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This article was written by DarknessApogee. Please do not add to it without the writer's permission.
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| Light Submerged | |
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Unknown
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April 2018 - Ongoing
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Light Submerged is an ongoing story written by DarknessApogee. It is the first story ever to be an integral part of the Shadows of Darkness series, and directly follows the events of its prequel The Space Between Us. It is also the very first appearance of the Shadow Alternate Universe.
The story follows Toa Thevan Tavus as he finds himself stranded in the Shadow Alternate Universe in the wake of his fight against the rogue Toa of Space Dabohi. As he tries to find a way back to the Prime Reality, he becomes embroiled in the local Mahri Nui Civil War alongside beings he never thought he would have sided with.
Story[]
Prologue - After the Darkness Comes the Light[]
There was only darkness around him. A light above cast some shadows. Then it all faded to black.
The first sound he heard was the light lapping of the water surrounding his body, making itself heard back and forth as the swell of the sea advanced over the beach and went back again. He was lying face down over a tract of gravel and pebbles. With a grunt, he stood up and had a look around. He was on the coast of some island, with the neverending sea behind him, and some kind of gigantic derelict city in front of him, further into the land. He himself was standing on a rocky beach, where some massive blocks of bricks were lying here and there. The sky over him was tainted with unusual colors. Orange, yellow, purple. He could see the stars, but it was not completely dark yet, nor was it day anymore. He concluded it had to be the sunset.
What was this place? What had happened? His memory was blurred. He remembered going through a forest with his team of Toa. Then they had found the one they had been looking for for nearly a century: a suspected murderer and rogue Toa of Space. There had been a fight, among the stars. And talks, too. Velika... The Toa of Space had killed Velika. And suddenly, there had been a huge flash of light, and here he was. He had appeared somewhere underwater. But the water was dark, and he could only see a little beam of light coming through the waves above him then. And after that, he remembered fainting.
Had he drowned? This place did not look like any kind of heaven. How did he end up on the shore? Where were the others? Too many questions. No answers to be found. Suddenly, he heard a distinct clatter over the pebbles, like a group of spiders marching over the rocks towards him. He drew his sword quickly, only to discover it was indeed a group of spiders - or more accurately, a pack of Visorak. At an instant's notice, he was surrounded by a dozen of them, but something felt eerie. Their color scheme was uncommon, and he had never seen Visorak like those before. Moreover, none of them seemed to want to attack him, they were just merely preventing him from fleeing.
"Lower your weapon, Toa. They won't hurt you," said a voice coming from up a rocky hill.
So he did. The being walked down to the beach and approched the Toa. He was quite tall, more so than the Toa's old friend Gallus, and his armor was silver and yellow orange. The Toa thought he recognized some pattern in the build of his interlocutor, like something he knew, but some elements felt out of place. The being spoke again.
"Who are you?"
"I am Tavus, Toa of Plantlife," he answered. "Where... Where am I?"
The being chuckled.
"Well, Tavus, Toa of Plantlife. Welcome to Metru Nui."
Chapter I - Debris Amidst the Stars[]
Tavus was speechless. He followed the tall being from the beach to the desolated streets of the City of Legends. Every building was ruined, if not utterly destroyed. Stones and debris were scattered everywhere, and going through the streets was like pacing through a maze. In many places, the vegetation had started to grow out of the ruins. Trees, ferns and tall grass, mixing plantlife and cemented architecture. Every single trace of color seemed to have disappeared. And to top it all, everything was covered in Visorak web. Visorak who were everywhere in sight, inside the remaining buildings, up the trees or down in the streets. The orange light of the sunset that shone above the city gave Metru Nui an apocalyptic look. Everything there confused the Toa, but he finally asked one question to his savior.
"What happened to the city?"
"Hum?" the being answered interrogatively. "What do you mean?"
"The... The destruction. The Visorak. Everything!"
The being frowned. He did not seem to understand what Tavus meant.
"It has been like this for decades, centuries perhaps."
