Chapter 6

When Jaller opened his eyes, he was floating in the sunken basin of the Pit. There were no Cowie shells at these depths. Only the bleached husks of armor and hardened coral.

The Toa of Fire watched passively as the battle transpired around him, his limbs moving as though in a distant imitation of battle. His Power Sword glanced against the carapace of a frenzied Keras crab. At his absent behest, his Hahnah companion fired a spread of Cordak missiles at the advancing sea creatures.

Craters appeared in the rock around him, explosions rattling his armor. Jaller stumbled to his feet, still amazed he and his teammates had survived as long as they had against the armies of the Barraki.

“Golden one, are you there?” he yelled, raising his sword to repel a Takea shark angling towards Hahli. “Why have you brought me here, to relive this battle?”

At his command, the waters swirled and the warm visage of the golden entity filled his vision. His presence was reassuring. He would not have to relive the horrors that were about to unfold alone.

“Of all the battles you have fought, of all the memories you have shared, this is the one your teammates linger upon,” observed the nameless titan, his expression one of knowing empathy. “Your spirits coil and knot around these events. Kongu, Hewkii, Nuparu, Hahli and now you too, Jaller. You all return here in the end. Why is that?”

Somewhere over his shoulder, Kongu cried out in wordless exclamation as a Giant Squid latched onto him, dragging the Toa of Air towards the darkness. Watching his teammates move to defend him, Jaller felt the energy of the battle shifting.

“The sacrifice was never mine to make, great one,” answered Jaller, feeling the hollowness of his words as he spoke. Not long ago, he had thrown himself in front of a Turahk on the steps to Kini Nui, giving his life to protect Takua. He didn’t care to relive the experience if there was another way.

As though he intuited the weakness of Jaller’s words, the golden entity shook his head. Only then did it strike the Toa how much he looked like Turaga Vakama. This was a leader he could follow.

“You deny and bargain and plead against the forces of history. You flirt against the endless possibilities of what could be but never truly give voice to those desires. What will it take for you Toa to truly dream…?”

A darkness loomed in the depths of the Pit. Jaller looked up to see the Barraki warlords descend upon the Toa, joining the frenzy of metal and flesh. He watched as Pridak tore into Nuparu, as Ehlek and Hewkii tangled in each other’s electric snare. Even his Hahnah companion had joined the battle at the universe’s end, launching Cordak against the oncoming wave of the Barraki.

But this time Mata Nui had a different destiny for the Toa Mahri. As the Great Spirit breathed his dying breath and all color faded from the universe, the Kanohi Ignika sank into the shale at Jaller’s feet.

He knew what needed to be done.

“Perhaps if it had been me instead…” he murmured, pulling the Mask of Life from the ocean floor and staring into its empty eyeholes. “But I was never meant to carry the mask. That great destiny was meant for…”

Wordlessly, he looked back at the other Toa. His teammates seemed so very far away now, fighting to push back the Barraki. He remembered the scene well - he had been prepared to unleash a Nova Blast - but this time he was not in it. This time Mata Nui had given him a different calling.

No… this was his choice.

“You are their leader, Jaller,” murmured the golden colossus at his side, gesturing to the Ignika that he now grasped. “But above that, you are their brother.”

“I… I can’t,” stammered the Toa of Fire, though he felt the truth of the golden one’s words press upon him. “And even if I could, these events have already come to pass. We can’t change what has been.”

The golden warlord allowed a grin of satisfaction to stretch across his gilded face. The Toa was on the cusp of voicing his darkest imagining.

“Ask, my dear Toa, and you shall receive,” he said gently, motioning towards the great fissure in the ocean floor. “There is still time to save your friend. You could not ask any of the Toa under your command to make a sacrifice such as this. Such a calling… it goes beyond duty. This is a calling of destiny and today that destiny is yours!”

Stealing one final look at his teammates, Jaller gripped the Ignika in his arms and stowed his sword. If he moved quickly, there could still be a chance to save Mata Nui and prevent the horrors to come.

He shot forward, using his powers over Fire to propel himself into the abyss, the anguished screams of Pridak echoing after him. With the grace of an Alkini player, he slid over the edge of the fissure and found himself tumbling into an immense waterfall, Voya Nui still sinking into place overhead.

There was still time.

He tumbled through the water until even that evaporated away, leaving only cold air rushing up to meet him. He was falling into an immense cavern obscured by mist and stalactites - larger than Ta-Koro, the Pit, larger than the entire island of Mata Nui, larger than anything he’d ever seen!

A pang of fear struck him, for he could not see the ground beneath him. The further he fell, the more momentum he built up. If this didn’t work then there’d be no surviving this encounter.

But one way or the other, he supposed that was the point.

Tearing off his mask, he pressed the Ignika against his face and closed his eyes. If any Toa were to give their life in service of Mata Nui then please, by the will of the Great Beings, let it be him.

