Makuta_Servaela's Ramblings @makutaservaela - Tumblr Blog

Jan 4

A Side Project

I've been considering whether I want to share this with you all, or keep it separate from my Bionicle ramblings: on one hand, it's an original project and technically not Bionicle, but on the other hand, you all show a lot of interest and response to my works, and I am interested in critique and feedback, so I've decided to share.

I'm working on a novel that is based on my Bionicle What Comes After fanfiction, specifically from the Makuta's perspective. It combines some of my old story elements with new ones, and is nowhere near a 1:1 match to either my fanfiction or to Bionicle.

I've almost reached 100,000 words in the total novel, and I have the first chapter below the cut, if you're interested.

Chapter One

Rushing water froze her face as it burned her lungs.

The onslaught of waves fell rapidly across her, but her limbs were grasped and slowed as if caught in mud. She’d lost the energy to fight back long ago, but her lips still struggled to scream, her legs still kicked to break free, her gaze still sought desperately for escape. There was no escape. There hadn’t been an escape the last few hundred times, and there wouldn’t be this time.

The burn in her lungs began to fade, and her mind swam lightly. The feeling in her fingers drifted away, the numbness creeping up her limbs until it reached her heart. Its pounding slowed until the familiar peace settled in. The last thought that ran through her mind was a question: What death will she face next?

Her vision faded to darkness.

The darkness was replaced with a blinding light. Something didn’t feel right.

For however long she had been dying, she could feel every prick of thorn, every sting of venomous creature, every pebble of falling rocks, but compared to the cold breeze that now prodded her flesh, those pains felt like a far away dream.

Her eyes opened to a sight she had never before remembered seeing: comfort. A soft white pillow.

She lifted her head from the mattress and surveyed the room. The white walls surrounded her with a familiar blankness- every time she had died, she had seen pure darkness, then blinding light. She had found herself in a blank white void, which would be filled with her next cause of death. Sometimes, the rockfall would come suddenly and crush her. Sometimes, the blizzard would swarm for hours until her limbs shut down. Sometimes, the heat would rise only one degree every few hours until her shell plates peeled away from her flesh and her body cooked while she lived in it- if only living a few more minutes by that point.

This was not the void of death. Her years of torture had been a dream. She remembered every moment of visceral pain, but as the seconds ticked by, the details trickled away until all she recalled was terror. A terror that no living being should ever be forced to experience.

So, why had she?

And, beyond this, what was she? Who was she? Where was she?

She was sure she had a name, but trying to remember it only brought her memories of the pain. She struggled to recollect something- anything- from before the nightmare, but every attempt only caused her head to ache and her tissue to burn.

“Hello?” She startled at the deep and hollow mature female voice in her vicinity, and jerked her gaze around the room. She was alone.

“Who is there?” The same voice, and this time she recognized it as her own. She had spent so long screaming that she had forgotten how it felt to speak.

The room answered her with silence.

The walls were completely bare, with the only details of note in the room being the bed in which she rested, a machine whose tubing had been freshly pulled from the injection sites lining her left arm, an illuminated crystal embedded into the ceiling, and a door cracked ajar, offering a curious invite to the room beyond. Had the door not been open, it would have been invisible against the wall, with how its blankness perfectly aligned with the rest of the room’s interior.

She shuffled in an attempt to move her limbs under her. She had spent the last few years running from the terror, but in this moment she felt as if she had never moved her body a day in her life. Muscles whose exercise had been only through artificial external stimuli for years now screamed as they were finally forced to move on their own. Organs she could not identify in her abdomen began to churn.

She moved slowly from the bed until she was satisfied that all of her hooves were neatly beneath her and she was standing with some stability. She moved to step, and her limbs gave out from under her. With a shriek, she found herself in a crumpled pile on the cold white ground.

Her organs jolted, and she vomited a mass of pale silver liquid that burned her throat as it rushed out.

Steeling herself with determination to not allow death to chase her once more- or at the very least, to not rest in a puddle of her own vomit- she moved her limbs under her again, carefully watching her balance until she had stepped to the door. She gently nudged it open, and found a barren grey corridor before her, with doors pushed ajar lining the same wall as the one that contained hers. So, she was not alone here?

