As most everyone knows, the Bionicle story serials ended on multiple cliffhangers, as Greg was not able to continue them. I don’t know of any fan project that has actually set out to finish the serials. So that is what I aim to do. Not just finish the stories – I aim to finish them as I feel Greg would’ve. So that means taking into account things Greg said he might have done, including building up to an eventual Great Being Civil War. (Though don’t expect that in this story)
Star of Death might be included in this project, although I may rewrite it, since it sets up some fanon stories and characters, and I’d prefer to keep this to canon characters as much as possible.
Anyway, on to the first chapter of the first new story, Shadow of the Fallen.
Chapter 1
The Toa Mahri were in the middle of a nightmare. Literally, though they had no way of knowing at the time.
A few days ago, they had been tasked with investigating the doings of various Skakdi warlords, who were rumored to be seeking an alliance with the Makuta. The rumors turned out to be false, but the Mahri discovered that the Skakdi were making something else – a fusion of several beings to create an entity with the power to realize the dreams of those around it. The first demonstration of its power placed the Toa Mahri in a trance, wanting to serve the Skakdi.
They remained in this trance, perfectly happy with the Skakdi’s orders, until the Skakdi ran into a monster with the power to drive others mad. The monster drove the Skakdi mad, and the Fusion started unwittingly granting the mad Skakdi’s dreams. It was a literal nightmare come to life.
Hahli, Toa Mahri of Water, was the first to awaken from the trance. She found herself standing in some kind of room, the other four Toa Mahri there with her. The others were just standing there, staring blankly ahead.
She realized she had no idea where she was. Her memories of the past few days were hazy, and the last thing she could clearly remember was being on Zakaz, watching the Skakdi make… something. Something bad, something monstrous, and the Toa Mahri had to stop it. And then…
Her attempts to make sense of her blurry memories were interrupted when the floor shifted abruptly. Hahli barely managed to keep her balance. The other Mahri, caught off-guard, tumbled to the floor, landing awkwardly in a pile.
This did help snap them out of their trance. They awoke very confused, and like Hahli, had no idea where they were or how they got there.
“What-- what happened?” Kongu, Toa of Air, implored. “Why are we on the floor? Did the Skakdi blast us?”
Hahli helped Kongu to his feet, and the other Toa Mahri got up as well. “Where are we?” Hewkii, Toa of Stone, asked. “This doesn’t look like the cavern under Zakaz. Or any fortress on Zakaz, for that matter. The stone is too new.”
Nuparu, Toa of Earth, glanced at the walls surrounding them, though he didn’t know what details marked rock walls as new or old quite like his friend did. But when he glanced at the far wall, he saw something he knew definitely wasn’t right. “Hey guys, are walls on Zakaz supposed to move?”
The other Mahri glanced at the wall Nuparu was looking at. It wasn’t moving, not exactly; rather, it was fading, parts of it going in and out of existence. Worse, the effect was spreading fast, not just to the other walls, but to the floor as well.
Jaller, Toa of Fire, spotted a window on one of the nearby walls, and ran to it, hoping to get an idea of where the Mahri were. Outside, he saw a vast ocean to the left, a forest to the right. The building the Toa Mahri were in appeared to be some kind of fortress, built atop a rocky cliff near the shoreline. Down on the ground, Jaller could see numerous beings, though they were too far away to make out what they were. And something, or someone, was glowing bright red, and moving toward a large creature that Jaller recognized as the Fusion.
Jaller turned back to the other Toa. “We need to go, now,” he said, and started for the door.
He never made it there, as the floor abruptly melted. One moment, it was solid stone, and the next it was like liquid. The Toa Mahri found themselves falling through the rapidly disappearing fortress.
Jaller spent a second waiting for Matoro, Toa of Ice, to form an ice slide to bring them to safety. That second was how long it took him to remember that Matoro was gone, having died to bring Mata Nui back to life.
Hewkii acted instead, using his powers to create a slab of solid, non-fading stone for the Mahri to land on. It was held up by the walls of the Fortress, but there was no telling how long that might last.
Kongu was the first one to spot the monsters. Creatures of all types were appearing in the shadows, crawling along the walls. They were all hideous creatures, like nothing the Mahri had seen before… except in their worst dreams.
“We need to get down to solid ground,” Hewkii declared. “This fortress isn’t gonna last.”
Nuparu glanced down, and realized the ground wasn’t solid at all. In fact, it was shifting, undulating like a sea made out of rock and sand.
Before he could inform the other Mahri of this, however, something grabbed him and pulled him off the stone platform. He yelped as a tentacle hoisted him into the air, attached to what looked like a giant floating squid, with a large eye in the center of its torso and a gaping maw that it was raising the Toa of Earth toward.
