Story of the Dead/chapter two

The First Battle

"Go!" cried Feyain at the sight of the fire, charging towards the distant glow as fast as she could run.

"Feyain, wait!" called Gyotaren. "I'm wearing a Mask of Speed!" Taking Onathei by the hand, Gyotaren activated his Kanohi Kakama with a thought and dashed for the Toa of Water. Onathei attempted to run at the same speed as Gyotaren, but before long he simply let himself be dragged. As they passed Feyain, Onathei grabbed her. She struggled fiercely the whole way.

It was a minute of Feyain screaming and squirming before they reached the village. "What is wrong with you?" demanded Gyotaren. "I was trying to get you to the fire quicker with my mask power."

"Meh...mer...mafk?" Feyain struggled with the pronunciation briefly and then stopped trying. She couldn't seem to pronounce the "s" correctly.

"Yes, mask," said Onathei. "You have one too."

Feyain rubbed her mask, seeming to understand. "Go," she said again.

The other two nodded and jogged through the village to the site of the fire. As they approached, the crackling sound of burning wood became louder. The acrid smell and taste of smoke became nearly tangible. A few Matoran were trying to put out the burning hut. Several more were standing by.

"Out of the way!" cried Onathei. "The Toa will handle this."

"Toa?" asked one Matoran.

"Toa," confirmed Feyain. "We...are Toa...now."

"But who are you three?" asked the same Matoran.

"Me the...queen," said Feyain with a smile. The Matoran understood.

"Feyain," said Gyotaren. "You should have Water elemental powers. Smother the fire."

Feyain cocked her head in confusion. She blew on the fire with all the power she could muster in her lungs, but to no avail.

"She doesn't understand," said Gyotaren, using his Earth power for the first time to choke the fire. "What use is she to us if she doesn't understand what it means to be a Toa?"

"You can't question Feyain's usefulness," said Onathei, masterfully creating some bamboo supports to keep the badly-burnt building from collapsing. "She's useful when she needs to be most, as she proved earlier today. Anyway, how did this fire start?"

"A dragon spat a fireball down from the sky and then disappeared," said the Matoran with a shrug. "There was some kind of knight riding on his back."

"What?!" demanded Onathei. "This island is supposed to be uninhabited!"

"History repeats itself," said Gyotaren. "Remember Ayomeii?"

"I don't like to," muttered Onathei.

"Your grudge against Ayomeii can wait. Let's go after this supposed dragon."

"Three Toa who have literally only been around for hours, one who can't really do much of anything, going to take on a dragon and his rider who have who knows how much power? What do you think, Feyain?"

"What do you think she's going to say?" muttered Gyotaren, and then all three Toa said simultaneously:

"Go!"

The three Toa had all morning to search for the dragon and his rider, but didn't find them. Eventually Feyain found a large footprint (and another one nearby), which served only to tell them the sheer size of their new enemy, and that even though the apparently bipedal dragon could fly, it still had to land at some point.

In the end, they gave up and returned back to the village. of course, had they showed up a little earlier, maybe a little less would've been lost that day.

They returned to find a strange being, taller than a Toa with white and blue armor, and a mask that none of them had ever seen before. He was walking around smashing flimsy Matoran huts with his bare hands, and incinerating the remains with blue fire launched from his hands. He did not seem at all interested in harming the Matoran. They had tried to attack him, but he shrugged off their attacks and kept going.

"The Toa are back!" cried Xironu, self-appointed general of a small army of Matoran that he was leading into battle against the mysterious attacker. The strange being paid them no mind at all and went on smashing huts.

"What is going on here?!" demanded Gyotaren.

No one had an answer. The Toa gathered that this being had been attacking the village for at least the past hour. He had been taking his time. They also learned that this being was separate from the two attackers last night, though his motives seemed to be the same--clear the island of Matoran establishment.

"So you think burning our homes is funny, huh?" said Onathei. "I don't get the joke." He darted in front of the being as he attempted to smash a shop.

The being hesitated. Then he smashed Onathei aside with a mighty fist.

"I think that was the punchline," said Gyotaren with a trace of amusement in his voice.

"Not funny," muttered Onathei. The Toa of Plantlife stood up, shook off the pain, and created vines to halt his progress. Without a second thought, the being continued walking, tearing through the vines effortlessly.

"Why aren't you two helping?" asked Onathei, creating more vines which were destroyed just as easily.

"Oh, right," said Gyotaren, causing a hand of earth to spring from the ground and hold the being steady. This worked--for about twenty seconds. Then the being broke off the hand's thumb with a blow from his elbow, and from there escaped.

Gyotaren jumped in front of the being and turned on his mask power, moving his legs at blinding speeds while his hands were held outwards against the being, pushing. The being flicked off Gyotaren's mask and the Toa of Earth flew into a hut, destroying it. Gyotaren groaned and tried to sit up, but collapsed back into the rubble.

The being was thoroughly annoyed now, and as he readied blue fire in his hands to burn the remains of the hut, he had every intention of killing Gyotaren in the same burst.

