Early Sunsets

Early Sunsets: Iaja's Tale is the first book of the Early Sunsets Arc by BZPower and C.I.R.C.L.E. member Cap'n K.

Chapter One: Fog of War
Lift, swing, hack.

Lift, swing, hack.

Lift, swing, hack.

The monotonous noise filled the cavern with a thousand clinks and grunts as thousands of protodermic picks swung and collided with the rock wall. Iaja liked to make up songs to go with the rhythmic beating, often nonsensical. Today he was all out of words, but that didn't stop him from humming loudly and tunelessly.

Lift, swing, hack.

Lift, swing, hack.

Lift, swing, hack.

Clunk.

Iaja paused, and observed the wall closely, brushing it with his fingers. Had he found ore? Or was it just hard sediment? He brought his pick down on the wall again.

Clunk.

It had to be ore.

Iaja set down his pick and hefted his extractor chisel up, then aimed it at the wall. It made a loud, rapid thumping noise as he revved it up, making many Matoran pause in their work to look in Iaja’s direction.

The noise was amplified as he touched the hydraulic chisel to the edge of where he guessed the ore began, and started to chip away at the wall. His fingers began itching from gripping the chisel so hard; the chisel cut the solid rock with excellent precision, but at the price of wearing out your hands.

Soon it was over.

Iaja breathed a sigh of relief as he let the extractor chisel fall to the ground, and sat in exhaustion for a few moments.

“Cart, please!” Iaja shouted over the noise of the picks hitting solid rock. When another Fe-Matoran approached with a shallow cart, Iaja eased the heavy crystalline rock from the wall and let it fall. It landed in the center of the cart’s platform with a dull thud.

Iaja hefted the cart's handle from the ground and began to heave the it through the tunnels of the Fe-Koro mines, maneuvering around the muscular Matoran who hacked away at the rock walls, not caring for the small Matoran as he tried to pull around the large chunk of ore and avoid the living, armored obstacles.

When Iaja was out of their fields of view, he decided to take a break from pulling the heavy stone and leaned against the wall. When he was positive that nobody would look around the corner, he fell to the ground in fatigue. Mining was definitely not the job for this puny Matoran, but it was the only job left for a Fe-Matoran that wouldn’t end with him causing some sort of disaster.

Muka Bird farming? No, Iaja caused a rockslide.

Canoe building? Surely not, all of Iaja’s boats had holes hidden in them somewhere or other.

Entertainment? Not a chance, Iaja was far too clumsy.

So he was stuck mining, a job in which he couldn’t possibly kill any livestock, sink any boats, or ruin anyone’s fun.

When he figured he should stop lying around, Iaja stood up, his back still pressed against the wall. That's when he heard a low, scraping sound. Almost as if... the wall was hollow. Is there another tunnel or a room on the other side of the wall? Iaja wondered.

He removed his miniature pick from his tool belt and lightly tapped the wall. The movement produced a faint echo. Hesitantly, Iaja swung the pick back and struck the wall. A few rocks fell out, creating a hole that led to dark oblivion beyond. There was definitely no Matoran-made tunnel on the other side... he had discovered some sort of cave. Letting his curiosity get the better of him, Iaja wriggled through the gap; he was just small enough to get through. When he made it to the other side, his feet landed solidly on the ground. Except for the dim light beyond the hole that he had made, Iaja could not see anything in the cave, not even the walls or floor, so he couldn’t tell how big it was.

Iaja fumbled in his tool belt until he found a small, leather pouch and produced from it a lightstone. Now the cavern glowed with a dim, greenish light, and Iaja could see that the cave was only about two meters in both directions, shaped like a circle. It was too clean-cut... maybe he had been wrong about it being a natural cave? But then why was it hidden, and why was it so small? On the wall opposite him, text was etched meticulously into the stone. He couldn’t read the insides of the small hexagonal glyphs from where he stood, so Iaja cautiously crept to the other side of the room and held his lightstone to the wall. The carving read:

“SECTOR 13.”

“Sector 13”? Iaja thought perplexedly.

