Mata Nui Comics
2003 - BIONICLE Comic 13: Rise of the Rahkshi
Adapted by Michael Larson. Edited by Jeff Douglas.
Tahu wobbled uneasily on his magma swords, struggling to master an act he usually took for granted: surfing.
Water, it turned out, moved much faster than molten rock and mineral, and was proving to be far more slippery. If it weren’t for Gali controlling the tidal wave they were riding, he would have slipped right off the board a dozen times already.
As he regained his balance, he spotted three colored dots moving along the sandy Po-Wahi ridges.
“You were right—the Rahkshi were headed for Po-Koro,” Gali murmured.
“They will go no further,” the Toa of Fire declared. “We will stop them now!”
Tahu jumped off of the wave and landed on a rock spire. “These creatures will not stop the coming of the Seventh Toa—this I swear! We will send them scurrying back to Makuta, and—”
The ground shifted beneath the Toa of Fire’s board. Tahu looked down just in time to see it disintegrate and crumble into pebbles, and before he could escape, he was banging and clattering his way down the mountain. The Toa landed hard, groaning painfully.
He looked up, even as a dark shadow blotted out the sun. The Lerahk towered over him, raising its staff high. The Rahkshi brought its staff down hard, splitting the ground slightly and narrowly missing Tahu. As the Rahkshi yanked its staff from the earth, Tahu scrambled to his feet.
“Close, monster…but your aim is as poor as your breath, it seems,” he muttered.
Not far away, Gali brought her wave crashing down, swamping the ground and knocking the Panrahk from its feet. Only the Guurahk remained upright, which now advanced on her.
What are you, creature? she thought to herself. The very sight of it chilled her soul as nothing had since her fight with Makuta himself.
The Rahkshi suddenly stopped, jamming one end of the staff into the ground. An angle of energy expanded on the ground outward, encompassing Gali. Then the ground suddenly disintegrated into a fissure, sending Gali plunging into a chasm.
“The ground—!” the Toa Nuva of Water cried as she just barely caught onto the nearest edge. She cried in pain as she wrenched her left wrist, barely catching the ledge. Kicking to the side, she tried to grab the edge with her right hand and missed.
Now the Rahkshi towered over her.
It raised its staff above her left hand.
Gali gulped as she realized what was coming.
A fast-moving flash of green and silver swept by her, sending the Guurahk crashing into the stone. “Hard-luck, Rahkshi—Lewa Nuva is too ever-quick for you!” Lewa shouted, catching the Rahkshi between his legs and propelling it away, riding the momentum of a nearby mountain vine.
Unfortunately, the Rahkshi did not enjoy playing passenger. The Guurahk screeched in irritation, and swiped with its bladed staff, severing Lewa’s vine.
“Hey!” Lewa cried, hurtling helplessly through the air.
Nearby, Tahu was landing two more consecutive blows on the Lerahk. “You’re weakening, Rahkshi!” he gloated.
“Tahu, look out!” Lewa gasped
Tahu turned to look, mere moments before Lewa and Guurahk barreled into him, and sent all three plowing into the canyon wall. The blue Rahkshi stumbled away, even as the Panrahk now backed Gali into the same tight corner as her brothers.
The Rahkshi were not able to speak, but they could perceive. Though the Toa fought well, they did not work together. That was a weakness they could use.
Indeed, it was already paying off. The three Toa attempted individually to escape, and were each batted down or away by the three Rahkshi.
Lerahk stabbed the end of its staff into the ground, causing a sickly green poison to spurt along the ground, surrounding the Toa. Lewa started to levitate higher, but energy blasts from Guurahk caused him to duck lower.
Gali watched the ground dissolve in sadness. “The earth is screaming, Lewa…we have to stop this poison!” She began firing water blasts at the substance, trying to mitigate and contain it.
Tahu pointed. “We have bigger problems, sister! Look!”
Now all three Rahkshi staffs were glowing with energy. They raised their weapons, but instead of firing at them, they channeled their energies above their heads.
“It’s aiming at the cliffside!” Tahu finished. The blasts blew it to poisonous rubble above them. It’s coming down! Tahu realized. And there’s no time to dodge!
Within moments, the three Toa were buried under tons of rock. The avalanche continued for several long seconds before finally subsiding. The Rahkshi looked on coolly, before turning and heading off.
✴ ✴ ✴
“Why have you brought us here, Whenua?” Onua asked the earthen elder. “We should be helping the others against the Rahkshi.”
“Or aiding Takua and Jaller on their search for the Seventh Toa,” Pohatu added.
“You are here because I need you here,” the Turaga replied.
