It seems I’m on some kind of roll…
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Chapter 38
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It took a good ten minutes for Nuparu to return, and when he did, he was carrying two things: an old, rolled-up letter, and two opaque, red crystals that fit in the palm of his hand. He handed me the letter first.
“Read that,” he instructed, “and tell me what you think.”
“Okay…” I unrolled the letter, unsure of what exactly made this piece of paper so significant. That changed the moment I noticed the signature on the bottom: Lewa. Nuparu stepped back as I began to read the letter.
Onua, dearest brother,
By the time you get this, I’ll be dead. But before I go, I owe you an explanation, and a warning.
Please, understand that I don’t mean to hurt anyone by doing this, least of all you. However, I don’t want to fade, to become the bitter has-been that our brother Pohatu has become. You pointed out that I should retire, call it quits before my body says “enough,” but I can’t do that either; part of me knows it’s only a long road downhill from here. I don’t want to see the bottom; I have spent my life at the summit, and I can’t be happy anywhere else. Therefore, I can’t quit: one way or another, I would drive myself to my own destruction. This way, at least, I’ll do it on my own terms, and leave the Le-Matoran with one more good story to tell.
Mt. Valmai’s eruption is only hours away, and in it I will have the thrill of my life, and the last. I’m sure the Matoran will see it as an inevitable accident, a great stunt of dare-and-do gone wrong. It’ll be tragic, but they’ll remember me as I want to be remembered, as the hero they deserve. It is the one thing I have left to offer them: a legend. That’s all we will eventually be to the Matoran, right? Legends. Symbols of our peoples’ character and achievements. It’s a role I’ve played, gladly, for millennia, and I know you feel the same. But I want to caution you against making the mistake I made: don’t let it consume you.
Our chosen professions may be different, but we have both worked our hardest to provide for the Matoran, to serve them as our code commands. However, you are patient, while I can’t sit still for five minutes. You have wisdom and experience to offer the Onu-Matoran, while I could offer the Le-Matoran nothing but spectacle. Old age will inevitably leave me bitter and ostracized, while you would be as good a leader of the Matoran as any Turaga. Yet, when last we met, you were still toiling away in the mines, even as the work is taking its toll on your body. I’m telling you now to do what you told me, what I could never do: retire, for the good of your people. You could offer them so much more than just the tale of a Toa who worked himself to death.
Yes, I know it sounds hypocritical, just as it did weeks ago… but fate played us cruel cards, and our brothers and sisters have already fallen victim to their circumstances, doomed to live out their lives as mockeries of Toa, sad as it is to see. I’m no better than them, but you, you saved all of us, several times. If anyone can show the world what it meant to be the Toa Nuva, it is you. I am taking the one good option left to me, but you still have a choice. I pray you choose right.
Farewell, and thank you for all you did for me, and for all of us,
Your brother, Lewa.
It was a difficult letter to read; between the erratic handwriting and spots of tears on it, it was clear that the author had found it equally difficult to write. Heart-wrenching, even. It confirmed what I had already suspected about Lewa; his death was not the near-miss, the tragic accident that everyone believed it to be. Lewa had flown into that eruption with full intent to die in it. The tragic part was that he was right; he was remembered as a hero for it, whereas if he had stayed around he could well have ended up like Pohatu.
“That’s… a lot to take in,” I remarked, looking up to find Nuparu leaning against the wall by the tempering oven.
“That it is,” the Toa of Earth agreed. “He wrote that five weeks after the last time he and Onua met. They argued about that exact thing, fell out, and hadn’t spoken since. Normally, they talked at least twice per week.”
“They were close?”
“Very. The only Toa Nuva that still were,” Nuparu took his seat by the work bench.
“So, what do those have to do with it?” I asked, pointing at the red crystals, now lying on the table.
“Lewa’s warning,” Nuparu replied, “about Onua destroying himself just as he had done… Onua heeded it for a while, but this,” he picked up a crystal, “this is what destroyed him.”
