Chapter 23.5: “Setting Conditions”

# Chapter 23.5 - “Setting Conditions” (2000/2300 words)

## Synopsis: Time to renew mortal vows.

“You didn’t want to go with your friend?”

Lesovikk shook his head. “Sarda has his life ahead. A destiny to fulfill. I have none of that.” The Toa glanced at a lone cell in the corner, one housing the notorious Karzahni, who had not so long ago been transferred from Daxia to the Pit. “Not anymore.”

The Toa stood with Hydraxon near the sea gates that connected the Pit to the domes of the Matoran universe. The Maxilos robots had used these to transport prisoners from the seas of the ocean above back to their cells in the Pit. But the sea gates and the tunnels to the outside had sealed, stranding the prisoners in the ocean above. The work of the jailors had been unexpectedly concluded.

Somewhere in the distance, Lesovikk’s new pet, the Terrain Crawler Rahi rumbled. “You must be curious about what's become of your homeland,” Hydraxon added.

The Toa of Air suppressed a smile. The jailor had initially resisted Lesovikk’s help, preferring to work alone. That resistance didn’t seem to have changed.

“My homeland doesn’t matter. Only the Matoran on it. And I know they are safe. Sarda, Idris, Defilak. Even my old friend Dekar. I feared for them before, but now I know they will be safe.”

He looked again at Hydraxon who had a peculiar expression. The jailor seemed caught halfway between a grimace and a melancholy smile, as if something had jammed midway along his steam of consciousness.

Lesovikk was about to make a joke when a flash of light erupted from one of the gates. Something large seemed to fly past both jailors, knocking them off their feet. By the time they regained their footing, the light seemed to shoot along the corridors, bouncing between walls and slamming into jail cells. Several cell doors were blown off their hinges.

Amid the cacophony, someone roared from deep in the Pit. “Here! Come here!” Nocturn shouted. The blast of light obliged, shattering the cell door before bouncing away.

Hydraxon shouted, leaping into action to subdue the mighty prisoner as Lesovikk blocked the other prisoners. The four-armed prisoner smiled wolfishly. “Ready to die again?”

The jailor sneered. “Make my day.”

The weaponless prisoner lumbered forward, ramming into Hydraxon’s midsection, slamming him into the wall. Nocturn pulled back to pummel him again, but Hydraxon twisted, using Nocturn’s force against him. Behind them, Lesovikk had subdued another prisoner, even as the inexorable light had vanished back into the sea gate.

Nocturn lunged toward Hydraxon, but the jailor dispatched a knife into his foot, pinning him and sending him falling forward. Narrowly recovering his footing, the prisoner staggered forward.

“I’ll tear that helmet from your severed head!” Nocturn howled. Foolishly, he lumbered forward again.

“I caught you once,” Hydraxon growled. “I could catch you again. But there’s one rule you should have learned after all these years,”

Hydraxon braced—then, at the last minute, he sidestepped and plunged a dagger directly into Nocturn’s chest, fatally wounding the stunned prisoner. As Hydraxon pulled his blade out, Nocturn crumpled to the floor.

“I don’t take prisoners twice.”

Lesovikk, meanwhile, had finished mopping up the rest of the prisoners. Slamming a prisoner into an empty cell, he turned and looked at Hydraxon. “Still think this is a solo act?”

Hydraxon snorted. “This wasn’t the first attempted breakout, and it won’t be the last. But more to the point—” he gestured to Karzahni’s cell, now vacant, “—Do you still think you lack a destiny?”

At the sight of the empty cell, Lesovikk’s fists balled and his face twisted into a deep scowl. “Someone did this. This was planned.”

“Someone who knew the location of the Pit, but lacked authorization to free him. One of the ‘good guys.’” Hydraxon frowned. He looked back where Nocturn had fallen… but the corpse had vanished. “There is more than one mystery afoot.” he mused.