She carefully shuffled out, coming a bit more used to her steps. A small noise drew her attention, and she found a canvas band wrapped around her left wrist. The band was lined with letters and numbers she could not decipher, and one word: “Kohiri”.

This was her name. She could not understand how she knew this, but she knew it.

She continued down the corridor to the next door and pulled it open. It was adorned with the same furniture as hers, but its inhabitant looked nothing like her. The being- a female, Kohiri could sense- was hexapedal, with hind legs that ended in clawed feet rather than hooves, middle limbs wielding great wings on her back, top limbs whose hands ended in small fingers and lacked any more leg or hoof, and slate shell plates lining clouded blue tissue.

The female looked up at Kohiri with a solemn gaze and a soft tone, “What do you want from me?”

“I do not know you.” Kohiri responded, “And I presume you find yourself in the same predicament as I?”

The female stroked a silver drop from her lip with one talon and swiped it at the puddle by the foot of her bed, “I can’t imagine someone else going through… this.”

Kohiri nodded, then gestured to the female’s arms, “A band tells me my name. I presume you do not know yours?”

The female observed her anatomy for a moment as Kohiri watched on. The female’s shell plates were layered in a similar pattern even if her proportions were strange. Her limbs were all of a similar or same length, and she lacked forehooves, her upper arms only containing two joints each besides the hands. Did she locomote bipedally?

She did, Kohiri noted, as the female stood on unsteady and clumsy-looking feet, with claws splayed against the hard ground in a struggle to find a gripping point.

The female held up her left upper arm to point out the canvas band around her wrist, and she muttered, “Shierva. That feels correct.”

“Greetings, Shierva, I am Kohiri. If we stand in a similar predicament, then we fight the same battle. Shall we locate our opponent?”

“I have plenty of questions for her.” Shierva huffed.

A high-pitched shriek sounded throughout the building. Kohiri jumped back from the door, her gaze alert for a third party. She glanced at Shierva, who was watching the air with a confused face. Shierva threw her head back and called a two-toned shriek of the same pitch.

The two shared a confused gaze. Kohiri decided against asking Shierva the reason for the behaviour, realising the other female was equally unaware.

They moved quickly down the corridor as another shriek sounded, this one a rapid array of quick sounds, and then a fourth that sounded an amalgamation of pain and volume.

The next room was empty.

The room after’s sole furniture- the bed and the machine- were upturned, and the crystal light had been smashed. Kohiri stared into the darkness, and the shadows shifted.

The air filled with a hateful hiss as scarlet eyes glowed from the corner of the room.

Kohiri and Shierva both stepped back out of the room slowly. The room’s inhabitant stalked toward them until the corridor light illuminated a twisted body lined in dark jade shell plates. The creature stepped forward quadrupedally, a hunt in his eyes and his teeth bared. His forelimbs were curved and jutted as if not properly attached to his torso, and wing webbing lined long talons that moved behind him.

His muscles bunched under him as he prepared to strike.

“Vhila?” The voice was Kohiri’s, but the meaning behind it was absent from her.

The male paused in his step. Both he and Shierva stared at Kohiri with wide eyes and held breath.

Shierva spoke first, “You know him?”

Kohiri shook her head, “I have never met him.”

The male’s voice was hardly audible in its raspy whisper, “You speak my name.”

“Another mystery, Vhila.” Kohiri insisted.

Shierva stepped back toward him, her gaze locked to Kohiri, “I don’t know if I trust you.”

Before Kohiri could respond, Vhila’s glare had moved past her. She turned to find a fourth being standing in the corridor. This being was of similar anatomy to Shierva, if not a head taller than her, and bore a wide frame locking deep veins of tissue, his amber shell pitted with old scars. His scarlet eyes shone from worn lenses as he surveyed each of the beings before him in turn.

His voice was cold and deep, “Come.”

Shierva snapped back, “Where?”

He had already turned to leave, “Follow me.”

Kohiri and Shierva shared a glance.

