Never Surrender

.....An onlooker seeing Nidhiki’s face beneath his mask, one would have been shocked. The normally emotionless face was twisted by emotion. Tears trickled out from under his Kanohi, while his eyes burned with both anger, grief, and lost.

.....The source of this startling display was currently being born towards him on a ornate slab of stone, carried by four of his fellow Toa Mangai.

.....He tried unsuccessfully to calm down again; in fact, his torment increased as the body of Naho, the Toa Mangai of water was slowly born past him. Slowly the body was lowered, and the four bearers faded into the circle of toa.




.....Lhikan, toa of fire, and leader of the Toa Mangai, stepped forwards. Like everyone there, he was quiet, subdued, and grief-filled. His gold-armored hands slowly reached up, lifting his ornate Hau, and kneeling, placing his kanohi at his right knee. Behind and around him, his fellow toa did the same.
.....Nidhiki’s face was even more visible as this happened, and Lhikan gave him a sympathetic smile for a moment, before turning back to the Task at hand.




.....Again, Nidhiki’s emotions threatened to overwhelm him.
.....’ten months. Ten months of heck,’ he thought bitterly. In his mind’s eye the face of those he had known and loved... And lost. There were dozens. Every one he could vividly remember; their bloodied bodies being carried in. All the same; slain by Dark Hunters. The grief in his eyes began to fade, those orbs now filled with hate.
.....'To Karz with them. To Karz with those Piraka,’[/i] his mind cursed wildly, and the trickle of tears became a torrent. He was still struggling to recover some form of rational thought, and asked himself sharply ’you’ve been through much worse than this. Why haven’t felt this before?’ The answer came sharply in the form of the fallen toa in front of him. One of his dearest friends, she would never again move, never again breath. It was all he could do to keep himself from snatching his scythe and going on a city wide Dark Hunter hunt.




.....Almost unnoticed by him, the next section of the burial began. Lhikan slowly stood again. His arms reached out, clawing at something out of reach. His mouth opened, and Nidhiki was jolted back to the present by the wild, keening song of grief. He too got to his feet, and followed by the rest of the toa, joined in the song.
.....Slowly, the room began to brighten. Color grew in the hands of each toa, energy slowly drifting towards the still form of Naho. In the multihued brilliance that filled the room, Nidhiki’s mind was still far away. Memories of his past flooded back. Growing up as a Matoran of the Tren Krom peninsula, he had learned to survive at an early age; the local Makuta, Gorast enjoyed using their home as a hunting ground, and a place to pick up plenty of lab rats; namely Nidhiki and his fellow villagers. Nidhiki learned stealth almost as soon as he could speak. Striking from the shadows was the only way to survive. But for all that, their population still dwindled as they fell, one by one. When Nidhiki had become a Toa, he had been overjoyed, and had started to go on the offensive, slaughtering Rahkshi, and Visorak by the dozen.
.....It had been a false victory however, and after the initial surprise, Gorast had simply come out herself. The villagers had been scattered, those not captured or killed. The village itself was never used again; those Matoran left had fled to other parts of the northern continent, or left for a different island.
.....Now totally unnoticed by him, the colors had settled around the body of Naho. Slowly they dimmed, fading away to reveal a prism of crystal covering the fallen toa. Right over her heartlight, on the outside of the crystal, a perfectly formed Toa Seal was stamped.


.....Dusk was fading into night by the time Nidhiki had managed to fix his emotions.
.....Fix his emotions? No. Direct them would have been a better term.
.....Armed with nothing but a few daggers, his scythe, and his skill, Nidhiki was stalking a Dark Hunter. The mercenary was slipping – rather noisily to Nidhiki’s expert hearing – from one patch of Shadow to another, and was totally unaware of the half mad toa behind him.
.....Activating his Volitak, Nidhiki silently landed on the pavement, scythe in hand. Hefting it like a javelin, he threw it end over end, guiding it with his air power.
.....The Dark Hunter never knew what hit him; one moment he was sneaking along, the next moment, something heavy slamming into his back, there was a dull pain. His last memory was of a foot of Nidhiki’s scythe emerging from his heartlight. Nidhiki contemptuously deactivated his mask, and wrenched his scythe out of the body. He quickly wiped off the pole and blade – while it looked cool and sinister to leave an enemy’s blood on your blade, Nidhiki had found it also left a nice trail of dripping blood. Satisfaction filled him. A few more kills like this, and he might be back to normal...



.....It was almost midnight by the time Nidhiki returned to the coliseum. He was guessing that search parties would have been sent out to look for him in about an hour or so.
.....Thanks to him, a half dozen Dark Hunters would never see Metru Nui again. Their bodies were sprawled in crumpled heaps over different parts of the city. For once, it was the Dark Hunters who would be dragging the bodies of their own back with the same report; death by ambush.
.....Nidhiki’s madness had gone, and was replaced by a numbing emptiness. He was dimly aware that he had broken the Toa Code repeatedly, but like the age old saying, he didn’t give a karz. All that mattered was the fact that he had avenged Naho. He winced at the name; it brought back a torrent of painful memories.
.....’Almost a year... How many more will be sent to their graves, in this lesson, this lesson ignored. Is there even a point to this madness?’ As usual, his questions were never answered.
.....As he took off his outer armor, and collapsed wearily onto his bed, he murmured again.
.....”Who can make this stop, make this end? Ten months... I’m almost pushed to the ledge.”
.....But yet again, nothing but silence answered him.
.....And tears coursed down his cheeks, even as he fell into a restless slumber.

Accepted.

One thing to remember; this is actually only a revised version of the original story, Sometimes. About the only thing I did here was improve the start, and rewrite the part after the funeral.

One of my earlier works, probably wrote it about Oct or somewhere around there.

I have to agree with Skarloth in that the descriptions are rushed. You focused mainly on Nidhiki's feelings and avoided the others'. It would have been interesting to see how others' behaviors influenced him to exact revenge on the Dark Hunters; after all, no man (or Toa) is an island.

This could have easily been twice the length. Making the funeral the main idea of the story would've made it more sorrowful, methinks. As it was, it was kind of skipped over, and then you focused equally on Nidhiki's killing Dark Hunters. But that's more of a nitpick and less of an actual mistake. Another nitpick: The scene at the end where Nidhiki goes to bend isn't really necessary.

One last thing: I noticed a distinct lack of metaphors and imagery. D:

So, yeah, it's an okay story, but needs some jazzing up.

Metaphors and imagery are usually absent from my stories.