“I will find him,” Lesovikk snarled. “I swear I will find him and whoever did this. This time, I will finish the job I started long ago.”

Krahka dropped her last bundle of twigs. Having taken the form of Nokama, she summoned some water and mixed it with clay as she had done many times on this long journey. Within moments, she had fashioned herself a suitable nest.

She lay down. All across Artidax, visible in the evening twilight, the last Toa of the universe were setting up camp, getting what rest they could before the showdown with the Rahkshi. Krahka found herself rather thrilled. She had been embraced by the Toa, despite certainly not being one. Strangely, she found herself missing the Turaga she had once known as Toa Metru. It would have been nice to fight alongside her… well, her friends one more time, rather than these heroes she had met so recently. But it was fine, for the Toa fought for the fate of the living. Could she do no less?

A flock of Ice Bats glided through the air, flying for the coast. Odd, Krahka thought. When do Ice Bats fly in flocks? And with daylight?

She wasn’t surprised, then, when she saw Crystal Climbers thundering along the mountain, their mouths hanging open as they did when hungry. The climbers were skilled jumpers and would make short work of the bats. Krahka watched grimly.

Yet that did not happen. The hungry climbers ran under the bats without a glance in their direction. Krahka’s eyes widened, and they widened further when she saw Razor Whale fins circling Takea fins in the ocean. The climbers ran into the ocean and directly to the fins which bore them off, all while the Ice Bats flew along overhead.

Krahka jumped to her feet. Stone Rats were crossing the island, mounted on Kikanalo. Lohrak were soaring alongside swarms of Protodites. Pit War Tortoises were rumbling beside Niazesk.

Something was happening. Even the Toa across the island were seeing this, looking around in wonder as hordes and swarms of Rahi hurried north.

Tahu will think the Rahi are fleeing something, Krahka thought. But these Rahi aren’t afraid.

On the horizon, Krahka spotted a white Rahi going against the tide. A small bull thundered up to her, pulled at her with its horns, and ran in the direction of the other Rahi.

Shapeshifting into a Nivawk, Krahka climbed into the air and flew after.

Her flight lasted several hours. Remarkably, the streams of Rahi did not continue north, but turned east, then south. This only confirmed her suspicion that these creatures were going somewhere.

Indeed, as the Rahi she was following met up with other streams of creatures, they all seemed to converge on a single island, the northernmost landmass of the eastern chain of the southern islands. As she landed, beneath the twisting form of a Doom Viper, Krahka noted the charred remains of Rahkshi--likely the ones Kopaka and Chiara had so recently destroyed.

As the island itself was too small to host all the Rahi streaming to it, most of the newcomers took up positions on the Great Barrier. Even Krahka staggered at the sight. It was an Archivist’s dream… or nightmare. This wasn’t every Rahi in the universe, not by a long shot. But it was all the universe could spare.

A large tent was situated at the center of the island, and Rahi were streaming in and out of it. Krahka took flight again and glided over. Surprisingly, three non-Rahi were waiting outside the tent beside a vat, watching those coming and going.

“What’s happening here?” Krahka demanded, landing. “Who’s in that tent?”

The three non-Rahi raised their weapons.

“First you must prove that you are a Rahi,” one of them growled. He lifted a shadow leech out of the vat, and the leech immediately appeared drawn to her.

“She has an inner light-shadow balance,” one of them looked at the other. “She’s not Rahi.”

“I’ve shapeshifted as a Toa before,” Krahka said quickly. “I am Rahi.”

“She’s one of us,” came a voice from the tent. “Even if a strange one.”

Krahka looked up. Standing in the entrance to the tent was a giant orange cyclops and a tall, lanky creature, the latter of whom had spoken. The white bull Krahka had followed took its place beside them.

“Welcome, Krahka. I am Tracker, and this is Keetongu,” the lanky creature explained. “These others are called Primal, Seeker, and Savage. Keetongu insisted that we send for you.”