“What is it?” I wondered.
“I’m not sure,” the Toa of Earth said as he held it up, inspecting it against the light, “and believe me, I tried for a long time to figure it out. It’s not a normal gem, that’s for sure.”
“What does it do?”
“Observe,” Nuparu said as he placed the crystal in the palm of his hand, then squeezed tight. He held the grip for about ten seconds, rocking his fingers, and when he opened his palm the crystal had been reduced to a bunch of smaller pieces and a fair amount of fine, red dust. “It’s fragile,” he explained, “and useless, except… it has an effect on the mind. A very powerful effect.”
“A drug,” I noted.
“Exactly,” he sighed. “The powder… you sniff it, inhale it, and in moments it makes you feel invincible. No pain, no anxiety, nothing.”
“Onua figured that out?” I asked.
“By accident, I believe,” Nuparu continued. “These things are found deep down in the mine, and to this day most people believe them to be useless. Plus, they’re rare, and I’ve made sure to collect them, to keep them out of unwitting hands. They’re fiendishly addictive, and therefore very dangerous.”
“Really?” I picked up the other crystal and held it up against the light. It seemed hard to believe that such a small, comparatively worthless gem would be so dangerous. “So, what did Onua do, then?”
“After he got that letter, and after Lewa’s funeral, he decided to retire,” Nuparu explained, “but he just couldn’t keep away from the mine. So, instead of calling it quits, he said he’d ‘ramp down’ his work, working shorter hours and all that, until eventually he would be ready to leave completely. At the time, it seemed perfectly reasonable, given how much important that work was to him.”
“His way of serving the Matoran,” I interpreted.
“That’s right,” Nuparu agreed. “I thought it was a good decision. I mean, he was already showing signs of wear; it was clear that his body was starting to go, so I figured he’d wind down and eventually take up a Turaga role. Unfortunately, that’s not how it happened. Instead, he found this.” He held up his palm with the powder in it. “He was hurting by that point; his body was telling him it was time to stop, and that was part of what motivated him to actually slow down; he really didn’t want to, didn’t want to abandon his duty as he saw it.”
“A workaholic…”
“A workaholic who saw his work as his divine duty…” Nuparu sighed, paused, swallowed, then continued: “Somewhere along the line, he discovered these crystals… they made him feel young again, feel strong again, or at least that’s how he described it to me later. At the time, none of us knew, but somehow, a month of two after the funeral, there was this newfound energy about him, and he went back to working full-time and then some. He was going it at it harder than ever before, and the Matoran were cheering him on because, you know, he was their hero, and his retirement would’ve meant the end of an era to them. They thought that, against all odds, he’d gotten better. At first, I was worried, but he seemed so much happier that I didn’t ask questions, and neither did anyone else. Like I said, we didn’t know at the time what was really fueling his return.”
“He hid it?” I asked.
“Very well,” Nuparu confirmed. “I mean, he was the one who found most of these crystals down there anyways, so it wouldn’t have been much trouble for him to pick them up and keep them to himself.”
“He couldn’t hide it forever, though,” I noted. “You found out in the end.”
“I did,” he recalled. “I’d go to visit him, only to find he was working an extra ■■■■■ again, and when he was home he was looking worse every time. It didn’t add up. One time he came home with his arm twisted and mangled; he’d gotten it stuck in a partial tunnel collapse, yet he acted as though it was nothing. He ate little, and started to lose weight and muscle tone; he was pushing his body beyond the limit, forcing it to destroy itself to fuel his work. I convinced him to take a week off, to get the arm fixed and healed, so he did and went back to work after three days. By that point, I was convinced something was up, so I followed him down there. That’s when I saw for the first time that he was using these crystals, or rather, he found some while he was working on yet another tunnel, deeper down than the last. Turns out he went back to work so early because his supply had run out. That was about a month after he first started using them.”
“He went downhill that quickly?” I was rather surprised.
