Chapter Twelve

Jala, Takua, and Vakama watched anxiously at the pile of rocks that seemed to mark Toa Tahu’s tomb. Under normal circumstances, Tahu would have exploded in heat and melted the stone to slag. Even now, the villagers held out hope that this would still happen. Vakama simply stared. Jala was bruised and battered, clutching his right arm. After a long moment of stillness, Takua and Jala exchanged somber looks. Takua hung his head.

The pile of rubble suddenly stirred, and from it Tahu exploded to the surface.

“Tahu! You’re okay!” Jala gasped.

Tahu stormed over, seething as he sheathed his magma sword. Gone was the usual red gleam of his mask, and it more resembled the grey hue of a lifeless, inanimate mask.

“I’m not okay,” he growled. “My powers of heat and flame are gone. Taken by that thing.”

“Turaga Vakama, what was that creature?” Takua asked.

“Let us consult the Sacred Fire,” Vakama answered. “In its flames we may glean the answers we seek.”

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The Sacred Fire blazed bright at the center of Vakama’s hut. The Fire continuously burned and changed its color, and it was said that its mystical energies gave the Turaga of Fire visions and premonitions of the future.

Now, Vakama stood before it, with the two Matoran and Toa behind him. He peered deeply into the fire, studying it intently. He closed his eyes as he concentrated… He raised his arms, and before the startled eyes of the onlookers, the fire exploded into a new shape — one that Matoran immediately recognized.

“That symbol!” Takua gasped. “That was the symbol on the creature’s headplate!”

Vakama nodded grimly, turning to the other three. “The creature was a Bohrok-Kal,” he informed, “an elite Bohrok. There are more, but I do not know where the others may be.”

“If this one was here, perhaps the others are stealing symbols from the other villages,” suggested Takua.

“This may be,” Vakama nodded. He turned to the Toa warrior. “Tahu, you should seek out the other Toa—even if they do not need aid, you could surely use theirs.”

Tahu scoffed. Being powerless is bad enough, he thought. But even the possibility of being the weakest of the Toa is worse…especially after our last meeting. “With respect, Turaga, I do not need their help. Even without my elemental powers, I am a match for this rogue Bohrok,” he said with a sweep of his arm. “I will hunt it down myself…” he pointed to the direction it had gone, “…and reclaim what it stole!”

With that, the Toa stormed out of Vakama’s chamber.

The two Ta-Matoran exchanged glances, but Vakama simply shrugged. “His pride puts him in grave danger,” he noted. He glanced back at the Sacred Fire. “I cannot see to what purpose the creature will put the Nuva Symbol, but it worries me.”

Jala spoke up. “I will go with Tahu. He will have my help, at least.” He bowed. “By your leave, Turaga.” Takua turned back to the leader and gave his quick bow as well before exiting after his friend.

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The two caught up with Tahu Nuva even as he was surveying the neighboring jungle of Le-Wahi. A long trek down slippery slopes and narrow paths brought the trio from the volcanic terrain of Ta-Wahi to the more fertile and untouched soil of the jungle. There, the sun shone down through the canopy in visible shafts of light, while the rest of the ground was shaded.

Tahu seemed to set the pace, walking hurriedly in the direction of Le-Koro as the other two hurried to keep up. Jala was just about to give Tahu a piece of his mind when a large green figure plummeted directly before them and lay still.

Lewa Nuva looked up from the brush where he had fallen. “Oh, my head,” he said slowly. As he looked up, the sun illuminated that his mask, too, was no longer bearing its bright forest-green color, but a dull, poorly reflective grey. Lewa met Tahu’s gaze. “You don’t mind if I lay here for a while?”

Tahu shook his head. “On your feet, Toa of Air. What happened?”

Lewa bounced to his feet and brushed his armor off. “Well, I was quick-chasing a Bohrok…and, well, I found out leaf-running is not so easy-fun without my usual power-force over the winds.”

“You fell out of a tree!?” Jala reacted, scarcely believing his ears.

Lewa looked down at him irritably. “Hey, buddy, I can down-fall sometimes!” he bristled. “Well—thing is—there was a loudboom that knocked me from the air…. Hit pretty hard, couldn’t land safe-right.”

“It was the Bohrok-Kal,” Tahu said. “They have strange powers.”

Lewa brightened. “Yeah, that sure-had to be it. The Bohrok made me bad-fall!” He looked back down at Jala again. “There you go.”

“I am pursuing my symbol’s thief,” Tahu said sharply. “If you wish to join me, then do so. Otherwise, get out of the path.”

With that, Tahu marched past the chastened Toa of Air, followed quickly by Jala and Takua. Lewa hobbled forward awkwardly on his feet.

“Okay, I’ll just ground-walk with you guys this time…”

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The hot, unforgiving sun bore harshly down on Tahu, Lewa, Jala, and Takua, as they trekked across the Motara Desert of Po-Wahi. Even Tahu, robbed of his elemental powers, found himself wearing down under the sweltering heat of the sun. It was an odd feeling, and not one he welcomed.