After escaping the rubble Onu-Koro with help from Whenua, the Toa and Turaga immediately set about checking on the Matoran. None had been badly injured, fortunately, but the encounter with the Rahkshi had changed something in Whenua. No sooner had they finished this task than he had insisted the Toa Nuva follow him through a tunnel to the surface of Po-Wahi.
Now the three stood before a dark, yawning cave that had been cordoned off from the general populace, under the same Turaga mandate that prevented Matoran from poking around the pit where the krana lay, or seeking out the burial place of the Infected Kanohi — not that anyone even wanted to.
But the seal on the stone was unlike any the Toa had ever seen before.
“Tell me…” he began, sliding his hand across the carving, “…do you know what this is, Onua?”
Onua stepped forward, examining the picture. The last time Whenua had shown him ancient carvings, he had hinted at secrets about the past. Now perhaps they would have an opportunity to learn more about that.
The carving looked like some sort of large slug. After a few moments of thought, he replied, “No, Turaga. It looks like nothing I have seen before.”
Whenua nodded. “It is a kraata…a part of the very substance of Makuta. You will find them inside the Rahkshi, but they have plagued Mata Nui since long before you arrived. They slither in the shadows—as is fitting—spreading Makuta’s darkness wherever they go.”
He turned back to the two Toa, looking up solemnly through the eyes of his Noble Kanohi Ruru. “It is the kraata who infected the Kanohi masks Makuta used to control the Rahi. They do this simply by coming in contact with a pure Kanohi, spreading Makuta’s darkness and infecting it. I and the other Turaga have hunted them in secret for years. But we have begun to fear that the Rahkshi may find—and free—their brothers.”
The Turaga of Earth entered, beckoning for the two Toa to follow. Pursuing the Turaga deep into the darkness, the Toa left the daylight behind them.
They had not gone far before they were illuminated again, this time by a sickly green glow. Now, rounding a bend, they could hardly believe their eyes. The chamber they arrived at now stretched about forty to fifty bios high. Along both walls were lines and lines and rows and rows and rows of the worm-like kraata, shaped exactly like the carving and trapped in stasis tubes.
“Behold,” Whenua stated, raising his arms, “the spoils of our hunt. Thousands of kraata safely suspended in time and space, hidden here as they have been for years.”
Pohatu was looking around, shocked. “You imprisoned these…things…in my realm, and never told me?” he asked, his voice rising in disbelief. Since arriving on the island, Pohatu had scarcely gone a day without shattering mountains and reshaping canyons. He’d had no idea that every time he did so, he’d risked shattering this cave or its contents.
“They were no longer a threat,” Whenua shrugged. “We did not feel you needed to know.”
Pohatu sputtered.
“Didn’t need—!? What else have you Turaga been keeping secret? Just whose side are you on, anyway?”
Onua put a hand on his shoulder. “Pohatu, quiet! Something is coming…I feel it in the earth. Something very bad…”
The Toa of Earth looked above, seeing tendrils of blue and brown energy snake through areas of the ceiling. What they could not know was that at that moment, Guurahk, Panrahk, and Lerahk had joined their powers, collapsing the canyon far above.
Massive boulders and heavy debris fell toward them, forcing them to run for cover. Fortunately, the uses of their Kanohi Hau Nuva protected not only them, but the Turaga of Earth as well. Rubble continued to fall for a while, but slowly the implosion settled.
Pohatu groaned. “Is everyone alright?”
Whenua pushed himself upright. His eyes widened in terror.
“I believe we are all unhurt, Toa of Stone…but we are far from ‘alright.’ Look!”
One of the stasis tubes had fallen and landed not far from Pohatu’s Nuva feet additions.
The kraata’s head was sticking out of it.
“The shockwave has cracked the cylinders! The kraata are free, and there is no place we can run!”
✴ ✴ ✴
Kopaka skied briskly down an ice ramp as fast as he created it, skating smoothly along his ski-like ice blades. When Tahu was healed, the team had agreed to meet in the nearby Tiro Canyon, and from there pursue the Rahkshi who were allegedly making their way through the stone region. But strangely, although he saw signs of battle, there were no other Toa as far as his telescopic lens could see.
Strange, he thought. This was the place we were to meet. But I see no one.
He jumped off the ice slide and fitted his blades together. Another mystery, on an island that seems filled with them. Perhaps this ‘Toa of Light’ will bring answers with him when he arrives…
He frowned.
If not, I will find the answers to Mata Nui’s questions myself—alone, if I must. I—
HISSSSS!
“What—!?” he exclaimed, whirling… and then regretting he had.
Raising his blades and his shield, he braced for the fight of his life. For all six Rahkshi stood united before him.
“Six of you, now?” he exclaimed.
His eyes narrowed and his telescope adjusted. “Very well. Then this shall be a tale the Matoran will tell for years to come!”