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Nalosar strode down the jungle path, a squadron of Guurahk marching in lockstep behind him.
It felt right, to have such power at his beck and call, at last. Well, not his. But, he was adjacent to power. There was something right about that.
The trail opened up before him into a tiny village. A little circle of huts, a well, and an Amaja. No Suva. Rather unimpressive, as Nalosar had come to expect from the Southern Continent.
He started to doubt the intelligence he had been given. How can a tiny band of backwards Matoran cause so much trouble, operating out of a pit like this?
Of course, there were better organized rebel operations at work in his own glorious city of Metru Nui and the ring of larger settlements on the Northern Continent. But there was something about this group.
The Matoran of the village looked up from their dull little tasks – washing linens, carving up fish, other things Nalosar didn’t even trouble himself to notice – and regarded him with no shortage of venom.
Such hatred for the Great Spirit’s chosen. Another obvious example of how far these Matoran had fallen. Perhaps the reports that the entire village was aiding the Resistance were accurate after all.
Nalosar met the eyes of one scarred Su-Matoran who was shaking with rage, glaring at him like Nalosar had kicked his favorite Rahi. Nalosar’s hand twitched at his side, and he could feel the attention of his Guurahk squad on it. He itched to signal them to strike out with their staves, to Disintegrate everything in their path, to end the judgmental stares.
But no. If he did, there’d be no way to confirm that they’d neutralized the target. These villagers had information, and he knew just where to go to get it.
The Rahkshi followed Nalosar into a dingy little pub. It was deserted, save for the bartender, a Le-Matoran who was struggling to wipe down a glass with the prominent claws that were attached to his hands. Ah, one of Karzahni’s.
The Matoran looked up from his work, greeting Nalosar’s gaze with baleful, vacant eyes.
“Can I help you?” he said. His voice was slow and devoid of any emotion, but there was no fear in his demeanor.
Nalosar scoffed. “I doubt it. Do you know what these are?”
He stepped aside so the Matoran could get a better look at the Rahkshi. Perhaps he hadn’t seen them well enough.
“No,” the Matoran said in that same dull tone.
“They are Rahkshi of Disintegration.”
“OK.”
Nalosar sighed and rubbed his eyes.
“They are going to disintegrate you.”
No response.
“Destroy you.”
No response.
“Kill you.”
No response.
“Unless you help me.”
No response. And then…
“OK.”
“‘OK,’ you will help me?” Nalosar tried. “Or ‘OK,’ you understand?”
“OK.”
Nalosar collapsed onto one of the barstools and buried his head in his hands. Hadn’t he served the Great Spirit well? Wasn’t he capable of more important work than talking in circles with a cross-wired Matoran in a steaming bog in the middle of nowhere?
“I should have figured,” he finally said. “Alright, let’s be real with each other. There is a rebel leader who operates in these parts. An Onu-Matoran typically seen wearing a Great-shape Ruru. Answers to ‘Garan.’ We bel-”
He stopped himself. No. Express confidence.
“We know you have been sheltering him here. Tell me his whereabouts, and your molecules get to stay connected to each other.”
The bartender set the glass down on the table and tucked the rag away inside it.
“I’ll call him here,” the Le-Matoran said.
“Thank you,” Nalosar said, throwing his hands up in the air. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
The Le-Matoran hobbled over to a shelf set into the back wall and tossed aside a few stone tablets. Behind it was a lever.
Nalosar made a few sharp hand signals behind his back and heard the Rahkshi step closer in response. They were channeling Disintegration energy into their staves, readying themselves to strike.
The Matoran had implicitly confessed to treason and blasphemy against the Great Spirit. The moment he had summoned their true quarry, this Matoran’s sentence would be carried out as well.
In the meantime, he had a brilliant idea to lull the dim Matoran into a false sense of security.
“An ingenious system to contact each other,” Nalosar said, feigning awe. “How does it work? Rhotuka lines in tunnels under the sur–”
The bartender pulled the lever.
The wooden floor of the bar split down the middle and was rolled up into the walls by hidden winches and pulleys.
Beneath the floor was a river of churning lava. Its heat on his back was like no heat he had ever felt.
Nalosar opened his mouth to shout a warning, but the Guurahk had no time to shift to flight mode. They plummeted into the lava, pilot Kraata screaming their awful reptilian screams as they melted away from bottom to top in an instant.
Nalosar’s stool had been half-on and half-off the false floor and it pitched backwards towards the lava, carrying Nalosar with it. Before he could even scream, before his stomach could drop, a hand surmounted by sharp, rugged claws caught his forearm and held him above his death.
Nalosar screamed and struggled, clawing at the arm, until he realized why that was a bad idea and stopped, hanging limp in the Matoran’s grasp.