“At that point, his ‘supply’ consisted of maybe two crystals per day,” Nuparu explained. “I confronted him about it, and thankfully he was willing to listen to reason, but he wasn’t willing to stop working altogether. As he saw it, with these crystals he could keep going for longer, keep serving his duty to the Matoran. So, I let off, hoping that he would sooner or later realize how insane of a plan that was.”
“I take it he didn’t come to that realization…”
“I should’ve taken a firmer stance, but I didn’t realize just how much that sense of duty that had guided him as a hero before was blinding him…” Nuparu’s voice was beginning to waver. “And these… these things,” he looked at the red dust in his hand, “he believed that they were somehow giving him greater strength. They weren’t; they simply made him blind to his own limits. At first I thought he was just pushing himself to stay relevant, but then I had to believe that he was absolutely desperate, given how fast he went. I mean, it was becoming obvious to everyone; he looked gaunt, didn’t care about injuries, hardly slept or ate or drank anything… I tried again and again to tell him that he should slow down. When I visited him in the mine again a couple of weeks after I found out, he collapsed while working. I used that incident, and his… well, condition, to argue that he had to stop. Not slow down, not a break… he had to stop. That was it.”
“Did he?” By this point, I found myself hoping that he did, even though… well, history had already played out, hadn’t it?
“He tried,” Nuparu leant to the side and dropped the powder and fragments of the crystal in a trash can. “And for a while… he almost managed it. But it was hell. He’d already damaged his body beyond repair, and as soon as the crystal wore off, it was like his nerves were screaming at him. Headaches, cold sweats, back pain… he could barely drag himself out of bed. And it just wouldn’t end.” Nuparu shuddered, and his voice had taken on a distinctly morose tone. “It lasted all of two weeks. Two weeks during which he didn’t dare step outside, ‘cause he didn’t want the Matoran to see what was happening to him. Through it all, that was what he said hurt most; the fact that he was sitting there, not working…”
“He couldn’t stay away…” I looked down at Lewa’s letter again… the Toa of Air had felt the exact same way.
“And that’s what ended it,” Nuparu said, with a sudden anger in his voice. “He gave up, or gave in, whatever you want to call it. Got a hold of another crystal somehow, went back into the mine, and didn’t come out for the next two weeks. When I asked him about it, he said he was making up for lost time. So I took matters into my own hands. While he was gone, I turned his house upside down to figure out where he was keeping these things… I didn’t find any. Instead, I found that.” He pointed at the letter.
“Lewa’s warning…”
“I showed it to him, reminded him of it…” Nuparu paused for a moment to collect himself. “And then he told me that Lewa was wrong, that he’d be fine. Lewa’d just lacked the resolve to keep going, had flinched when faced with the future, like Gali. Coming from him, that was the worst insult for a Toa; he blamed Gali for driving the team apart, and hadn’t spoken to or of her since except to express his anger. Then he told me to go back to ‘fixing little drills’ and to leave him alone. So I did; I was furious, furious at his delusion, furious that he’d dismissed his dead friend’s warning and insulted him to boot… I was done for a while after that.”
“I know that feeling.” Pretty much how I felt about Kopaka at this point.
“It felt right at the time, but I shouldn’t have left,” Nuparu continued. “I should’ve dragged him out of that tunnel and over to Gali’s place, just to see if she could do anything about the state his body was in. Maybe that would’ve made quitting tolerable for him, not to have to deal with as much pain… As it was, when I left, he was doomed. He stayed in the mine for longer and longer, looking for more crystals to fuel his spiraling habit… at the end, he was up to one per hour, and that was over a month after the last time I saw him. I went down there one last time… and it was awful…” he was choking up.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” I stopped him. “You can stop, really, I… I mean, I know this is difficult, and…”
“No,” he said defiantly. “No, someone needs to know… just give me a moment.”