Vhila burst between them in a flurry of feral noises as he pounced at the newcomer. He leaped for contact, fangs and claws bared, and in a motion, the new male turned on his heel, grasped Vhila by the upper shoulders, and threw him into the near wall. The smaller male slammed against the barrier and crumpled to the ground in a daze.

The larger male paused with a sigh.

Shierva moved before Kohiri, “You’re the reason we are here, then? What do you want from us?”

“There is no use bickering here.” He replied as he walked away.

Vhila clambered to his feet and lowered for another charge, blocked swiftly by a stamp from Kohiri’s left forehoof as she snapped, “Do not kill him yet. He may have answers.”

Vhila gave a low hiss, “I take them from his tongue.” He shoved past her and charged at the larger male again, aiming low this time. The larger male stopped in his tracks patiently until Vhila was nearly upon him, then sank to a crouch, snapped a hand on Vhila’s, and sent the smaller male over his back and flying down the corridor until he crashed into the floor of the wide room at the end. Vhila was quicker to his feet, and he turned toward the larger male for another charge, before stopping short, his eyes wide. He sank to the floor, his head whipping in alarm.

The larger male continued his patient walk as Kohiri and Shierva rushed ahead to the wide room to stand beside Vhila.

The walls of the room were as emotionless as the rest of the walls thus far, save for a large window that spanned nearly floor to ceiling. The room had at some point contained leisure and seating items, the remnants of which lay strewn about the floor. One of the dozen light crystals was shattered, its sparkling debris littering the dark spot under it. Claws tapped on the ground as a large figure moved between the mess. The only glimpses of it that Kohiri could spot were the occasional flashes of golden eyes and brindle shell as it moved.

Vhila reared to his hind legs and clenched the muscles of his forelegs. Muscles and shell plates shifted fluidly as if his arms were transforming.

The beast tore through the broken furniture and floor linings as it flew toward the group. Kohiri locked down on her hooves, considering rapidly if she had yet enough of her balance and mind to fight for her life- an odd thought, after so long. She had not yet faced a death ripped apart by a wild animal, anyway.

The beast stopped breaths away from the group and reared on its hind legs, its two upper pairs flexing with powerful muscles and glimmering talons, the wings of its middle pair tensing in the air. It gave a violent hiss, spraying spit and hate on the group and baring sharp, greyed fangs.

The larger male behind the group coughed, “If you are quite finished, Saybet?”

Saybet’s middle arms clenched and tucked behind her. She lowered on to the haunches of her hind legs.

Kohiri did not take her eyes from the beast as she muttered to the larger male, “Is it sapient?”

He responded with a chuckle, “When she chooses to be.”

Shierva spoke up, “Now, then, how many of you stand against me?”

The larger male approached the wide window at the far end of the room and traced a talon against the glass, “Shierva, what can you tell us about this land?”

Shierva, Kohiri, and Vhila followed, keeping a distance from the male as they looked out the window. Far below their room was a dark ocean, and had the sound of its crashing waves been able to reach the group far above, they would have been violently deafening. Far ahead was the shore of a land, with purple-crowned mountains rising on the horizon.

Shierva’s voice shook softly, “Nothing.”

The male addressed Kohiri, “What can you tell us about how we arrived here?”

Kohiri considered attempting again to recall, but the memories of the excruciating pain and terror this caused led her to reconsider, “Nothing.”

The male addressed Vhila, “What can you tell us about who we are?”

Vhila neither looked nor spoke to the male. He had returned to his quadrupedal posture, and his gaze had calmed with a hint of irritation as he surveyed not the ocean or the land, but the sky above their confinement. The muscles in his arms twitched, and with the calmed posture, Kohiri could finally see that his anatomy matched the others among her. He was a hexapod like them, with his wing arms moving with and in tandem to his upper arms as if each two were one. She followed his anatomy until she found his face aimed at her, his scarlet gaze trailing her with the same curiosity.

The larger male continued, “If any of you recall, my name is Alehkai. We once knew each other.”

Shierva huffed, “So, you know more than we do?”