Centuries?! Tavus had been to Metru Nui but it never looked like this, even after the Visorak invasion. And didn't the Matoran repair the island anyway? And how did he end up back in the Great Spirit Robot? Did the Toa of Space teleport him there? But why? And what was wrong with the Visorak? Why were they donning weird colors and behaving peacefully? And who was this being anyway? Had he introduced himself? Tavus didn't even remember. His thoughts were rumbling inside his skull and he felt like his head was on fire. Questions. Too many questions. Exhausted, the Toa let himself fall over a rock and stayed there, holding his face in his hands.
"Are you alright, Toa?" inquired the being, seemingly worried.
Tavus answered desperately. "I'm lost. I'm lost. I'm lost..."
The tall being clearly understood something was wrong. He whistled and some Visorak left quickly towards a grove. He helped Tavus sit on a smooth stone and tried to make him comfortable. The being already had a hunch, but this Toa was definitely not like the others. The Visorak came back holding many spherical orange fruits of a kind Tavus didn't recognize. The being grabbed a big one and handed it to the Toa.
"There, have one of these. They do taste really sweet and it will help you get on your feet."
Tavus thanked him with a little nod and bit through the fruit. It was extremely juicy but the pulp was thick. And it did taste really sweet indeed. He needed to calm down.
"Breathe..." the being advised. "Breathe... The night is upon us. I should light a fire."
Tavus' savior started to gather branches, pieces of wood and a handful of web. All around, the Visorak were heading back to somewhere else in Metru Nui. Only one stayed with the Toa : white and orange-colored, with bright neon eyes and sharp chelicera. While the being disposed his material to set up the campfire, Tavus tried to focus and stare at him. His yellow-orange armor was quite an unusual color to see, but the pattern of his build was definitely something the Toa had encountered before. At least two heads taller than himself. Large shoulders. Tubes in the back, one of them going up to the being's mouth. Big hands. And over the right shoulder, a strange piece of metal that probably could be attached to some kind of blaster. Where had he seen something like that? Tavus was stopped in his thoughts by the sound of the fire crackling. The Visorak web proved to be a surprisingly good fuel.
"Spinax, come over here." The being uttered to the Visorak.
Spinax? Spinax. Spinax. That was it. He knew where he had seen the being's armor pattern. The colors were widely different, some elements were eerie, but that was definitely it.
"You're a Maxilos Robot!"
"I was," the being said in a breath. "My kind is no more. I am Maxilos, only."
The Toa was shocked. He had seen some MAXILOS quite recently on Spherus. Why did everything seem so displaced?
"I'm sorry, uh... Maxilos," Tavus said. "What... What happened to the others?"
"They were killed. The Great Spirit came to us one day. And he destroyed them. One by one. Crushed them with his bare hands and played with their corpses. All of us, but one. Me. And he came to me, with the skull of one of my brothers in the hand, he came to me and he offered me a gift I wish I never had. Consciousness."
"What?" The Toa frowned. "The Great Spirit?"
"Mata Nui."
The name of the Great Spirit echoed throughout the entire city. Out of the silence rose an uproar, a bundle of clicking noises and bestial screams, like every Visorak on the island woke up just at the sound of it. And the silence came back just like it left. Silence of death.
"No..." Tavus whispered. "No, that's not true. Why would he do that? He saved us!"
"Saved us? He never saved anyone but himself, Toa," Maxilos said with a serious tone.
"What? He killed Teridax! And then he landed our universe, the Matoran Universe, on Spherus! Did you not know that?"
Maxilos frowned. Something very strange was happening. Was the Toa delusional?
"That is not what happened. Mata Nui had gone insane. Murders. Genocides. Annihilation. Teridax stopped Mata Nui, not the other way around. And your so-called 'Matoran Universe' was never on Spherus Magna."
"Where are we then?" Tavus didn't understand anything anymore. "Where are we?"
The tall being started to be frightened by the Toa. Spinax' chelicera were wide open, ready to attack at any time, and Maxilos himself grabbed the handle of his weapon in his back, just in case.