“I wish it had been my destiny instead!” he gasped, feeling the golden energies of the mask surge through his body. For a moment he struggled, then closed his eyes and prepared to embrace the stillness of death.

The wind faded slowly and the world around him was filled with a blinding light. Jaller felt his body become one with the Ignika. He was part of something greater now. The very lifeforce of the Great Spirit. He could feel it…

Mata Nui was still dead.

Jaller wrenched his eyes open and jolted forward, panting for air. He lay sprawled on the marble floor of the golden one’s fortress. Some distance away, his patron was standing but his attention was elsewhere. He stood with his mighty arms outstretched, bathing in the radiant glow of unfulfilled dreams.

“Great One,” spluttered the Toa, thumbling around and finding no trace of the Ignika. “I don’t understand… it didn’t work. I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t save Mata Nui!”

“Destiny cannot be so easily unwritten,” chuckled the golden entity, absorbing the golden energy into his form. “It is not within my power to change events that have been or to bring back those who have been lost.”

Jaller searched about the chamber for some trace of the vision he had experienced - some way back into the waters of the Pit so he might try again. He found only the cold reptilian features of the wonderous golden entity staring back at him.

“Had you taken the mask to the Universe Core in your brother’s place then your sacrifice would have been for naught, my disciple,” he continued, as though he too shared in the heaviness the Toa now felt in his chest. “You would have traded your life and failed to revive the Great Spirit all the same. Your teammates would have perished, and soon after the universe too would have plunged into darkness. The mask did not choose you as its bearer and yet you wish it had - to spare your brother? I think not. You wish this because you cannot bear a life knowing circumstances could have been different. Perhaps in time that wound will heal but for now you desire it all the same…”

“I don’t understand,” stammered the Toa, still lucid from the effects of the illusion. “Why would you hide the truth? How long – how many times have you shown me this vision?”

The golden being’s smile was wide but by no means friendly.

“True, I have kept you from understanding,” he explained, raising his mighty head as though scanning the chamber for his next meal. “Days and days you Toa have run, and I have moved the scenery in pursuit of that which you desire most. But today, little one, you have finally given me that which I have desired all along. In the end, Jaller, you will always be that lost Matoran on the mountainside crying out for someone else to show you where your destiny lies…”

When Jaller finally found the strength to raise his head, the golden Skakdi had vanished. He was left alone on the chamber floor to piece his broken thoughts back together.

✴        ✴        ✴

As midnight ticked over, the Skakdi sentries grew disgruntled, for they had been anticipating an assault under cover of darkness all evening. While the soldiers hungered for battle after holding defensive positions for so long, their generals assured them that adversaries would inevitably reveal themselves, for the construction of their fortress had not gone unnoticed.

Electric floodlights played across the stretch of arid coastline, illuminating the jagged rocks and fjords. The anticipation was palpable in the air as the Skakdi gripped their weapons and thought of new and barbaric ways to kill the army of Toa that no doubt approached.

“I hope they have decent weapons,” bristled one of the sentries on the outer perimeter. “I broke my axe on a Toa a few months ago. I figure they owe me a weapon.”

“Lies!” snorted a Skakdi of Plasma beside him. “You’ve never even seen a Toa in your life!”

Rumbled, the Skakdi’s grin tightened as his compatriots laughed.

Exploiting the opportunity, the dark outline of Toa Bomonga slipped past the post while the sentries argued, sticking to the stonework above so closely that he appeared little more than a shadow caught in the torchlight.

Stealth had always been second nature to him and he had honed his skills to become an expert in the art of infiltration. For the purposes of this assignment, he had used his elemental powers to camouflage himself with a fine dusting of Earth, dulling whatever gleam his metallic armor gave off. Under cover of darkness, he was all but indistinguishable from the wall he now scaled.

Slinking over the rim of the first wall, the Toa pressed himself against a wooden barrel, gazing beyond the outer perimeter and into the interior for the first time. In the gray glow of the stars, he could see the main body of the fortress, surrounded by Skakdi grunts clustered in sparse groups around fortifications. They seemed to be of the impression that the buildings themselves were defensive elements.

Nearing closer, Bomonga watched the nearest sentry, who was sweeping an area of wall with a lantern, shining it on at predictable intervals, sweeping the arc of the ground in front of him then shutting it off.

Adjusting to the window of opportunity, the Toa lined himself up behind the barrel then dropped to the ground and low-crawled straight for a nearby guardpost. He budgeted five minutes to cover the distance, which was fast enough to get the job done and slow enough to get it done safely. The naked eye noticed speed and discontinuity. A Shore Turtle heading inward worried nobody, whereas a Rock Lion bounding in attracted everyone’s attention. So he maintained his speed, slow and steady, head down, no pauses. He made it through ten bio, then twenty, then thirty, then forty.

