with the red star, however.

For that matter, no one inside the Matoran universe had ever laid eyes upon the red star until the day Vakama and his team had first arrived on the island of Mata Nui. In the time afterward, the Matoran had seen it as an omen of the Great Beings — a sign that they were looking down from above, watching over their creations. It had risen the day the Toa Mata had awakened, and it had formed a rare alignment the day they had first fought Makuta. When the Toa Inika arrived on the island of Voya Nui, the red star had been responsible for turning Jaller and his team into Toa Inika.

Kopaka’s eyes narrowed in disgust. “Like so many other mysteries of the Great Beings, the truth is far darker than it once seemed.”

“Correct,” said Mavrah. “None of us up here are especially fond of the Great Beings. Not anymore, at least.”

The former Archivist went on to explain that the red star served a number of utilitarian functions for the Mata Nui robot, first among which was reincarnation of those who had died. Although it could not save everyone — the technology relied on being able to recover a body, something which often proved impossible — it would recover whomever it could and resurrect them so that they could resume their work in the universe below.

However, as the Kestora had hinted earlier, all was not working as it should. Although the red star could recover corpses easily enough, none were ever sent back. “Like a stopped river,” Mavrah said, “this place is overflowing with the living, the dead…and worst of all, those caught in between.

“Caught in between?” Kopaka snapped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Hush!”

Kopaka and Pohatu immediately fell silent, focusing on their alien surroundings. As soon as they did, they became aware of distant wailing, metallic hammering noises, and the whir of machinery. Combined, the sounds invited all sorts of images into the minds of the Toa, each more gruesome than the last.

“Where are we?” asked Pohatu in a voice softer than a whisper.

“We took a shortcut,” replied Mavrah. “It was a gamble. I had hoped we could outmaneuver them before they caught on. But if they know… No, there’s still a chance…”

With a clang, the steel blast door behind them slammed shut, making them jump. To the right, another door slammed shut as well. Only one passage in the corridor remained open.

They were like Kinloka in a maze.

“We’re being herded,” Kopaka growled. “I hate being herded.”

“You’re going to like it even less in a second,” Pohatu responded. “Listen.”

Kopaka listened. The wailing and mechanical noises had ceased, leaving an eerie silence that chilled even the Toa of Ice.

“Well, isn’t this a little slice of Karzahni,” Pohatu muttered dryly.

“Somehow I think I’d rather be there than here,” Kopaka returned.

“The good news is that it’s a straight shot from here to safety,” Mavrah said. “This hall will take us directly to where we need to go. If we hurry through here, we’ll bypass the most dangerous parts.”

“It’s a chance we’ll have to take,” Kopaka said. “Pohatu, why don’t you use your…”

His voice drifted off as his eyes fell on something over Pohatu’s shoulder. An icy feeling gripped Pohatu’s soul, and Mavrah’s gasp confirmed his fears. Against every instinct, he willed himself to turn.

Standing in the corridor, directly between them and safety, was a living nightmare.

Armor, once fitted to biomechanical forms, now hung from their misshapen, decaying limbs like shackles. Eyes flickered behind misaligned Kanohi — excluding those whose faces had become too malformed to wear one — with a viscous indigo fluid trickling from their mouths. As they closed the distance, there was a distinct wrongness to how they moved; legs of uneven length, some mangled in ways that made the Toa wonder how it was possible for them to take steps forwards without collapsing from the pain alone. For some of them, their organic internals had decayed to the point where their armor had begun to sink into their bodies. Atrophy and rot had turned the creatures into grim husks.

“‘The danger isn’t always what you see,’” came a low, husky voice from the back of the mass. Although it was muffled and aloof, the voice seemed strangely familiar. Like a ghost out of Kopaka’s past that he couldn’t identify.

“‘Often, it’s what you don’t see until it’s too late…’”

The words may have been unfamiliar, but the tone was not. The voice was flat and emotionless, like a machine vocalizing words it had been prompted to say long ago. Something screamed in the back of Kopaka’s mind, something that should have been obvious but wasn’t. That alone was agonizing.

The corpses shambled aside, opening a path for the tall, shadowy being that had stood near the back. As the figure shambled toward the Toa, with his left foot twisted at an awkward angle and the rest of his leg not in better shape, they could hear a distinctive, metallic crunch with each rolling of his shoulders, like rusted gears having long since fallen out of place, having become tangled in the few sinews that remained hidden inside the figure rather than left hanging out. Two metal claws on the being’s left hand, once part of the armor on its wrist, looked as if they were merely an extension of its skeletal structure.

Seeing his face, hearing his voice, memories that Pohatu and Kopaka hadn’t realized they still had came flooding back in a whirlwind of images. From millennia ago, long before they had been set to rest, there he was. The brutal trainer and teacher.

“Hydraxon!” Pohatu gasped.

“‘A light dawns,’” the skeletal Hydraxon rumbled. “‘I didn’t realize it would take light years.’”