"We are on Matora Magna. Planet of the Matoran. Is there something wrong with you, Toa?"
"What? That doesn't exist! Matora Magna? We're on Spherus! Metru Nui is on Spherus! I should be on Spherus!"
"You'll find out soon enough, Toa, that there is a broad difference between what is and what should be." Maxilos said. "You can't be on Spherus Magna, for Spherus Magna is no more. Look above."
Tavus lifted his eyes to the night sky. And he saw it. Among the stars was pacing a gigantic asteroid field of a size the Toa could not even fathom. Everywhere, small or large rocky pieces, shattered across the sky. Desolation. If what Maxilos said was true, Spherus had been reduced to debris amidst the stars. The Toa's voice broke down.
"What... What happened?"
Maxilos sighed and left his weapon. The Toa wasn't dangerous. He was lost. Lost like no one had been lost before. He made his Visorak lie down and put a hand on Tavus' shoulder.
"Mata Nui."
The Toa fell to his knees. Here in the darkness of the night, he felt a massive void inside. He had no home. No friends. His fellow Toa were gone. And Mata Nui was a nightmare.
"This is a world of shadows and darkness... A world of death..." he whispered.
"You shall not fear death, for only life can hurt you. And you shan't fear darkness either, for it is the light that blinds you when threats arise from the shadows."
The fire went out. Tavus broke down in tears. He cried in the middle of the ruins of Metru Nui, under the light of the stars obscured by the remains of Spherus Magna. Tears in the ruins. He understood now. The reason why everything felt different. Why Maxilos was not a robot anymore, and why Spinax was not an Energy Hound. Why the Visorak were weirdly colored. Why Metru Nui was destroyed, and why Spherus was gone. The Toa of Space had sent him to an alternate universe.
A shadow alternate universe.
Chapter II - Tales of the Great Spirit[]
Tavus was awakened by the dim sunlight shining through a demolished building. The visorak web was creating an undefinite shadow pattern on the ground, like stained glass. The Toa got up from the stone he had slept on, stored his two swords in his back and went on to join Maxilos.
After he had calmed down after the events of the past night, Tavus had explained to the tall being his story, and how he arrived from another universe to this one. Maxilos had been skeptical at first, but understood the Toa could not have imagined such an unbelievable and yet incredibly fleshed out story only for the purpose of lying. Tavus definitely felt out of place in the middle of the ruins of Metru Nui and their inhabitants, and before they went to sleep, both beings had come to an agreement to find the Toa a way home, as soon as possible.
Maxilos gave another one of those juicy fruits to Tavus.
"Are you feeling better, Toa?" He asked.
"A little," the other one answered. "Thank you."
As the day was rising, light filled up the City of Legends. It was looking much more welcoming that way - in spite of the desolation all around, vegetation gaining the upper hand over the artificial buildings and web covering everything, that is. Some other strangely colored Visorak were spinning their web a little further down the street. Tavus notably recognized Spinax, of course. The Toa was interrupted in his contemplation when Maxilos began speaking.
"Listen, Toa," he started. "I may have found a way for you to travel back to your dimension."
Tavus was all ears. "How?"
"I know a powerful being whose skills extend far beyond our universe. I cannot guarantee for certain that he would be able to send you home, but he is all we have got, for now."
"It's fine with me. Where do we find him?"
"He is in another place," Maxilos answered. "To reach him, we will have to go to Onu-Metru. There is a route there that leads to him."
By the remains of architecture around him, Tavus had recognized he had landed on the shores of Le-Metru. In order to go to Onu-Metru, they had to walk up to the very center of Metru Nui, and then cross the Coliseum to reach the other district. They had a long walk ahead of them.
"To Onu-Metru, then."
