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This path was an arduous one on a good day, and today was not one of those.
Axonn paused and shouldered his axe, his chest heaving with powerful breaths. He scanned the surroundings. This had been a mighty jungle once. Now, it was a mess of fallen trees and rockslides.
Even with his great strength and the might of his fearsome axe, this journey was pushing him to his limits.
He flicked his eyes backwards for just a moment, to ensure his partner was still there. He was lagging far behind, but still refused to acknowledge how much his shoulder wound was slowing him down. And he hated it when Axonn fretted over him.
“We can come back tomorrow,” Axonn said. “There’s no nee—”
“Ax,” was all Brutaka said.
Axonn sat down on a boulder, groaning as his old joints creaked in protest.
“Well, you may be alright, but I need to rest,” said Axonn.
Brutaka sighed, bouncing anxiously on the balls of his feet. Axonn could see it in his eyes, he was debating whether or not to take the out.
Finally, Brutaka sat down beside him, their thighs brushing, and Axonn breathed a sigh of relief.
The silence should have been peaceful, but it was wrong. Neither of them dared comment on it, but the air should have been filled with the twitter of birds and the buzzing of insects.
The Rahi, so it seemed, were reeling from what they had endured just like the Matoran were.
Brutaka didn’t even let himself rest for a minute. He hopped up and started pacing in an anxious circle, his good arm wrapping around his chest to cradle his torn shoulder.
Axonn pushed himself ponderously to his feet and started back down the trail. If Brutaka was going to be this antsy, they might as well keep going.
Fallen foliage and any other debris that blocked the path fell before Axonn’s axe and Brutaka’s blade. Brutaka’s Olmak could take them straight to their destination, but they needed to clear this trail so it was safe for the Matoran.
Safer. Nothing felt safe anymore, even for beings like them.
Ahead, the path sloped upwards into a hill that Axonn remembered. He knew approximately where they were now, but Brutaka was the one with the head for directions.
“About five kio to Ba-Koro?” Axonn asked.
Brutaka glanced at the sky, still gripping his sore arm. “Six point three five two,” he said.
Axonn’s laugh rang out across the broken landscape. “You’ve got to teach me your trick.”
A gleam of mirth passed across Brutaka’s eyes, lightening his stormy countenance. It was gone far too soon.
“No trick to it, I’m afraid,” he boomed. “Just my superior intellect.”
“And if your head swells any bigger, we can use it as a balloon and float to Ba-Koro.”
They reached the summit of the hill, and whatever barb Brutaka was about to shoot back choked off in his throat.
More of the same ravaged jungle terrain stretched out before them. Lazy tendrils of smoke spiraled into the sky from recently-extinguished wildfires. Axonn remembered this vantage. They should be able to see Ba-Koro from here.
But where the village had once stood was an ocean.
Their path led down to the water’s edge, where it abruptly cut off in a jagged tangle of torn stone. The current lapped against the gash, carrying timber and boulders out to sea. The detritus littered the water like little boats, spinning and bobbing in the tide.
The water itself was clear and still. Axonn saw whitecaps cresting on the horizon, but they broke long before they reached the mangled shore. Seabirds fluttered in a cloudless sky.
Axonn dropped to one knee in the stony dirt, his axe clattering to the ground beside him. They had expected to find Ba-Koro damaged, in need of aid. But they had never imagined…
Never.
Axonn could no longer look at it.
Beside him, Brutaka could have been a statue were it not for his claws tapping nervously on the hilt of his sword. Unlike his brother, he did not look away, he did not blink. His back was straight, his orange, calculating eyes fixed on their new horizon.
“Ah,” Brutaka finally said. “I see.”
“A flood?” Axonn asked. His voice usually rumbled, now it felt thin and useless.
“Flood?” Brutaka let out one sharp laugh that echoed out over the waters. “Open your eyes, Ax! This was an apocalypse!”
“I… I don’t understand.”
“You do,” Brutaka said.
It was just two short words, but Brutaka’s tone set off every single alarm bell in Axonn’s head. He’d known Brutaka for thousands of years. Not once had his voice been completely devoid of any emotion.
Not until now.
He scrambled to his feet and spun to face his brother, but Brutaka was already hiking back down the hill, his steps rigid.
“Bru, wait,” Axonn called after him, but Brutaka opened a wispy, translucent portal before him, and stepped through it. The portal collapsed into nothing, leaving Axonn alone.
The hike back to the outskirts of the Matoran settlement took Axonn until nightfall. By the time he arrived, there was a mound of dirt as tall as Brutaka himself off to the side of the trail, and a hole in the ground beside it. Axonn stepped towards it, the rhythmic scrape of metal against earth growing louder.
Axonn stood at the edge of the hole and peered down into it. Inside, Brutaka hacked at the soil with his blade, panting with exertion. His weapon made a poor shovel, but Axonn didn’t think there was a spade built that could withstand Brutaka’s strength.