His responding laugh was pained, “Allow me to even our knowledge, Shierva. I seek the answers you seek.”

She eyed him cautiously, “How long have you been awake?”

He gestured to the window, “I awoke with the sunrise.” The sun was far above.

He stepped away from the window, “I have paced the corridors as far as I could go. Saybet was the first to wake and join me on my exploration. In the doors we could open, we found five more beds besides our own- three containing you, the other two still warm. We found you tossing and turning against your sheets, wailing in your sleep and scratching gashes into the bedframes. From this… I can imagine the dreams you had matched mine, and the confusion with which you woke did as well.”

Shierva’s eyes narrowed, “The doors you could open? There were more?”

“Locked.” He responded.

“I would imagine they would be more willing with an offering of brute force, with your strength.”

Saybet huffed, “We tried that.” She enunciated by crushing a chair leg under her clawed foot until it shattered into splinters.

Kohiri paced the room and observed the remnants of furniture. Before they had become Saybet’s chew toys, that had been held in the hands of master crafters, and bore delicate markings and polished wood and stone.

She raised her head to the others, “Five of us here, and no more, then?”

Alehkai’s gaze matched hers, “Six.” He raised a talon and pointed to a mess of wires hidden against the top corner of the window. The wires surrounded a box, on which rested a dark lens.

Kohiri cocked her head, “What is that?”

Alehkai paced under it, “I am not sure, but the lens looks to me like an eye. The machine watches us.”

Kohiri snapped to the eye, “What do you want?” It remained silent.

The group dispersed into the room, each observing and pondering the oddities.

Shierva trailed a talon against the horizon outlined in the window as she mused, “I wonder if we lived there?”

Alehkai’s response was as soft as his gruff voice seemed to allow, “I hope I did.”

Kohiri trailed Vhila to the back corner of the room, where he had lowered to rest quadrupedally. Kohiri felt an alien among a group of friends to the others, but this one's posture she found comforting. Perhaps he intended to match her stance as a gesture of good will, or perhaps he understood the balance of a quadruped was superior to the strange bipedal ways most of the others walked?

She lowered beside him, tucking her forehooves beneath her. He did not acknowledge her.

She spoke in as gentle a tone as her worn throat could muster, “What are you?”

He watched her, but remained silent.

She attempted again, “Your wings are magnificent. Can you fly?”

His gaze and decision to speak were unchanging.

A final attempt, she decided, “Was that your scream we heard? What was the meaning behind it?”

His voice retained its whisper, “A signal.”

“What did you intend to signal?”

Shierva interrupted, “It wasn’t intended, was it? I felt a strangeness in my throat the moment I awoke and found myself so alone. When you called, I couldn’t help myself but to echo, and it comforted the strangeness away. It’s as… an instinct.”

Vhila turned his eyes to her for a moment, before throwing his head back and releasing a shriek identical to the first one Kohiri had heard. Shierva, Alehkai, and Saybet gave theirs in turn- the two-toned, the rapid shrills, and the caterwaul, respectively. They looked around at each other with warmer gazes.

Shierva laughed, “We are not meant to be alone, I think. We have a built-in beacon- an overwhelming urge to find each other.”

Saybet nodded, “I heard Alehkai’s in my dream shortly before I woke. I think he called me from my sleep.”

Kohiri mused, “I feel no urge.”

Saybet’s warmth vanished, and her golden glare snapped to Kohiri, “Because you aren’t one of us. You’re a traitor behind this, aren’t you?”

Kohiri rose to a stand, “I assure you, I have no memory. I stand with the same vulnerability as you.”

“Liar!” Saybet shrieked. Alehkai moved to grab her, and she wrenched away from him and bounded at Kohiri. Vhila moved to block the attack, before seemingly deciding against it, and shifted back to his rest. Kohiri leaped back to angle herself, and readied to buck the attacker.

Moments before the impact, Saybet stopped in her tracks. Her tissue tensed, and then rapidly relaxed. Her hitched breath let out into a gentle sigh. Her eyes dimmed behind her lenses, before fading to darkness, her eyelids not even closing fully before she collapsed on the ground a pace before Kohiri. Shierva took a step forward, her eyes filled with terror, before she too fell limp and collapsed, followed by Alehkai and Vhila.