After forty-five bio, Bomonga knew he was no longer visible from the spaces between the buildings, but he stayed low all the way until his back was pressed against the structure, listening for a reaction.

Nothing.

Shimmying around with his back to the wall, the Toa found there were more dwellings on the other side. He had broken through the perimeter.

The sentries were all behind him now and they were all facing the wrong way.

Edging towards the inner keep of the fortress, he skirted across the open ground unobserved. Scaling another wall and finding himself in the narrow stretch of walkway between two posts, Bomonga squeezed himself through one of the battlements, running through the schematics of similar structures that he had infiltrated on behalf of the Brotherhood of Makuta. All too often, his targets were in the deepest bowels of such structures, held in the most defensible position.

As he approached one of the nearby panels, Bomonga soon learnt what the structures contained: the circuit boards and cables of server racks. A curious find and far too advanced for the Skakdi surely?

Unlimbering his shield, the Toa of Earth began charging a Pulse Rhotuka.

How very considerate of the Skakdi to build their generator on the side of their camp…

✴        ✴        ✴

The shockwave crackled and pulsed, emanating from the center of the fortress with concussive force. Motors froze and wires crackled, circuitry fried across the entire facility. Electric floodlights fizzled out and shut off, plunging the structure into an all-encompassing darkness.

As one, the confused sentries cried out in surprise. Torches were frantically lit and spears thrown wildly into the night. Many of the guards were quick to discard their weapons, most of which were projectile in nature, snatching up swords and clubs and axes in their place.

All of a sudden, a cold wind prickled against the spines of the Skakdi, who had spent so long anticipating the arrival of the enemy from their comfortable vantage point that they had forgotten how easily things could go wrong.

The Toa had arrived.

Silently, four silhouettes flitted through the chaos, weapons still clipped to their backs and moving through the shadows. For the moment, they passed unseen by the Skakdi, who milled about in a panicked frenzy, their posts vacant. Guided by what little light was created by the flickering torches, the Toa Hagah merged with the darkness.

Making their way past the exterior wall, the Toa finally slipped into the inner keep of the fortress. Where a Matoran structure might have housed stalls and marketplaces for merchants to sell their wares, the Skakdi had adorned the area with industrial crates packed with munitions and weapons. There were Cordak missiles and Nynrah Ghostblasters no doubt looted from the ruins of the Matoran universe, along with all manner of blades and nets and Kanoka.

With the sentries now flooding to the outer perimeter, the passageways were sparsely covered. Raising her hand, Gaaki signaled the others.

“I don’t like this,” muttered Pouks in a hushed tone. “I’m sensing complex stonework beneath our feet, stretching all the way down to the ocean floor.”

“I feel it too,” added Gaaki, pressing her hand against the wall, her thoughts linked to the waves crashing against the fortress. “There’s something solid down there.”

“The handiwork of our missing comrades, perhaps?” inquired Kualus, eyeing the end of the corridor.

“I don’t think much of the architecture, but this entire structure is sitting on a solid rock layer,” muttered Pouks darkly. “The Skakdi don’t have the skill or the patience to build like that. I’d bet my bottom ten widgets that the Toa Mahri were involved in construction, unwilling or otherwise.”

“You’d win that bet,” came a familiar voice from behind them. Toa Bomonga stepped out of the darkness and into the light of the torches, giving Pouks the fright of his life.

Leaping from his perch in Kualus’ scarf, Norik reverted to his normal size and drew his Lava Spear. His teammates turned to him for instruction, faces grim.

“Jaller and his team could be in any number of places,” he announced. “As of yet, we still don’t know the nature of their involvement, whether they are prisoners or collaborators. Our objective is still unchanged: recovery.”

“And if they don’t want to be rescued?” asked Gaaki quietly.

The other Toa Hagah leaned closer, the bruises sustained during their last encounter at the Coliseum having only just healed.

“We don’t give them the option,” answered Norik sternly. “They’re coming with us, either by choice or by force.”

“That plan didn’t go so well last time,” said Pouks, gripping his Avalanche Spear tighter at the memory.

“If this mission was easy, Tahu wouldn’t have sent us,” said Norik, though he silently conceded the point. “The Toa Nuva have a special connection with these Toa, but they can’t answer the call right now. We must carry that responsibility in their stead, for our comrades, for the Matoran of Metru Nui, for Toa everywhere. We will bring our brothers and sister home.”

Extending his fist defiantly, the Toa of Fire watched five sets of knuckles connect in a perfect circle. He beamed admiringly at his team and their unwavering commitment.

Five fists.

The same realization dawned on his teammates as they looked around the circle then turned their heads to search the surrounding corridor.

Iruini was missing.

His smile fading, Norik let out a deep sigh.

“Oh, Iruini…” he muttered darkly. “I’m going to hurl that Kualsi so deep into the ocean even the Toa Mahri won’t be able to find it…”