The Le-Matoran stared down at him through the lenses of his Kanohi Mahiki, head tilted to the side. The slowness of thought Nalosar had noted in his posture and his gaze were gone. In their place was the calculating intelligence of a warrior.
No. Craftier. A spy.
“He’ll want to talk to you,” The Le-Matoran said.
Before Nalosar could ask what that meant, something cracked against his skull from behind and everything went dark.
Nalosar woke with a spasm.
He was lying on stone, and half of his body was cold as ice. He sat up, groaning as the shift in position made his head pound with pain.
He heard a jangling sound as he moved, and Nalosar looked in its direction. There was an iron chain with links as thick as his hand winding off into the darkness of the stone chamber behind him. The other end attached to manacles that dug into his wrists.
Nalosar hopped up and ran full tilt straight ahead until the chain went taut. His arms jerked back, wrenching his shoulders, and his own momentum pulled him straight off his feet. His Kanohi smacked against the stone hard enough to make spots swim in his vision. He lay facedown on the stone, groaning, for longer than he wanted to admit.
It would seem the chain is secured much more firmly than I anticipated.
This was unacceptable treatment for a chosen representative of the Great Spirit! Where were his Rahk–
Oh.
Right.
Nalosar paced around the chamber, testing the length of his tether. It was as dark as night here. He could see the chain, his own body, and one of the walls when he drew close enough.
A cave? The Resistance had been known to appear out of nowhere, using the massive network of tunnels beneath the Continent as cover.
“Show yourselves!” Nalosar shouted into the blackness. “Step into the Great Spirit’s light, you cowards.”
A lightstone was unveiled somewhere in the depths of the cave beyond the range of Nalosar’s chain, burning eyes that had just adjusted to the darkness. He groaned and looked away, covering his eyes with his hand.
“Look at me,” a voice demanded. It was a Matoran’s voice, completely unremarkable. But the way it echoed off the cave walls gave it more import. Not too different from the voice the Great Spirit had used when he had spoken to Nalosar.
Nalosar dared to crack one eye open. The light seemed less intense, so he lowered his hands and faced the lightstone.
It rested on a table where sat six Matoran. Their features were in shadow, but he recognized the silhouette of the Le-Matoran who had tricked him in the bar. And there, in the middle! That looked like an Onu-Matoran and a Ruru.
Garan. At last.
If only he still had his Rahkshi. But Garan had made a mistake in exposing himself like this. Nalosar would find a way to exploit it.
Somehow.
Garan’s tone was even when he spoke. He did not raise his voice once. He kept his hands folded peacefully. Even so, there was steel in his voice. An absolute certainty in every word he said. They flowed from him as if they’d been carved on the inside of his Kanohi from the moment of his creation.
“What was it?” Garan asked. “That shiny new Hau you’re wearing? A penthouse in the Coliseum?
“Or are you going to try to make me cry? Did you have a sick friend who needed medicine? Were you starving on the streets? Are you going to sob to me about how you had no choice?
“Or is this what you always wanted to be, but you were too much of a coward to do it on your own? Is that what you needed? An excuse to get back at the ones who never liked you, or the ones you never liked?”
Garan paused for Nalosar to reply. Instead, he glared across the cave at Garan, every muscle in his body tensed. He refused to give his enemy any indication that his words had hit home.
Which, of course, they hadn’t. Because they were ridiculous, plain and simple.
“You might think I’m just ranting,” Garan went on after a while. “But I am genuinely curious. I want to know what could possibly drive a Matoran to betray his people, his land, the Great Spirit to the enemy.”
Garan rose, but his voice was no less calm or restrained as he continued. Nalosar could do nothing but keep watching, Kanohi frozen in a defiant scowl.
“I want to know so I can hold myself to the fire until I burn that thing out of me, whatever it is. So I can unleash a refining fire on all those who look to me for leadership. So I can forge us into the sword Mata Nui will use to chop the head off of the tyrant who has stolen our lives.
“Because if I looked in the mirror and saw you looking back at me, I would throw myself into the fires of Valmai. So, tell me. Now. Why?”
Nalosar counted five deep breaths before he responded. He longed to tear into Garan just as brutally as the rebel had torn into him, but it would do no good. The Great Spirit demanded better of him.
“You are the traitors,” Nalosar said. “You betrayed the Great Spirit. You burn bridges and rob convoys. You shelter Toa in your huts. We stand for order. You stand for nothing.”
Garan was silent for a few moments. In the flickering glow of the lightstone, Nalosar watched him tilt his head and sigh softly. He was looking into the middle distance now, not at Nalosar.
“Order.” Garan said. “I know order, and I know hunger. Not long ago, six beings came to my island. They claimed to be Toa. They were not. Much like your ‘Great Spirit,’ they enslaved us. Put us to work destroying our own land for their selfish gain. They used us up until there was nothing left.