---
They departed towards the Earth district followed by Spinax. Maxilos was walking silently, leading the way for the Toa. Tavus couldn't help but think the being reminded him of his friend, Kaadin, the wise and considerate Toa Thevan of Earth. After one or two hours of march, still none of them both had said a word. The Toa didn't mind ; after all, he and Maxilos were not even from the same universe. What could they possibly talk about? They never should have met, and if Tavus managed to make his way home, they probably would never meet again. To distract himself, the Toa was using his Elemental Powers of Plantlife from time to time to feel the flowers, grass and trees on the streets. The majority of the feels that transpired were fear, mourning, loneliness. Tavus was stunned to see how scarred this entire universe was, so scarred that even the vegetation was overshadowed by darkness. He broke the silence.
"What happened to this universe?"
Maxilos looked at Tavus with questioning eyes.
"I mean," the Toa added, "this place is so different from mine. How did it end up like this?"
"Oh, I see." Maxilos said. "Let me tell you the legends of Mata Nui, the tales of the Great Spirit."
The Toa of Plantlife was listening religiously, while Spinax was crawling over the blocks of bricks next to him and going through the web his species had spinned.
"In the time before time, there were the Great Beings. They were beings of culture and wisdom, unchallenged inventors, for whom nothing was impossible. The Great Beings were ruling over the paradise known as Spherus Magna. It was a time of peace and prosperity. But those times were soon to come to an end, for not even paradise could resist to the alterations of time. Spherus Magna was shattering."
Tavus remembered the asteroid field he had witnessed pacing through the nightsky the day before. What a tragedy it was.
"The Great Beings had to act before it was too late," Maxilos went on, "so they created the Matoran. A new form of life, that were to build them a planet. Matora Magna, planet of the Matoran. And from the heavens upon this world descended the Great Spirit. He was an almighty deity, destined to unite the Matoran in their task to build this planetoid, so that when the time of Spherus Magna would come, the Great Beings could flee their doom and rebuild their world on Matora Magna. And the time of paradise did come."
A shadow passed through the eyes of the titan.
"But little did the Great Beings know that on the surface of Matora Magna, chaos and doom had spread everywhere. The Great Spirit, in spite of his unlimited powers, had wanted more. From the legendary Kanohi Ignika, Mask of Life, he had granted himself a body of gold so that he could march upon the planet and torture, devastate and murder to satisfy his wishes. He had made the Matoran build him a robot, which height surpassed those of the higher clouds, so that he could rule Matora Magna from up above, dominate the land closer to the heavens he had descended from, as fields withered away, sunlight grew cold, and ancient values were forgotten. The Great Spirit Robot soon cast its shadows of darkness. When the Great Beings called for the Great Spirit to save them from the shattering of Spherus Magna, he answered by using all of the robot's powers and focused it in a single beam of pure energy, that annihilated heaven. Above the Great Spirit could there be none. Above the Great Spirit, were there none anymore."
The Toa was absolutely shocked by how Mata Nui, the keeper and savior of his universe, could have gone so terribly wrong in this forsaken place. But everything was making sense now. The very foundation of all things, the Great Spirit, had taken a dark turn, so the rest of the universe could only have followed. Tavus most certainly wasn't even able to fathom the darkness and suffering the inhabitants of Matora had witnessed. At this instant, he had never so much and so desperately wanted to go home.
"Ironic, is it not?" Maxilos concluded bitterly. "The Great Beings created Mata Nui to save them from their doom, and it was him that brought it to them."
Tavus did not answer anything to that. Although irony was most probably the feeling everyone shared in this universe, the Toa was thinking more of sadness, tragedy, wanting to die and being about to puke. Not necessarily in that order, that is. While Maxilos was narrating the legends, Tavus had not paid any attention to the path they had been following, and it seemed they just arrived to the Coliseum. Or at least, what was left of it. Where in the Metru Nui the Toa had known during his time in the Matoran Universe was standing a magnificent piece of architecture with the finest sculpting and most chiseled stonework, here were left only a few fallen down walls and architectural remnants surrounding a gaping hole - and, as the entirety of the city, it was all covered in web.
"Did Mata Nui do that too?" He asked.
Maxilos simply nodded as a response. After a brief while, as both of them had started to cross the hole in the ground of the Coliseum still followed by Spinax, the being went on with his story.
