Their Lesser Chronicles

I try to not get too much into his head. He shouldn’t have any more life beyond the one he was given, and I don’t let him occupy my head as much as I did before. But I wonder if so much of who he was came from a crisis of identity, from not being The Makuta, but just another one of the many.

I say this only because I knew him as that, the fearsome Makuta, Mata Nui’s brother who grew jealous of him and was hellbent on making our lives something we wanted to be done with. That’s how the Turaga referred to him: The Makuta. They must’ve known enough about the species, though, that even if they hadn’t known his name they could’ve at least pointed to the fact that he was only A Makuta, one of many more. But no. Even they were complicit in making him the root of all evil. They’ve always liked stories (and I guess I’m guilty of that now, as well), so it makes sense that they’d give him the pleasure of being The most evil, most malignant, of all things.

Imagine being created with such a curse as ambition is, only to realize there were over a dozen versions of you that had been created, also with the same ambitions, also the same potential, also the same name. Makuta. It’s a thing with hard and cruel phonemes, like you’re spitting out something you knew would be bitter but not that horrid. Teridax has a similar ring to it, but it sounds too much like Miserix, like Icarax, two names that I know, though what really matters is that Makuta is the only name I remember, the only name I can ever remember. And he wasn’t even leader of the organization. Imagine seeing someone as weak-willed as Miserix, ineffective as I assume the Turaga of Metru Nui was during the Civil War. Imagine seeing that leader and wondering how he can also be a Makuta, because wouldn’t that mean some of him is also in you?

I would’ve told you that maybe I’m too docile and would never even begin to entertain the notion of taking over from Turaga Nuju, or now Turaga Dume; but this Makuta, he supplanted his own leader no problem, and wasn’t that supposed to be an indication of how he would succeed to take over the universe? Ambition, foresight, these things carry you far. But Teridax was the essence of the traits a Makuta carries. He was simply unlucky that the name wasn’t his, and only his. He was cursed, not so much with ambitiousness for power so much as he was cursed with ambitiousness for a name.

He showed he could defeat anyone, through fear, through cunning, through shock. He subdued the other Makuta to work for his Plan. So why kill those in Karda Nui? They could’ve served his purpose. He could’ve promised them riches, power, a universe for each to rule and create life and be the Makuta, the only Makuta, The Makuta, of that universe of their own. It’s what he’d always wanted.

Maybe he didn’t let them live because even the idea of offering this to them, to exile them under pretenses of glory, would’ve left him knowing there were others who called themselves The Makuta.

I’ve tried looking for the etymology of the word, but I’ve found nothing. Granted, we barely named him those first thousand years, and the fear of looking into him, even after dead, could be making me so ready to not look further. As I said, he was in our heads long enough, he ruled our universe enough, so even writing this reflection feels like I’m bringing part of him back to life.

But it has to be said. It has to be said - or at least considered - because this thing we call evil, we trouble over it but still don’t know what it is. Is it innate, something planted in us by the Great Beings? Do we develop it from moral deficiencies? From the thrill of success and glory?

Was The Makuta an exception, or the norm?

His existence has to mean something to us, but I would challenge you to find someone who would give this more thought than even I have. No one wants to be tempted by The Makuta.

We might see what made him him. We might suddenly start tasting that bitter taste in our mouths.

CONFIDENTIAL:

FOR THE EYES OF HELRYX ONLY:

Our analysis suggests it would be risky to approach this Matoran and make him a servant of the Order. The reasons why, based on the intelligence you requested and our own observations, are listed below:

- Krakua is a De-Matoran living in De-Koro towards the outskirts of the Tren Krom Peninsula. We know there are exceptions (Mazeka) to the norm of villainy and deficiency that comes from there (see the files on Toa Nidhiki, and unconfirmed reports of the Ta-Matoran Vultraz’s return), and we are concerned that Krakua takes after the ethos of his homeland.