Belatedly, Brutaka sensed Axonn’s presence and paused his work, his breathing slowly steadying. He still didn’t turn to look up at Axonn.
“Their well ran foul,” Brutaka said. His voice was a soft growl. “I could smell it. Figured I’d dig them a new one.”
The tension left Axonn’s shoulders. At least he hadn’t just walked in on his brother digging his own grave. Axonn swallowed hard and searched for the right words.
“Good work,” he said.
Brutaka sniffed and wiped the dirt from his brow with his forearm.
“No,” he said. “No. The whole aquifer’s tainted, most likely. All it takes is one crack in the seabed for pollutants to leech in. There’s… nothing to do here.”
“Bru–” Axonn began.
“It’s a simple equation,” Brutaka cut in, his words pouring out in little quick bursts between trembling breaths. “No force in the cosmos could have dropped a whole ocean of water on us in one day. Ergo, it wasn’t the ocean that moved… It was us. Ba-Koro didn’t go anywhere. We went somewhere.”
“No. Impossible,” Axonn said, even as he knew that it was the only possibility. Brutaka was the scholar. And Axonn’s Rode did not stir at Brutaka’s words.
“Impossible,” Brutaka echoed.
Silence. And then:
“I think I’m done, Ax.”
Axonn said nothing. Brutaka stared at the wall of dirt before him.
“I want to go home.”
Brutaka said it so quietly that Axonn could hardly hear him. But the words tore a ragged, bleeding hole in Axonn’s heartlight.
Without hesitating, he hopped into the hole, the ground cracking beneath his feet where they thudded down. He didn’t reach out to touch his brother’s shoulder, not yet. He stood there beside Brutaka, watching him sway and breathe heavily, teetering on the verge of something. Axonn wasn’t sure what.
“Do you remember your home?” Brutaka asked.
Axonn cast his thoughts back across centuries of blood and war, and found, to his shame, that his earliest memory was pinning some snarling warlord to the ground with the blade of his axe, while his castle burned behind him.
“No,” Axonn said.
“Neither do I,” Brutaka said. “But I want to go home.”
Just look at me, Bru. Please.
“You know we can’t, Brutaka,” Axonn said, as gently as he could. “This is where we belong now. We have a duty to the Great Spirit.”
Brutaka whirled to face him with a fury so intense that Axonn’s hand flew to his axe before he could stop himself. Brutaka’s eyes swirled with a cold, calculating anger. The kind of anger that would drive a being to take a Rahi apart piece by piece, not smash it to bits.
“And what about his duty to us?” Brutaka snapped. “He abandoned us!”
“Mata Nui will never abandon us,” Axonn insisted, “I am certain.”
In response, his Mask of Truth vibrated, rattling against his face.
Falsehood detected. It frightened Axonn how often his mask knew he was lying before he did.
Brutaka scoffed, and swept his arms wide, indicating the devastated landscape.
“Then what do you call this? He left us here to die!”
“It… It must have been some kind of attack,” Axonn floundered for something to explain this. “The Great Spirit was injured. But he will return to save us.”
“And we’re just supposed to take that on faith?”
Brutaka grabbed Axonn’s forearm, clinging to it as tight as he could. Axonn wasn’t sure who was supporting who.
“We gave everything for this,” Brutaka whispered. “We gave–”
Axonn wrapped his arms around Brutaka and pulled him into a hug.
Something changed in Brutaka, with his head buried in Axonn’s chest. Perhaps with his face hidden from the world, he no longer feared letting his weakness be seen. He trembled in Axonn’s arms, his quiet sobs muffled against the plates of his brother’s armor.
“Faith is all that any of us have,” Axonn said, pulling Brutaka closer. “I don’t know what has happened to the Great Spirit or to our world. I don’t know if it can ever be repaired. But I know that he gave me life and breath and strength so I can do everything in my power to protect those who need it. He gave you those gifts too. I know it’s hard to see a path forward. But stand beside me. I can’t do it without you. My brother.”
“How?” Brutaka asked, staring up at Axonn with questioning eyes. “How can you be so sure that Mata Nui does care? That he hasn’t forgotten us?”
“Because he sent you to me.”
Brutaka scoffed in disbelief, his expression softening. “You may be right,” he said.
Their eyes met for a moment.
“After all, you’d have died centuries ago if it wasn’t for me watching your back,” Brutaka said with a little smirk.
Axonn rolled his eyes and let go. “Get out of the hole.”
“Are you going to give me a hand? Or do you expect me to use my swollen head to float us out?”
They leaned on each other as they climbed out of the well Brutaka had dug. Next stop was their hut. Axonn was going to see what he could do to treat Brutaka’s arm, and this time, he would knock him out if he resisted.
“Bru… Are you ok?”
Brutaka paused and shook his head once. “No. I am not.”
“Neither am I,” Axonn confessed. “But I have you.”
“And I have you.”
For now, that was all they needed.