Kohiri scanned her fallen companions rapidly, her heartbeat pounding in her throat as she searched for the unseen threat. Had it killed them? Was this her death? Did she still stand in the dream, this one a magnitude more cruel than her last?

A new being stepped into the room from the corridor entrance opposite the one Kohiri and her companions had used. Six limbs as well, his lower two pairs ended with hooves and moved with his lower torso quadrupedally, while his upper two stood vertical along with his chest. He wore silver armour over a deep grey shell, great horns behind his head, and a gas mask on his muzzle. A smaller, lithe biped female followed him. Her grey gas mask and deep red eyes were the only things about her appearance not hidden in ebony colouration. Her arms crossed over her chest with a sharp grip. Kohiri had never seen this female before, she was sure, but there was something about her species that Kohiri recognized.

The female’s voice was slightly muffled behind her mask, “Hello, Kohiri. As you can see, we would rather you lot not rip each other to pieces quite yet. We need as many of you alive as possible for the proper impact.”

Kohiri lowered her head and bristled her limbs. This female was the enemy.

The female continued, “The good news for you is that you are highly resistant to most poisons. Had we put enough tranquilliser in the air to knock you out, it would have killed the others. So, you get to walk under your own volition.”

Kohiri watched the form of Vhila with a side-eye until she spotted the slight movement in his chest as he breathed. She turned back to the female.

The female continued her casual approach, “The bad news is, should you choose not to comply, we still have ways of removing your volition. You will find these ways rather painful, so I suggest you comply.”

Kohiri raised her head, “The others- are they my friends?”

The female paused, “Would you believe my answer?”

As the female assisted the male in throwing Alehkai and Saybet over his back, Kohiri asked, “Are you a friend?”

The female paused again, not facing Kohiri, and repeated, “Would you believe my answer?”

“Not if it is ‘yes’.”

The female laughed, “I had heard you tended to be sassy.”

“What do you know of me?”

“More than I would rather you know.”

The female dragged Shierva while the male carried Alehkai and Saybet. Kohiri crouched to Vhila and lifted him over her back before the female could approach. She couldn’t quite tell if she was intending to be helpful, or wanted to protect Vhila from these two- and if the latter, why she cared.

The three moved silently down the corridors and down several flights of stairs until they arrived at another great room, this one containing a row of cushioned chairs, a mat, a long table lined with plates of berries, glasses and pitchers, and bowls with scraps of meat. The two newcomers deposited their prisoners on the various chairs. Kohiri hesitated to drop Vhila, but his weight was straining her still weak muscles. She finally conceded, and deposited him beside Shierva.

She looked to the female, and the female responded with a gesture at the mat. Kohiri approached the mat cautiously, prodding it with a forehoof, before resting on it.

“This is meant for me?”

The female did not look at her, “Unless you would prefer a bipedal seat. I figured that would be more comfortable.”

“Why would you comfort me?”

The female took one of the seats and helped herself to a drink, placing her gas mask on the table before her. She mused, “Tea, food, whichever you prefer.”

Kohiri turned her head from the table to watch the male. He was quietly pacing the room.

After a silent minute of Kohiri’s refusal to interact with the table, the female laughed, “Starve yourself, for all I care. Once it incapacitates you, we can just hook you back up to that machine to fill you with nutrients, and then we can try again once you have swallowed your pride.”

Kohiri turned back to eye the female with a glare. Her stomach churned excitedly for the chance at solid food that it had been denied a long time.

The female continued, “It is not poisoned- is that your worry? Even if it was, as I told you, you are resistant to most poisons.” She enunciated by popping a dark berry into her mouth.

Kohiri hesitated, before taking a sip of the glass before her. The beverage was sweet and warm, and soothed her strained throat and churning stomach.

The female gestured toward it, “Your favourite tea, if you remember. I apologise that it is not still hot.”

Kohiri snapped, “You provide me comfort and pleasures, yet you torture me?”