- De-Matoran, indeed any creature of Sonics, already exists with a weakness greater than any that other Toa or Matoran may face due to their own elemental belonging. These Matoran are incredibly susceptible to any noise louder than a scream, knocking them out with the same effect as that of a mask being removed. This would imply that he would have to be taken care of extensively, a usage of resources we would not suggest allocating at this time.

- Krakua is a bit of an anomaly in his Koro, as he hums to himself. This has made him a bit of an outcast, to put it charitably. As he walks from one place to another, his brothers avoid him, crossing away from his path or going into buildings before he notices them. There is something interesting about this point, though: he doesn’t notice them. He may be comfortable being himself, but he may also be absent-minded and careless; we have been able to train many of our servants and members to overcome these deficiencies, yet we worry that someone who has a flaw going so much against his own element could be a lost battle for us to wage.

- During the attack listed in our previous communique, our servant Mazeka was able to save Krakua from a sonic attack. Mazeka has already shown an aptitude for acting under stress and putting himself in harm’s way; because of this, we would use this example to suggest you instead consider making Mazeka a Toa and not the Matoran Krakua.

then-Matoran Hahli stood, catatonic, in front of the Ussanui that Taku-

Takanuva (had to get used to the name),

and others were putting together, made of other things that were now dead. Maybe they’d never been alive; carapaces of Bohrok, Rahkshi staffs, calcified remains of flying Rahi that were strewn all over the jungle. Maybe that’s what they all were, in the end. Because if they weren’t, then Jaller had suffered, and had died, for nothing.

Who was to say whether this plan would work? One had to be distrustful of prophecies, since they could end up being stories we clothed under the veil of fate to convince ourselves that we knew where things were going. They were vague things, things that could be twisted and taken literally or metaphorically, evidence to back up any claim or any worry we were carrying. There must’ve been some prophecy of someone dying or sacrificing themselves. The Matoran and Turaga around her must’ve been handling this better than she was because they believed Jaller’s death was foretold.

His body was just lying there, mouth agape, eyes closed. From another angle you wouldn’t be able to see into his mask’s eyeholes and you’d think he was sleeping. Could she tell herself over and over again that this is what had happened to him? She was still rooted to the ground, and hadn’t moved now for well over an hour. She had to give it to those around her that were doing her the kindness of checking in with her. She would’ve screamed. Maybe cried. Maybe kicked the Ussanui until it was nothing, and there was no purpose to journeying below, because Jaller was dead and there was no real need to do anything of importance, was there?

Mata Nui could be damned, because they had to keep sacrificing so much for absolutely nothing.

If she were a Toa, she thought to herself, she wouldn’t bullshit her friends with lies to make them feel better. She owed them the truth. She would fight for them, because if death was guaranteed then she should at least make it worth it. She would ignore prophecies or etchings on walls, because she could only believe in what was in front of her.

Her lifelong friend Jaller lay dead in front of her, and night fell like they were all back to living their normal lives. She couldn’t do this anymore.

But if he were still here, she thought, he’d shake her, and tell her she had a duty to perform. Ha. Perform was the right word there, because she didn’t know what to do, she only knew how to act out a role, how to act out her role. Did he buy into his own role, of a fearless leader and warrior who would give his life for a cause? Or is this something he truly believed? Could he have been such a fanatic to give himself into something he knew not how it ended?

She would not be able to ask him. She had to remind herself of that.

If you ask others who were there that day, the most powerful thing was when Hahli walked up with Jaller’s mask and gave it to Takanuva to install in his Ussanui. A moment of reverence and power, most people think. But she told me that it was an effort to get rid of the thing that was torturing her soul.

And yet, she felt such guilt later, an empty pang in her chest, and she tortured herself even more, and finally decided against her own better judgment to hide inside the vehicle, so that she could see revenge exacted on the creature that had caused them so much pain, that had led to Jaller’s death, that led her to nurture this previously-undiscovered rage.