"The robot was over Metru Nui when the shattering took place. But the Great Spirit's victory was shortlived. Taking advantage of the distraction the genocide caused to Mata Nui, the grand Makuta Teridax had made his way into the robot up to the mad titan's control room. They fought in there for days, dragging the Great Spirit Robot across the planet's face causing destruction on its way - hence the state of the Coliseum. Eventually, the robot stopped its course over the island of Daxia and was desactivated there. Neither Mata Nui nor Teridax have ever been heard of again from this moment on."
"But Matora Magna isn't at peace nonetheless, is it?"
"No," the titan sighed. "The tyrant may be gone, but his servants, the Toa and Turaga, took over after him, enslaving the Matoran, pillaging the villages, feasting on their weakth and slaughtering every soul that dares to oppose them. The Makuta, Dark Hunters and some others still fight their rule here and there, but it has had next to no influence at all to this day. On this planet, civil wars come and go."
Maxilos turned to Tavus. The Toa was taking very deep breaths and his hands were shaking with anxiety. Perhaps mentioning his kind as a dictatorial regime of terror had not been the most clever thing the tall being had done in his life.
"I am sorry, Toa."
"It's alright," Tavus said as a shiver went down his spine. "After all, I asked. Please just send me home."
"Well, we have arrived in Onu-Metru."
Indeed, the two beings and the Visorak had arrived to the district of Earth. More accurately, they were standing just in front of a massive entrance to a building the Toa did not recognize. He was not even surprised anymore to notice yet again that everything there lied in ruins and Visorak web. Entering said building, he followed Maxilos down some seemingly endless stairs while the clatter of Spinax' legs on the stone echoed all around, leading to an hexagon-shaped door, the design of which reminded Tavus of one of the most well-known places in Metru Nui.
"The Archives of Onu-Metru hold many treasures for the ones that know where to look," Maxilos commented as he pushed the door open with an ominous rasping sound.
Behind the door was a small room lit by a pale lightstone, in the back of which passed a massive tube with a large opening on its side, large enough to let at least two Maxilos through. Inside the tube, Tavus noted a water current going at incredible speed.
"What is this?" He questioned with perceptible doubt.
"These hydraulic conducts spread across the depths of Matora Magna," Maxilos answered. "They can prove excellent means of transportation, provided one knows where they lead. Spinax?"
The Visorak joined his master and faced Tavus. Before the Toa could even react, Spinax aimed the Rhotuka launcher on his back towards Tavus and fired one right to his face. Tavus briefly thought he had been betrayed by the titan, before realizing the Rhotuka had formed a round air bubble around his head. Spinax seemingly had air-related Rhotuka powers. The Toa pondered the bubble and the conduct and quickly added the pieces together.
"So... We really are gonna get through this current?"
"I told you the being we are looking for is in another place," Maxilos simply told. "Do you trust me?"
"Do I have a choice?" Tavus asked.
After a short silence, the titan replied: "No."
And he suddenly pushed the Toa of Plantlife through the opening on the side of the conduct, throwing him into the speeding waterstream.
Chapter III - Creeps from the deeps[]
To be continued...
Characters[]
- Toa Tavus
- Maxilos (Shadow Alternate Universe)
- Numerous Visorak
- Spinax (Shadow Alternate Universe)
- Mata Nui and his shadow counterpart (mentioned)
- Teridax and his shadow counterpart (mentioned)
- Toa Dabohi (mentioned)
- Toa Thevan (mentioned)
- Velika (deceased, mentioned)
Trivia[]
- The story's title has many different meanings.
- "Light" can be interpreted as Tavus himself. Since he is from the Prime Reality, by opposition against the other characters that are shadow versions of themselves, they can be considered as "Shadows" and Tavus would be a "Light". He finds himself submerged because the story is set for a large part underwater, but even this is shown from the very beginning of the prologue where Tavus appears under the sea.
- Finally, the title as a whole can also refer to the absence of moral light in the Shadow Alternate Universe. Everything is dark and twisted, there is death and shadows everywhere, hence why light is submerged (or overthrown).