“Me? What’s going on?”

The orange Rahi rumbled something in an archaic language, and Tracker’s Rau glowed. “You, like Keetongu, sought refuge in Metru Nui. He among the spires of the Knowledge Towers, you in the bowels of the Archives. But he emerged, as you did, thanks to the Toa Metru. Now he has waged a crusade across a long millennium to end the threat of the Visorak for good.”

A cold chill ran along Krahka’s frame, and the horrors of her past came flooding back. She had done battle with the hordes these past months. But she thought she was the only Rahi to take a stand against them.

Keetongu continued. “Months ago, the Order of Mata Nui dispatched three Toa to Artidax,” Tracker translated. “They carried the Heart of the Visorak which summoned all of the spiders, no matter where they were. The Visorak and their heart were trapped there when Artidax’s volcano detonated, destroying them all and melting the Heart to slag.” Tracker produced a molten gold mound and dropped it on the ground.

“Yet the Visorak survived,” Krahka frowned.

“Makuta could not save those Visorak. Instead, he refashioned them from his mind, shaping them again, only now independent of the Heart. They’ve built their stronghold in Keetongu’s island, breeding more Visorak and straining antidermis from the corpses of the last Makuta to fashion legions of new Rahkshi.”

Krahka started at the mention of Rahkshi. She looked around at the host of vengeful Rahi assembled around her and thought of Tahu and his friends.

“If this Heart was destroyed, what chance is there to destroy the hordes now?” asked Krahka.

“Ever seen a hive in a whirlwind?” asked Primal.

“Without the Heart, it takes Makuta considerable mental bandwidth to keep the hordes assembled,” Tracker explained. “Deal a big enough blow and he will have to focus on reforming them, buying time elsewhere.”

Krahka nodded. “He’s been quite distracted lately.”

Keetongu grunted again.

“We are Rahi. We know when the winds shift. Now the greatest storm is coming. The beasts will do our part.”

Less than a day later, Krahka found herself on the rocky ledge of the Great Barrier. Hidden in the caves and tunnels behind her, Rahi were making final preparations. Many were the last of their kind, driven to extinction by the Visorak. Others had long been slaves, fitted with Infected Masks and made to terrorize their ecosystems and the Matoran. Still others had been mutated, sometimes multiple times, and were unwelcome among their own species. Nearly everything here was a Rahi, yet the sense of anticipation was no less palpable.

And before her? Out in the dome beyond, a once-glittering paradise had been twisted and warped beyond all recognition. Winding silver threads spanned from one end of the dome to the other, a giant web dripping with venom and lined with cocoons. Vegetation was choked, withered and gray, and giant mutated Tahtorak roamed along the shores. Visorak towers lined the rim of the island as Boggarak guards monitored the ocean for any intrusion.

It was a plan as simple as it was ruthless. Over time, the Colony Drones had been brought to Keetongu’s base where they were exposed to doses of iron elemental energies. As they were returned to the Visorak stronghold, they fed the unwitting Visorak whose webs were now laced with traces of metal. Now thousands of Electric Spiders had taken positions high in the Great Barrier. On cue, they would unleash combined charge of electricity down the webs as Ice Vermin channeled their powers into the earth, sending fissures everywhere. With the Visorak dazed and pinned in the earth, the stronger waves of Rahi would charge in, then the weaker, and then the reckoning would come.

Something heavy stepped out beside Krahka, and she looked up. It was Keetongu. He looked at her with a questioning look.

Krahka looked at him. Tilting her head, she shapeshifted, taking the form of Keetongu. The orange Rahi staggered back, his eye wide. Then, stepping forward, he took her hand and let out a gruff rumble.

Krahka looked out at the Visorak stronghold. Then to the west.

And she shapeshifted to the form of Toa Nokama.

Keetongu nodded once. And as Krahka shapeshifted to a Lohrak and flew to rejoin the Toa, Keetongu turned and readied for his final battle.