His gaze swept the walls of the cavern until he realized there was nothing else to see. He crawled back through the hole and into the light and relatively fresh air of the tunnel. Thankfully, no Matoran had noticed the abandoned cart or the hole in the wall. Iaja balanced some of the rocks that had fallen out of the wall on the edge of the gap, but most of them fell out. After a minute, he managed to arrange them in such a manner that only a finger-sized hole was still visible.

Iaja rubbed his hands together and began to pull his cart again. When he finally arrived, out of breath, at Turaga Korym’s chambers, he knocked on the wooden door.

“Come in,” came the cool voice of the Turaga.

Iaja opened the door, lugging the cart behind him. “I think I’ve found some ore,” he said.

The Turaga of Earth observed the rock closely from the table where he sat. Finally, he said, “Come over here. Close the door, and leave the cart.”

Iaja cautiously closed the door and sauntered over to the Turaga’s table.

“Have a seat,” said Turaga Korym calmly.

Iaja obeyed, taking a seat in the low chair across from the Turaga. Iaja observed the table: round, but covered in hexagons of black and white, like Matoran letters but with no marks on their insides. There were stones of black, white, tan, and dark brown of various sizes scattered across the table.

“Iaja, correct?” said Turaga Korym.

“You know me?” questioned Iaja politely.

“Who doesn’t?” chuckled the Turaga. “Tell me, Iaja, have you ever heard of ‘Fog of War’?”

“No, sir,” said Iaja in confusion, distracted as he wondered if his clumsiness was really that infamous.

“It’s a game,” stated the Turaga, as calm as ever.

“A game? And is this…?” Iaja said, gesturing to the patterned table.

“That’s right, Matoran,” said the Turaga. “Would you like to try your skills at it?”

“Oh, I’m not very good at games…” began Iaja.

“But this is a game of strategy,” said Korym, “not like most Matoran games of luck and chance or athletic abilities. I insist. It will be like a justified break.” A small grin appeared on the Turaga’s face, and was mirrored on Iaja’s.

“Well, how do you play?” Iaja asked.

“It’s simple,” began Korym. “It’s a war simulator. But you never know everything that’s going on. That’s why you have to use your brain.” Korym gave a light tap to the top of Iaja’s mask. “Now you see, these pieces represent soldiers. The black and white ones are warriors, and the brown and tan ones are scouts. The warriors can capture other pieces, but the scouts can move up to three spaces in a turn.”

Turaga Korym arranged the pieces in a pattern: On Iaja’s side, he made a small pattern with the black and brown pieces, and the same pattern on his own side with the white and tan ones.

“Now you see, you can move the warriors to any adjoining space, as long as they’re not on top of any of your own pieces.” Turaga Korym lifted a white piece and moved it one space forwards.

“You can move a scout one, two, or three spaces, as long as you don’t land on another piece. You can jump them over other pieces, though. The object of the game is to have full awareness of the battlefield. You must place a scout here,” he said, pointing to a green hexagon in front of him, “here, here, and here.” He indicated blue, yellow, and red hexagons, respectively, on each extreme of the board. “Your warrior can land on an opponent’s piece. When you do so, it’s called a “capture.” You can then remove your opponent’s piece from the board.

“If an opponent manages to capture all but four of your pieces, you can reclaim a piece—either warrior or scout—by sacrificing a turn. If all of your pieces are captured, you automatically lose the match. And one more thing—you can use a turn to replace a scout with a captured warrior, or a warrior with a captured pawn, if you like. Any questions?”

Iaja looked at the board. Both he and the Turaga had six warriors and six scouts, twelve pieces total. In the extreme of the board nearest to him, there was a red hexagon. That would probably be the easiest extreme to protect, and to gain control of.

“Yes, Turaga. Can you capture a piece if it’s on an extreme?”

“Yes, that is allowed, so be sure to protect your units on the extremes. Actually… such an occurrence is fairly common.”

“Okay,” said Iaja, “I think it make sense.”

“Good,” chuckled the Turaga, his eyes lighting delightedly.

The game began.