Toa Hahli jokes nowadays that this is how the universe knew she was ready to become a Toa, because her spirit had finally broken into something different. Now she believes that Jaller’s was always of this kind, and that the universe could not let her friend die just like that. Seeing a Mask of Life at least assured her that the Great Beings did not take death lightly.

I’ve been watching my latest visitor for an hour now. He’s a Toa of Air and he wears a Miru; he’s not Lewa, though, this turns out to just be a coincidence. He hasn’t told me his name, but he has told me he was a veteran of the Toa-Dark Hunter War, and a survivor of a raid into Vortixx from a few centuries ago. He was stationed there, though he still won’t tell me what secret mission he had there. Maybe he’ll never tell me. And he lost his left arm in the Battle of Le-Koro, which is not that great a loss compared to the hundreds of fighters who lost their lives that day, going up against the Rahkshi unleashed upon them.

Finally, he turns to me to speak, and I begin jotting down what he says now which I shall immortalize later.

I was part of the wave that served as support for Toa Takanuva. The plan we had been told to follow centered around how we’d first be sending a wave of Matoran in Boxors since they’d be targets more than anything. They wouldn’t be in danger, though; the next step of the battle strategy was for those Matoran to use a special switch installed under the seat of their Boxors so they would be launched up into the air and out of danger as the army of Rahkshi inevitably got caught up in attacking the now-empty metallic carcasses. But he who controlled the troops of Rahkshi, the dreaded Makuta, he showed just how much of a worthy opponent and strategist he was. We felt a gust of wind fly across the battlefield, and the switches under the Boxor seats became oxidized. The Matoran who tried to flip them open couldn’t, and they remained imprisoned in the cockpit as they were killed. At least it was quick, the Rahkshi used disintegration powers.

The trick in our battle plan, then, worked against us, ironically. We couldn’t see through  the onslaught of air, so we assumed the plan had worked and that the Matoran had been launched to safety, and so we pushed ahead with all of our might. This second wave consisted of about twenty of us Toa led by Toa Takanuva, a dozen tamed Rahi natural to the fauna of Mata Nui proper, and shoulder-mounted disk launchers that our good marksmen Matoran carried.

And you never noticed, in all honesty, that there was something odd about the Boxor plan?

No. As far as we could tell, the plan worked. Our orders were to wait a few seconds until we heard the chorus of switches clicking and then that we should launch into the action. I can’t speak for the other ones, but I assumed that the pilots had been launched into the air and were able to find places to land. We didn’t hear any screams, any warnings. It makes me think Makuta might have redirected the air in order to change the acoustics of the field. Maybe something was being kept from us, is something I always thought during those battles; the Makuta and his minions could read and control minds, so who was to stop them from using our own fighters and strategies against us? You could take off our masks, now we had other treasures in our minds.

We pushed ahead. We didn’t look back. This is how we had been trained as Toa at the outset of the Great Darkness, and this is how we had later trained the various Matoran who joined our ranks. You might follow the code of Kopaka, but our strategies called for swift action, not based on thought, but on disorienting our enemies. And we were incredibly effective at this, since those few seconds in which Makuta’s orders were sent to the minds of his minions were the perfect moments to strike. So no, I never would have been able to tell.

The Rahkshi blazed past the Boxor graveyard pretty quickly, and half the Toa were tackled to the ground. Red eyes lit impossibly bright and half of my comrades vanished. Now I heard the screams of fear, but they were coming from in front of me and behind me, and I realized, almost calmly, that we were about to be massacred. As a Toa, you prepare to die. I’ve joked that this is one of the later parts of our training, that our destiny includes this big asterisk that reminds us that we didn’t have the choice to be in a line of work with a high mortality rate.

So what went wrong?

I learned what my priorities were.

Here the Toa again paused. I let him stay like this, knowing that in those silences the speaker most feels the need to burst open with what they want to say. It wasn’t an hour this time, but he took the better part of fifteen minutes to resume his telling of the battle.