“Don’t talk, then,” I suggested. “Just… think. I’ll see for myself.” For a moment, he looked a bit confused, but then he realized what I was doing. I focused in on him, as he was reliving that memory… I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty, but if he was intent on me knowing, I was going to see it for myself.
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I’m walking down a tunnel, one that’s barely lit. From up ahead, I hear a scraping sound, an occasional falling rock… the sound of someone digging, punctuated by two small, high-revving engines; the signature sound of Onua’s tools. To the left and right of me, water comes dripping down from cracks all over the walls and ceiling of this tunnel; it hasn’t been reinforced or anything… this can’t possibly be safe. Looking back, I see the vehicle I’ve left behind; a small quad-buggy, pointing the other way with its engine still running; if worst comes to worst, I have to get out of the tunnel quickly, but it has now narrowed to where the buggy can go no further, hence I am continuing on foot.
Only fifty or so feet beyond where I left the buggy, the tunnel curves to the right… and now that it’s straightening out again, I get my first glimpse of the Toa Nuva of Earth. It’s from about a hundred feet away and from behind, but even from here it’s obvious that he’s in a terrible state… I’m not looking at a Toa; I’m looking at the living, skeletal remains of one. As I approach, the details become clearer; what little muscle is draped over his base frame is torn, frayed, and discolored… His armor, dented, meant to accommodate bulging muscles, is hanging by the bolts that attach it to his frame, and as he pushes the fast-revving drilling tools against the wall, grinding away into the rock, his whole body shakes as though he’s struggling to hold the heavy things in place. I wait for a few seconds until, exhausted, he allows the tools to wind down and lowers them to the ground.
“Onua?..” I manage to get out. He doesn’t seem to hear. “Onua!” I call out more forcefully and approach. For a moment, it seems my call has once again fallen on deaf ears, but then he slowly begins to turn… as I come within ten feet, his eyes fall on me. They’re red around the edges and unnaturally wide open; their owner hasn’t slept for days. He once stood quite tall, but his bony, bent frame is that of a tortured man.
“Nuparu.” his voice is incredibly hoarse, to the point where I can barely understand what he’s saying. This is the state those crystals have left him in.
“Look at you…” my voice is wavering; I’m still getting over what I’m looking at. “Look at yourself.” No reply. “The once mighty Toa Onua… look where your duty has brought you. It is killing you.” For a few seconds, we just look each other dead in the eyes. I want some kind of reply, some acknowledgement beyond my name, some sign that those crystals haven’t taken his brain as well.
“Duty brought me this far,” he says at last. “There is no turning back now.”
“No turning back?”
“I can’t go back up there… not like this.” Even through torn vocal cords, I recognize a tone of sadness… of resignation.
“So you know,” I reply. “You know where you’re at. That means you can turn back.”
“I can’t,” he says. “It’s done, and you need to go. Now.”
“I’m not leaving,” I reply resolutely.
“No, Nuparu, you are leaving,” he says again, now more threateningly. “There’s nothing for you here. Go!”
“■■■■ it!” I exclaim. “You’ve given up… just like Lewa, right!?” I expect him to hurl back some explicative at the mentioning of the Toa Nuva of Air’s name… but I don’t get that. Instead, he gets that look again… as though the gravity of his condition just hit him. “Just like Lewa…” I repeat.
“He was right…” Onua suddenly says. “■■■■■■ fool was right all along. There’s no place left for me; not now.”
“There is, if you can let go of your pride, of your duty, for just a second,” I argue. “We can save you.”
“No…” Onua begins, but then a sudden pain seems to grip him. “Argh!” he lurches, drops one of his tools, and grabs onto the sides of his abdomen.
“You’re hurt,” I continue. “Come with me, we can get help. We can get you through this.”
“No!” he exclaims, still grimacing with pain, as he reaches into a small bag attached to his waist. “Come on…” he mutters as he rummages around it, eventually pulling out one small, red crystal fragment.
“Onua, don’t…” I begin, but before I can even get to him he’s crushed it in his hand. He brings then had up to his face, takes a deep breath… For a moment, everything seems to stand still, then he lets out a sigh of relief.