“You know what we called those beings? Piraka. Thugs. But they at least had the decency to not pretend to be anything else for long. That is what I brand your false god now. Piraka. A hungry, cowardly thug.
“He knows only how to take, and he will take and consume from this world until it is nothing but ash and tears. Tell me, where is the order in that?”
Garan’s gaze fell on Nalosar again, and he felt his heartlight skip a beat for the first time.
“And then there’s you,” said Garan, leveling a finger at Nalosar. “You think you can please him? That he’ll hold onto you when he throws the rest of our kind out with the rubbish? He didn’t even spare his own brothers and sisters. You mean nothing to him.”
No response.
“No… Actually, I think you do mean something to him. I think that every time you leave his presence, he laughs at you. I think he laughs himself to sleep every night when he thinks about you.”
No response.
“He probably thinks you’re the funniest thing he’s ever seen. ‘Look at that poor, stupid Matoran march to his death for me on his tiny little legs. Watch him stand in front of a platoon of Rahkshi like he thinks he’s leading it. Look how meticulously he polishes the shiny armor that I gave him. Watch him doom his brothers and sisters to torment and pain because he’s delusional enough to think I would shed a single tear if he died for me!’”
No response, but Nalosar shifted further back into the shadows so Garan couldn’t see his hands shaking in the manacles.
“I bet he can’t believe his luck. I bet he can’t believe how easy it was to convince you to abandon everything and everyone you held dear for an illusion of power.”
Nalosar felt himself sit back down on the ground, his head throbbing, the world spinning around him. His chest was so tight he could barely draw a breath. Had they poisoned him? That would only make sense… A coward’s weapon.
“I’d stake my life that he thinks you are the most pathetic being in this whole wide universe… And that’s the one thing I agree with him on.”
Nalosar opened his mouth to reply in kind, but his throat was raw and even his jaw was trembling. Garan saw it all with those piercing golden eyes and let out one mirthless laugh.
“I’ve seen enough,” he said. “Dalu!”
One of the other Matoran who sat beside Garan hopped up from the table and approached Nalosar, slow steps pounding across the stone. The Matoran stepped into the light, revealing a Ga-Matoran whose eyes were swirling with righteous anger, her hands twitching with the burning need to act.
In one hand, she held a broad cleaver that looked big enough for a Toa and far too large for a little thing like her.
Nalosar backpedaled away from her, the chain scraping on the stone. Dalu did not increase her pace.
“So it is to be an execution, then,” Nalosar blurted, his peril at last returning his voice to him. “Go on. Show the world how savage the Matoran Resistance is! How you spit in the face of law and order. Your brothers and sisters will beg the Great Spirit to deliver them from y–”
Dalu closed the gap between them with a long stride and raised the cleaver high above her head.
“Wait,” the shout ripped itself out of Nalosar’s lungs, and he shielded his face with his own manacles, kneeling before the mad Ga-Matoran. “P-please, I don’t… I don’t want to die, I… I can’t die… He chose me… The Great Spirit, he… Chose… I just wanted to do the right thing… J-just like you, just like everyone! Can’t you see, I’m just like you… I’m just like–"
Dalu swung the cleaver downwards.
Nalosar collapsed to the ground, shuddering and shaking. He grabbed at himself, searching for the mortal wound that he knew had been dealt him, but he found nothing, though his hands had felt every–
My hands.
Nalosar looked down at his hands. The two halves of the manacles that had bound him to the chain fell away from his wrists and dropped to the ground. His hands were unharmed.
He thought very carefully about what he was going to say so as not to embarrass himself, and eventually settled on.
“W-w-what?”
“You’re much more useful to us alive, friend,” Garan said.
Dalu held the massive cleaver in a guard with no effort. Nalosar kept his eyes on her. Everything about her posture suggested she would have preferred to strike to kill.
“Go back to your master,” Garan said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Tell him you failed. Tell him you lost a whole squad of Rahkshi.”
Nalosar’s breath caught. The walls of the chamber seemed to collapse in on him, and the shadows grew much deeper. He eyed the cleaver. Maybe he could provoke Dalu, get her to swing it in a rage…
Garan followed Nalosar’s line of sight and chuckled.
“What’s the problem? As you said, he’s on the side of law and order. Surely he will show you mercy like we did…”
Nalosar swallowed hard. When he finally spoke, his voice was too quiet and timid for his liking. But he was proud to hear a note of resolve in it too.
“Is it… Too late? To…”
Nalosar could not bring himself to finish the hateful, treasonous sentence. But Garan seemed to take his meaning. He strode across the cave floor to Nalosar’s side and looked down at the shivering, kneeling Matoran for a second.
Then, he extended a hand down towards him.
“Never too late, brother. Never.”
Nalosar took Garan’s hand and let him pull him upright. Nalosar didn’t miss how, at the end of everything he held dear, Garan managed a tired little smile.
“Grab a weapon.”