Kopaka had never been in a city so silent. It was the first thing he noticed as they made their way into the maze of narrow streets. To see the brightly-lit and clustered-together urban sprawl but not hear it felt positively unsettling. All of the Toa's instincts told him that this place was meant to be alive - to be filled with Matoran going about their daily business, or idly discussing the most recent Kohlii scores, perhaps.
But instead, the city was as barren as the stone that it had been carved from. So far, at least, the duo hadn't encountered any signs of life. As they passed yet another empty house, its doorway an unopenable indentation in the wall, Pohatu paused with a puzzled expression.
"Hold on," the Toa of Stone muttered, leaning closer to the building. "This is... wrong. Broken." Those ominous words hung in the air as Pohatu inspected the rock in an innate way Kopaka could never hope to match.
I've got a feeling that a lot of things are wrong with this cavern, Kopaka thought as he waited for his ally to finish. The white-armored Toa took the chance to glance behind them. Being surrounded by the carved buildings on all sides made him feel unsettled and boxed-in, and as Kopaka looked down the smooth, lifeless street, he couldn't help but make sure his shield was firmly fastened to his forearm.
Pohatu interrupted Kopaka's grim mood with a sudden shout. "Aha!" he exclaimed, spinning in a burst of excitement to look at his frosty counterpart. "It's like I thought. Whatever this city place is, it isn't the first thing that this cavern held." The Toa of Stone pointed at some minute flaw in the rock as he continued. "There are signs of something else, hidden all over the carvings. You can see traces of ancient..."
Pohatu's words faded into the background as Kopaka considered the implications. So this city was built from something already in the cavern, he reasoned. Whatever it was, it's been completely replaced – there's no way to tell now. But the more important question is this: Does the Turaga's tablet belong to this city or to whatever came before? It seemed that the more the two Toa discovered, the less they knew.
"...the markings, but you're not even listening to me, are you?" Pohatu finished with a small grin. "Sorry to go on like that. It's just that I've never seen something so large and yet so precise." Sheepishly scratching behind his head, the Toa of Stone gestured to the massive sprawl around them. "You have to admit that it's pretty impressive."
"...Very," Kopaka tersely replied after a moment of silence. "We should move forward. We're no closer to finding the tablet than we were a few minutes ago." Secretly, the Toa of Ice didn't have high hopes for discovering their goal within the labyrinthine underground city, but what else could they do except keep searching?
"I suppose you're right," Pohatu said, stretching his arms overhead and lazily continuing down the narrow road. "After all, if we don't hurry, the tablet might hear us coming and flee, eh?" The brown-armored Toa rounded a nearby corner, and his quiet chuckling followed him.
Frowning, Kopaka pushed himself to catch up. The duo had entered what felt like a residential district, its buildings multi-storied stacks of identical rooms. Here, the stone path was tighter, only wide enough for one Toa to stand comfortably. It looked as intricate as ever, right down to carved piles of "refuse" that littered the corners.
Who – or what – would build something like this? Glancing over to where Pohatu had wandered, the Toa of Ice made his way through the alley-like path. The stone around him felt so much like a city that Kopaka had to keep reminding himself that they weren't weaving through the narrow streets of Po-Koro, but instead underground in a remote cave. The illusion was thorough; all of the carvings suggested that beings truly lived here, from the way doorhinges looked more worn than the rest of the structures to the collections of scuff-marks near entrances and exits.
A shout from Pohatu spurred Kopaka onward. "I found something!" There was an undertone of excitement in the Toa of Stone's voice, and its cause became apparent the instant Kopaka rounded the next corner.
A Matoran stood in the middle of the path.
That's what Kopaka thought at first, anyway. Blinking, the Toa realized his mistake a second later. It wasn't a Matoran that he saw standing there, frozen in mid-step on his way between two plain doorways. It was a statue of a Matoran, and it was more detailed than any Kopaka had ever seen. Every tiny facet of the small biomechanical being's body was present. The longer he looked at it, the more impressed he became.
"By Mata Nui," Pohatu whispered reverently, "it's... masterful."