Jaller noticed Nuparu’s predicament and shot a blast of fire at the tentacled creature. The fire didn’t seem to hurt the creature, but it still stunned it, and it let go of Nuparu. The Toa of Earth started plummeting toward the ground.
Kongu ran, leaped, and caught Nuparu midair. A gust of wind, courtesy of Kongu’s power, brought the two Toa to a nearby section of flooring that hadn’t disappeared yet. In fact, the fortress had stopped fading from existence, at least for now. That was the good news. The bad news was, enough of it had faded out of existence, or melted away, that it was very unstable. Worse, it was now home to numerous nightmarish creatures.
Hewkii brought his slab down to the floor Kongu and Nuparu had landed on, and the Toa Mahri regrouped. A pair of large snakelike creatures hissed and started crawling along the walls toward them. Some sort of smoke entity was floating through the air toward the Mahri and they could hear the roaring of a large creature that they couldn’t spot.
The Toa Mahri were not cowards, but they did know when to run.
They ran into the hallways of the fortress, soon finding themselves in the dark. Jaller ignited his sword, creating light for the Toa to see by, but the shadows were strangely oppressive, unnaturally so. This was not just normal darkness from being in a windowless hallway; something, or someone, was controlling this shadow. Jaller was pretty sure there weren’t any Skakdi of Shadow.
Then, suddenly, light returned. The Toa Mahri had found the end of the hallway, and it opened to the edge of the fortress. In front of them was just open air, the beach far below and the ocean beyond that.
And there were creatures scaling the walls, heading toward the Toa Mahri.
“Where to now?” Hewkii said.
Jaller felt torn. Somehow, he felt going back into the shadows was a bad idea. At the same time, there didn’t seem to be anywhere else to go. The ocean was too far to jump to, the ground too far down to fall to, and scaling the wall clearly wasn’t an option, not with those… things crawling all over.
Hewkii found the answer. Aiming his spear at one of the walls and activating his powers, he blew a hole in it. On the other side, a stairway led down into another part of the fortress. Down, down is good, Jaller thought. “That way!” he called, and the Toa Mahri ran again.
Suddenly, Jaller’s Mask of Sonar started sending him familiar signals. “Stop!” he said, holding out his arms. “Something’s coming.”
The Toa Mahri readied there weapons, ready for anything. Now they could hear the sounds of footsteps coming up the stairs. From around a turn in the stairway came a group of Skakdi. The Toa Mahri readied for battle, but they needn’t have bothered. The Skakdi ran past them, seemingly terrified of something. The Toa Mahri continued going down, but behind them, they heard screams and knew the three Skakdi had found the nightmare monsters.
“Should we keep going?” Hewkii said. “I’m not sure I want to face something bad enough to scare Skakdi like that.”
Jaller nodded. “We need to get down. Whatever threat we’re facing, I’d like to face it on solid ground.”
“I hate to say it,” Nuparu said, “but the ground might not be so solid either.”
Before Jaller could ask what he meant, the Toa Mahri reached the end of the stairway, and finally got to the ground. Outside, they found an army of Skakdi, surrounding the Fusion and the glowing red entity Jaller had spotted earlier. They appeared to be talking, though Jaller couldn’t make out what they were saying.
What he could tell, however, was that the Skakdi were all focused on the two monsters. That gave the Toa Mahri time to get away. Jaller hated to run from a threat, but he also knew charging into battle with no idea what you were up against was a good way to get killed.
“Let’s go,” he whispered, leading the Toa Mahri toward the cliffs.
As they trudged along the sand, Nuparu realized that the ground was no longer moving. Maybe he imagined it? Or – and he liked this option even more – maybe this was all one very bad dream, and he would soon wake up in his bed in Metru Nui.
Jaller felt a sudden shift, a change in energy he would never be able to explain but could detect all the same, and glanced back. The glowing red entity was gone. The Fusion was still there, but the Skakdi were dispersing. It wouldn’t be long before they noticed the Toa. The Toa Mahri needed someplace to hide, and there was only one place close enough: the cliffs.
Quickly, the Toa Mahri made for the cliffs and started climbing down toward the beach below. A large creature, looking like a cross between a bear and a crab, was waiting at the bottom for them, but a blast of fire from Jaller’s sword chased it off.
The Mahri reached the bottom and took a moment to catch their breath. Jaller kept an eye out for any more monsters, but none showed up. The Toa Mahri were safe, for now.
“All right,” Jaller said. “First, we need to figure out where we are and how we got here. Then we need to find out just what we’re facing up there, and then we need to go tell the Order what we’ve found. I think this might be bigger than just the five of us can handle.”
Author’s notes: this chapter is a bit longer than the rest, as I hadn’t yet figured out a good chapter length. Future chapters, and chapters of future story serials, will be a bit shorter.
Next chapter up tomorrow. Maybe. I might forget or something.