The group traveled fast, entering on the rocky side filled with canyons, and moving toward the sandy landscape. Lewa jogged ahead of Tahu to the peak of their current sand dune. There, he shielded his eyes as he looked out over the expanse.

By the time Tahu and the two Matoran caught up, Lewa was pointing to the distance. “Looks like a third one joined up with the two we are hunting,” he informed the others. “I see three sets of tracks.”

Takua cocked his head, then turned to Jala. “You hear that?”

Jala concentrated and listened. Now that Takua pointed out, he heard them too. “Sounds like a herd of Mahi. They run free in Po-Wahi.”

Takua nodded, remembering with a shudder the infected Mahi he had faced when rescuing Turaga Vakama once. “Yeah, but there’s something else…”

He walked off to the side of the dune, slightly backtracking out of the way. The others followed him, rising over that crest as well. When they crossed and saw what awaited them, all four jumped in surprise.

“By the Spirit!” exclaimed the Toa of Air. “What in Mata Nui’s name is that?”

A herd of Mahi were stacked on top of each other in a veritable ball of hooves and horns. None present could recall ever having seen such a sight, and all the less when closer inspection revealed someone inside the herd.

“Er…little help?” Pohatu Nuva’s muffled voice called.

Tahu’s group drew cautiously forward. Pohatu’s arms were the only things visible through the goats pinned to his body. “They’re—sticking—”

Jala and Takua ran over to two of the lower Mahi and set to work pulling them off the Stone Toa. As they quickly discovered, however, they stuck fast, and the animals protested. Takua pulled harder and harder on the horns until finally it came free from the Toa. But even when he let go of it, the Rahi’s head was then magnetized to Takua’s upper arm. He pulled a couple times, but the animal’s forehead remained inexplicably attached.

“Ah! Stuck!” he cried.

Tahu watched as Jala pulled two more Mahi off of Pohatu. They stuck to the Ta-Matoran, but this allowed the Stone Toa to pull the others off himself. Once freed, the goats happily jumped and ran into the open space again.

“Magnetized, but it fades,” the Toa Nuva of Fire observed. He turned to Pohatu. “Let me guess—a Bohrok.”

Pohatu nodded.

“Pohatu, we are on their trail,” Lewa said. “Are you with us?”

“You know it!” Pohatu replied eagerly, even as Takua freed himself from the Mahi. “It has been too long since we’ve had a good adventure, anyway!” the Toa of Stone added. “And I think we all really want our powers back.”

He glanced uncomfortably at the Chronicler.

“Just—can you leave out the part with the goats? Please?”

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Soon the six Toa Nuva were moving as a group through the open, rocky pass between the northern section of Le-Wahi and the eastern slopes of Mount Ihu. “We should at least try to be prepared for what we will face when we find the thieves,” Onua pointed out as he hurried along near the back of the group. “The least we can do is share what information we have. What did your Matoran see? What tools did the creatures use against them?”

Each Toa Nuva described everything he or she knew in turn. Tahu and Takua reported that the creature in Ta-Koro had disabled the guards with a massive amount of electricity. The creature that had stolen Lewa’s icon had disabled the guards with a wall of intense sound so loud that it had cracked the walls of the Suva. In Onua’s village, the weapon of choice had been a vacuum power that had sucked all of the air out of the Suva. Pohatu had lost his symbol to a creature that had thrown off such intense heat that everything around it turned instantly to plasma. And Gali had already mentioned the magnetism used against her villagers.

When his turn came, Kopaka briefly described the way one of the creatures had affected gravity, making the Ko-Matoran guard’s limbs and body too heavy to move. “It sounds like there may be six separate attackers, not three,” he finished. “Six enemies, and six of us.”

“Three or six, three dozen or six hundred, it matters not,” Tahu said with a shrug. “We face them down no matter what.”

With that, he hurried forward to the end of the pass. Beyond lay the open, sweeping vista of the great northern desert.

Although Jala and Takua had remained silent during the whole affair, now he spoke up. “Vakama will be pleased to know that the Toa Nuva have been reunited. With that, I will take my leave.”

“What?” Takua exclaimed, alarmed. “Leave? Now? How could we desert the Toa now?”

Onua nodded. “Jala is right. It would be wise for you to return to your home. Chronicler, you have been with us before, and we are forever grateful to your Company’s efforts during the Battle for Kini-Nui. But this time…things are different. It won’t be as easy to protect ourselves, and even less so you.”

Before Takua could protest, Gali placed her hand on his shoulder. “Scribe this for now, Chronicler, and continue to do so as the story unfolds. If the Great Spirit wishes it, we will meet again.”

Takua sighed. “Very well.”

“Good luck, Toa Nuva,” Jala bowed. With that, the two Matoran doubled back in the direction of the North March.