"No!" cried Feyain, unleashing a veritable river of water in midair. The fire was launched a split-second too late. It collided with the water jet and could not pass, disappearing with a sizzle. Gyotaren was spared.

"Yes!" cried Onathei. "I knew you had it in you, Feyain!"

The Toa of Water replied by simply smiling.

Then the being finally spoke. "Foul creatures," he said in a voice that sounded as if it had not been used in thousands of years. His voice was so low it sounded more like a distant thunderclap, and it took the Toa several seconds to realize what he had said. "What is your business here?"

"We were exiled here," said Onathei. "We would like you to leave us alone."

"I cannot allow originals such as yourselves to inhabit this island," he said.

"Originals?" repeated Onathei. Feyain's face grew concerned upon hearing the word.

"Ori...ginalf," she repeated. "I not...originalf."

"Do you know something about this?" asked Gyotaren, standing up and brushing wooden splinters off of his armor.

"Nah trilly," she said awkwardly.

"What?" said Gyotaren.

"She means 'Not really'," said Onathei as if this should have been obvious. "She knows what 'originals' are, and that she isn't one, but she doesn't know anything about this guy."

Feyain nodded.

"You can tell us what originals are later," said Onathei. "For now, we need to drive off this guy. Right, Feyain?"

"Go!"

Feyain launched another waterspout, this one directly at the attacker. He stepped backwards, taken by surprise. While he was stunned, Onathei created thick vine restraints around his legs, tying him securely to the ground before he had a chance to break them. Then Gyotaren created an earth barrier around him. He wouldn't have been able to breathe if not for two holes he made with his own fists. Besides that, he could not escape, his whole body now restrained by Onathei's vines.

"Now that you're at our mercy," said Onathei, "are you a bit more willing to explain your actions?"

"You can't be here," he said, his already-unclear voice muffled by the earth cage. "Except the girl."

"Right, because she's not an original," said Onathei. "Now what does that mean?"

"It means that you can't be here!" he shouted. "Leave at once!" And then suddenly the earth cage collapsed in on itself. Gyotaren cleared aside the dirt, but the being was not there. He had teleported away.

"It sounded like he meant we seriously can't be here because we're originals," said Onathei thoughtfully. "Something about us makes us not be able to be here."

"Or he's just crazy," said Gyotaren.

"Can't you just once try to think outside of what you can see and touch?" said Onathei with a sigh.

"No," replied Gyotaren simply, his arms folded.

"By the way, Feyain, can you tell us what an original is?" asked Onathei.

Feyain gave a half-hearted shrug. "Originalf are not efp...efpair... Um."

"Experimented upon?" finished Onathei.

Feyain nodded. Onathei tried to press her further, but she became despondent and refused to talk anymore.

Eventually, all three Toa joined the Matoran in rebuilding the village. With Onathei's ability to grow trees and kill them in instants, there was a never-ending supply of wood, drastically speeding up the process.

By nightfall the village had been repaired. The three Toa retired to sleep. They would need it for what was to come in the morning.

***

"Get up!" Feyain cried, shaking Onathei's limp body back and forth. "Up!" Finally Onathei's body tensed up, and Feyain knew he had woken up. Next she went to Gyotaren, but before she could touch him, he put up a hand and shook his head.

"Don't get used to this," said Onathei in between yawns, rolling off his stone bed which had become far too small for him upon becoming a Toa.

Feyain showed them a strange object. It had writing on it, but it wasn't a tablet. It was a collection of incredibly thin white sheets of...something, marked upon with some kind of staining black-colored liquid. The sheets were bound together between two sheets of leather. On the cover, Matoran letters spelled out "How to be a Toa".

"What is this?" said Gyotaren. "And where did you get it?"

Feyain drew a circle in the sand and drew three dots in the shape of a triangle, as well as two dots off on the other side of the circle. The other two Toa realized she was referring to the day that they had been given their Toa stones. She circled the front dot, representing that odd Toa of Water.

"She gave you this?" said Onathei. "What is it?"

Feyain shrugged. She opened the object to the first sheet and pointed at the letters. Onathei understood at once: she wanted them to read it out loud for her. Onathei nodded and began to read the first page.

"This book is for one purpose: to aid Feyain once she becomes a Toa, based on what I have learned in my life as a Toa. As far as I know, Feyain can't read, so this guide can surely help whatever Toa wind up on Feyain's team as well.

"I won't waste any more words on an introduction. There are three aspects of a Toa's power. Their element, their mask power, and..."

"And?" said Gyotaren, since Onathei had stopped reading.

"It's smudged," said Onathei with a shrug. "How inconvenient."

"Keep read," Feyain instructed.

"As you mature physically and emotionally, you'll become more powerful. Each aspect of your power will mature separately and likely at different rates. As I've found, there are no magic shortcuts to power. The only way is hard work. Training. Perhaps there are magic shortcuts...but if so, I don't know them.

"The account of my life, with focus on the times my powers increased, is as follows: bla bla bla..."

"Wha?" asked Feyain.

"The rest is just the boring story of a Toa who was full of herself," muttered Onathei. "We don't need to read it all tonight."

Feyain looked a little disappointed, but nodded. She put the book away and the three Toa went to sleep.