The female rested back in her seat, “Why do you think I tortured you?”

“I know not my past life, but those dreams were not mine. If I saw those things every time I closed my eyes, I would have ceased closing them long ago and succumbed to the madness.”

The female’s expression darkened, “For your sake, you better hope that is not the case, because those dreams will not be leaving you for a very long time, if ever.”

Vhila stirred in his sleep, but Alehkai was the first to wake. The others followed slowly, each with eyes of confusion and exhaustion.

Saybet, not yet fully awake, attempted to lunge at the female captor, but succeeded only at collapsing from the chair and smacking her face into the table. The female chuckled, “It will take longer to return to your senses if you waste your energy.”

Saybet muttered something presumably intended to be witty, but was incomprehensible.

The female rose from the table and gingerly placed her glass down. The male approached, continuing his slow pace now in grabbing distance of the prisoners.

The female folded her hands behind her back, “You all have lived rich, full lives once before. You were known, you wielded power immeasurable, you were near rulers of the world.” She stopped, glaring down each prisoner in turn as she enunciated her next sentence, “You were monsters.”

The five prisoners looked between each other as the female continued, “Your bloodthirst was unmatched. The creativity you brought to destruction and desolation will fill the nightmares of generations to come. You as a group under one leader were a near unstoppable and devastating force.”

Kohiri’s voice shook as she spoke, “Who among us… was this leader?”

The female’s responding laugh was anything but humoured, “She does not stand among you. The greatest of our warriors challenged her to a final battle and saved us from her tyranny. And, you should be grateful.”

Alehkai’s talons dug into the armrest of his chair, “Grateful?”

“Do you recall your final memories before your capture?” The female did not face him as she mused wistfully, “By the time we caught you and started our work in your minds, the trail of horror and depression had already taken foot.” She closed her eyes, “She betrayed you. You were her finest warriors and creators, her highest ranked among her kind. You were the ones she trusted the most and-” she eyed Kohiri, “the ones she trusted the least. This meant that you also stood as… competition. Had we not stepped in and captured you, she would have killed you, and you saw this. The last words on all of your tongues as you succumbed to the comas in which we cast you were words of spite or sorrow in her name. Perhaps our capture of you was an exceptional pity, a mercy, or perhaps not.”

Shierva muttered softly, “Perhaps not.”

This time, the female’s laugh was humoured, “Fear not. You wasted much of your former lives as monsters, but we give you a second chance. Through us, you change from creatures of evil to beacons of hope.”

Kohiri snapped, “Why torture your beacons of hope?”

“The treatment,” the female beamed, “is the tool from which the beacon is formed. ‘Dream Therapy’, we call it- the latest technology we have. Once, you were known as noble, wise, powerful, and ever-dangerous. Now, you have lost everything. Those who consider doing as you have done will look upon the once-monstrous rulers and see pitiful beasts squabbling in the dirt, forever trapped in their quickly failing minds. The innocents will see you and see hope for a better future. The evil will see you and see their hope for power dashed. Alehkai, Saybet, Vhila, Shierva, and Kohiri- you five will herald a new world of order and faith in the Good and Just.”

She looked over each of the five in turn. Kohiri vowed to herself that one day, she will find the home from whence she came and adorn its entrance with this female’s head.

If the female sensed the animosity, she paid no mind. She turned to the opposing doorway at the end of the room, followed by the male. Before she left, she paused, “A door in the west wing has been opened to the outside world. My coworkers and I will supply this place with food, and have security in place to keep any from entering or you all from tearing each other’s throats out while you are still in this facility and unobserved by the outside world. You may stay here as long as you would like, and when you choose to leave, you will not return unless you fall back in your old ways- and that means any of you. One drops to tyranny, and you all find yourselves in Dream Therapy for another few decades. Play well, and you will instead be left alone, and be free to roam the wild as free beasts.”

Shierva stood sharply, “I am a civilised being.”

The female continued her leave, musing over her shoulder, “We shall see what civilization thinks about that.”

#original character #fanfiction #novel #writing #feedback welcome

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Makuta_Servaela's Ramblings