Kopaka had to agree with his ally. Gazing upon the statue felt like looking at a Matoran who'd been magically turned into stone. The sculptor had neglected nothing, perfectly rounding out the shoulder joints, finely winnowing crevasses between the fingers – even capturing the bored expression Matoran tended to have as they set out for the day. The Toa of Ice half-expected the carving to let out a yawn and continue going about its business, ridiculous as the thought was.
Pohatu stepped forward and gave the figure a tentative jab. A dull *thunk* of metal on stone rang out, echoing through the maze-like passageways, but it elicited nothing from the stony-faced carving. The figure merely stood there stoically, the way it must have remained for countless years. It was unsettling, Kopaka mused, for something so lifelike to be so deathly still.
"What do you think it means?" Pohatu's sudden question shattered the ice Toa's pensive mood. Perhaps it came hand in hand with being the protector of Po-Wahi, an entire land of stone, but Kopaka's ally didn't seem much bothered by their new discovery. "After all... you'd have to be a little crazy to make something like this. Wouldn't you?"
Without a good answer, Kopaka kept quiet. He couldn't figure it out, either. There certainly wasn't anything like these underground spires on the surface of Mata Nui – of that, the Toa of Ice was certain. Perhaps it doesn't matter what this place means, Kopaka reasoned. Wasting time in thought here could only be bad, and the idea of lingering struck him as unpleasant. With a horde of Nui-Rama to the rear and uncertainty surrounding them, their best bet would be to keep moving.
He set out again in silence, and Pohatu trailed along after a wordless shrug. The glow of Kopaka's sword-light wasn't needed here, with dim radiance coming from the lightstones speckled across the buildings, but he kept his elemental power at the ready, just in case. As the two Toa moved onward, their surroundings started to broaden again; the streets grew wider and the structures spaced further apart.
They ran into the second Matoran statue within minutes. Rounding the corner of a warehouse-like building, this stone figure held some sort of carving tool – a chisel, perhaps, or an awl – and carried a satchel over one arm. It seemed just as detailed as the first, and Kopaka inspected it with a frown. "Another one," he muttered as he peered at the gear the statue bore. "It seems like a sculptor."
"A sculpture of a sculptor," Pohatu replied, circling around and scuffing at the rock with one foot. "Very artistic. The Turaga would love it." Narrowing his eyes, the brown-armored Toa leaned a little closer. "It does strike me as a Po-Matoran sort of statue," he added after a moment of thought. "It has that... rugged charm to it, you know?"
...Kopaka made an irritated noise in his throat and deigned not to reply further. Still, Pohatu's off-hand comment had kindled a spark in the Toa of Ice's mind. Now that it'd been mentioned, he couldn't help but realize that everything here really did remind him of Po-Koro. The paths had that same meandering disorder to them, and the architecture, with its spires and carved arches, seemed just as self-monumental as the buildings in Pohatu's homeland. "Pohatu," he said with crisp suddenness, "do you think this place is connected to Po-Koro somehow?"
The levity faded from Pohatu's eyes as he seriously considered it. "Maybe," the Toa of Stone answered. "It's different, though. This seems so much more crowded, so... urban. It would take years of growth for Po-Koro to become a city of this size." Shaking his head, Pohatu pointed at the central spire of the chamber. "We won't have anything that big for ages. Maybe this is all some sort of... plan?"
If it is a plan, it's not a very practical one, Kopaka thought as he, too, turned to gaze at the massive stone column. "We should visit that spire," the Toa of Ice decided aloud. From the very center, they'd have a vantage point of the rest of the cavern, and it seemed as good a place as any for their mysterious tablet to be housed.
"Sure," Pohatu started to reply, but his counterpart had already set out into the maze of paths once again. Sighing with exasperation, the Toa of Stone gathered his focus and followed after Kopaka. His icy ally had admirable dedication, but they were deep in the city now, in the heart of the cavern. Pohatu couldn't shake the feeling that they wouldn't like what they found in that tower.
Resurrected, I guess. It seemed a shame to let this story die.