Toa Takanuva is a hero. His tales are told everywhere, and I could see he showed heroism in every battle. He would give up everything, even for the most insignificant of creatures. And he almost did that during the battle. A Toa of Water’s concentrated attack knocked down a Po-Matoran and a Rahkshi, and the Rahkhshi got up faster than the Matoran. And I saw, as did Toa Takanuva, the creature preparing to fire its lazer at the unfortunate victim. I knew what was going to happen because heroes will always act the same way. Toa Takanuva leapt to where the Matoran was. He was spreading himself wide, making himself, and not the Matoran, the target. But Toa Takanuva, on purely tactical terms, was infinitely more important to us all. So I beat him there. I pushed Toa Takanuva to the side, out of harm’s way. The beam struck the Matoran. And because I hadn’t been fast enough, also my arm.

I can see your face. I know you told me you’d remain impartial and non-judgmental, but it’s fine if you’re judging me. I know I was a coward. Many Toa are. It’s why so many of you all seem to be taken aback when a Toa turns evil or turns a failure, because even we’re conditioned to never entertain the notion that we also have our own failings. But we do. I do. So I saved Toa Takanuva and lost an arm, and a soldier, in the process. Judge me.

A little book tucked deep in Turaga Nuju’s chambers contains the most important sentence, one that has helped make my profession easier.

The now-deceased Chronicler who wrote it claimed that he would’ve preferred not to be shy, since that would have freed him from writing stories down, that it was purer, he said, to tell a story to someone and let it die, fade, with the listener as the sole remaining record of the teller’s story. It’s very telling that the aforementioned Chronicler’s name has been lost yet his truism remains.

As we reached the end of history, we wondered what our future would entail. First it was when our universe was overtaken, since everything had changed and, I thought, needed to be written down, shared with others, a reminder that this was not our normal, that when it ended I would keep chronicling what would come next, because something had to come next, this couldn’t be how our story ended. Later, as I walked alongside a battalion following Toa Tahu a troop of creatures hungering for freedom led by that legendary hero on this Bara Magna planet, I followed, dreaming of victory, and of telling stories of victory that would remain timeless.

That was a year ago. Now, overlooking the giant robots and the moss that overtakes them, I realize history has continued, but with no events for me to chronicle, no grand makers or main characters to continue telling our struggles. I set camp by Mata Nui Lake, thinking that if any grand event were to happen, it would be at the resting place of our Great Spirit. Later I would learn to wait for people, since they were the ones that made events happen. But at the start no one came.

No one of importance, at least. I have instead welcomed pilgrims coming from as far as the Southernmost Islands. I fed Thornax stew to a Glatorian who had many moons ago renounced violence though it hadn’t renounced him. I heard the incredible tales of a Matoran who claimed to have worked alongside the Great Beings in all their pride and folly. I provided shelter to a group of Toa who had been freed from experimentation pods during the Crash, only to realize it had been 10,000 years and the only thing they could still see alive was their shared trauma.

History became not about the big heroes and grandiose actions, but about the small Koro built atop a lake of pure Energized Protodermis or the Agori who would have died during a Baterra attack had it not been for the kindness of a passing stranger who would instead die in his place. “History” was every story that came to visit the last properly ‘great’ historical event, the day when Mata Nui left us by retreating into the Mask of Life. I was just lucky to be here and to be able to pen each of their stories. Their lesser chronicles, as it were.

Ice carving, even with tools designed for that, was never my strong suit. But I create, out of ice, a diorama for each tale told to me,, a single vignette showing that lesser chronicle. Now the guests stay an extra night to see my handiwork. All of them have so far rejected my offer for them to keep the sculpture (though the gift of someone’s story is the one that demands our eternal gratitude), and so this new wall of history is a collection of statues with very small blurbs beneath them. I add another one every week.

I’ve been told that Toa Takanuva has started spreading the word about this place (“the closest thing to the Great Archives we’re ever had!”, he apparently tells anyone who will listen). So as I prepare myself to be less shy, to tell a story and have it die in the telling, I will draft the stories out in full, purely for my sake, to make it a true chronicle, a hidden text, a brief story.