“That’s destroying you, and you know it,” I say. He doesn’t reply; instead, he reaches into the pocket again, then turns it inside out. It is empty. He sighs, and for a moment seems close to collapse.
“That… was my last,” he says as he reaches to pick up his tools again. I step forward again, reach out, and grip him by the shoulders. He looks up at me, his eyes redder than ever.
“You’ve got to stop this madness!” I plead.
“It’s too late,” he says, with a hint of bliss to his voice. “Go, Nuparu… Go. It’s over.”
“No, it isn’t!” I continue. “Those Matoran up there still need you! I need you, ■■■■ it!”
“No… you… DON’T!” he suddenly exclaims, swinging one of his tools in my direction, forcing me to leap backwards and get out of the way. I look, stunned, as he stands there, somehow still holding those things at the read. “This world doesn’t need me, it doesn’t need you, it doesn’t need any of us!” he continues as his face takes on an anguished expression. “I’m done, Nuparu… I’m done. Leave before I take you down with me!” Suddenly, it dawns on me what he is about to do.
“No, you can’t!” I call out, but before I can intervene, he suddenly turns around, revving up both of his tools as he does so, and plunges them forward into the stone wall. Over the screaming engines, I hear the unmistakable sound of cracking stone coming from above me. Looking up, I see the cracks in the ceiling are spreading! I jump back, just in time as a chunk of rock, dislodged from the ceiling, falls down on the spot where I was standing.
“Come on!” I shout to Onua. “We’ve got to get out of here!” He doesn’t respond, holding the tools and his position with what for his current condition has to be supernatural strength. More chunks of rock are beginning to fall… instinctively, I back up further. “Come on, ■■■■ it!” I plead again. “Don’t let it end like this!” More falling rocks… we’ve only got seconds at best. Suddenly, Onua stops the engines. His tools come sliding out of the wall as cracks continue to spread from the holes they leave behind, and he begins to turn, leaning now with his back against the wall. He slides down, collapsing, tools dropping by his side. “Come to me! NOW!” I shout, but he doesn’t listen.
“Go…” he says, barely loud enough for me to hear over the stone cracking and rumbling. “Run, or the mountain will swallow you too…” He leans back, and closes his eyes. I’m torn; I can’t stay here, I don’t have the time to even climb over the mounting rubble and get him out of here… I have to run.
“■■■■ IT!” I exclaim as I turn around. I start to sprint down the tunnel; all around me, pebbles and dust are already dislodging themselves from the ceiling. When I reach the bend, I look back one last time; he’s still there, sitting, leaning against the wall, looking upwards and awaiting the inevitable. It’s only a glimpse, a split second… then a large section of the ceiling comes down. Rocks, boulders, slabs of stone plunge into the tunnel between us, and the collapse is spreading. I have to turn and run again, racing against the closing earth. I round the bend, make it back to the buggy, jump on and gun the engine. A wave of dust heralded by a tremendously loud rumbling and crashing follows closely behind as I race through the tunnel to the central mine shaft; it seems like forever, but when I reach it, I turn hard right and up the spiraling pathway that leads, eventually, to the city up above. I’ve made it to the entrance of the next tunnel up… I’m safe.
I stop the buggy and look down and across the central shaft. A plume of dust has shot out of the entrance to what was a tunnel only minutes ago… the collapse is total; even before the dust settles, I can see boulders in the entrance. This is it… my hero, my mentor, my friend… is dead.
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#####author’s note: emotionally charged chapter is emotionally charged. This was one of those chapters whose events I’ve been planning for a long time (as in, back in January), and it felt great to finally write it out. All that planning and excitement probably contributed to the fact that this is the longest chapter yet (just over 4000 words). Not that it is a happy chapter, mind… don’t do drugs, kids!
I’ll post more chapters as I finish them. As always, post any questions, comments, and/or observations below. Enjoy!
