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Description
It was a quiet night as the wind blew over the low-cut grass, barely making noise in the valley of jungle. Several agori were still talking with their neigbours outside, enjoying the small campfire they had lit. Young ones sat on their laps and listened as the older ones told stories from both desperate and great times.

They were tales about almighty deities, who created living creatures out of nothing.
There were legends of glatorian, who got turned into powerful landlords, then turned corrupt in a fight over what belonged to the almighty deities.
Stories about the giants who fought on their homeground, bringing back peace after their initial destruction.

And of course there was told about Mata Nui, an extra terestial being who was a gift sent from heaven, created by the almighty deities, who were also known as the “Great Beings”. He was one of the two fighting giants, originally arriving on their homeplanet, which was barren back then. Starting out as glatorian, Mata Nui eventually got himself a giant body, meant to fight his old servant, Teridax, who had obtained an even bigger body.

Children laughed, and tried to replay the scene themselves when the older agori told about Mata Nui eventually throwing a moon at Teridax, thus crushing him. The kids climbed on top of each other in an attempt to appear as their savior, when the storytellers told how Mata Nui pulled the two moons to Bara Magna, to restore the ecosystem and turning the planet back into Spherus Magna.

As the neigbours finished their stories, the fires grew weaker and the amount of lighted windows became lesser, a deep and menacing cracking sound echoed through the valley. Every agori abruptly stopped what they were doing, and turned to where the sound had come from. Doors went open and other agori walked out of their dome-shaped homes to look at what was happening. In the east wall of the valley, which was the only fabricated wall there, appeared a deep crack just above the barred windows. A wild orange light shone through the windows, making the bricks around them look like they were glowing. Agori ran to the far western wall, as far away from the obvious threat as they could get. Children saught their parents, some glatorian accompanied the fleeing group to make sure no one got left behind, while other glatorian made their way to the cracked wall.

As the group of glatorian got closer to the east wall, orange flames licked the bars, and a horrifying skull appeared through a window, its empty eyesockets ablaze with bright yellow flames. The same went for the rest of its visible body. The glatorian halted, not wanting to scratch their warrior’s pride, but even less wanting to turn into a heap of ash. They stood there, staring at the firy being. Its sharp teeth formed a permanent grin, although it somehow seemed scared. Then it lowered down, leaving the wall’s bricks still glowing from the heat. As the orange light grew weaker, and a screech that the glatorian could only guess came from the weird being sounded, their leader gestured to move onward, to the gate. One of them split from the group, walking up a tower to open the gigantic entry to the outside, where the menacing beast of fire was waiting for them.

As the gateway started to open, a low voice from the other side shouted at them. “Don’t open the gate! Don’t open the gate dammit!” Then the same voice roared, and another crack at head level appeared in the wall. Soon after, the bricks started to glow orange.

The voice of metal against rock sounded through the tumult of raging fire, as if a sword was being pulled out of the wall. “Come at me, beast!,” the voice shouted supposedly at the firy creature.

“Tahu, that won’t do,” A calmer, yet colder, voice said, barely hearable for the glatorian of the other sides of the light-grey wall. There didn’t sound any voices for a while, suggesting the two persons were just exchaning looks.

“Keep your nonsense to yourself. I’m making progress on this guy, see?!” The first voice eventually shouted back. A few seconds later, another crack appeared, followed by the bricks glowing orange.

“You’re making progress on the wall.” It was the calm voice again. It somehow sounded menacing to the glatorian, but the first voice apparently didn’t seem to care.

“I said,” another web of cracks formed in the wall, this time a lot higher again. “Keep your nonsene,” instead of another crack appearing, the newest web spread out, the glow of the bricks intensifying. “To yourself!”

One last loud crack, and then a huge portion of the wall collapsed. The glatorian leader quickly shouted commands at his comrades, retreating to a safe distance from the collapsing wall. A cloud of grey dust covered the grass surrounding the gaping hole, and rubble shot in all directions, hitting one glatorian in the stomach, leaving him to a medic in the team.

From the cloud of dust, the group of glatorian, minus the unconsious one and the medic taking care of him, could see the blazing and enormous body of the creature lying on the ground. It slowly stood up, leaning on its arms while trying to get its legs under its body. As it straightened up, the creature somehow slightly seemed to grow in size. Then it turned around, facing away from the hole in the wall. After a few seconds, it stepped several steps forwards, out of the grey mass of blurryness. It scanned its surroundings, not even stopping to inspect the small group of glatorian.

Suddenly, coming from the cloud, a white bolt of energy stricked the creature in its back, throwing it to the ground and temporarily estinguishing the flames covering its weird skeletal body. In addition, the blast had driven most of the floating dust out of the way.

In the opening in the wall, six figures stood there. The one up front was a bulky red person, covered in gold chest- and shoulder armour, and wearing a fancy golden mask. He stood in a pose as if he was tired, yet still hungry for more fighting.

Next to him stood a white person of about the same size. His expression on his white Akaku was blank, which revealed to his teammates how he felt: disappointed.

Behind them stood a hunched black person with big claws, a brown warrior with big feet and a still glowing Kakama and a female blue fighter, her hooks attached to her back and her arms folded. She stared angrily at the red warrior.

The sixth one, a sleek green fighter with an axe in his right hand, stumbled forward, peeking over the red one’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of the caused damage.

“Good job, Tahu. You got that rage-mad fire guy into a nice-village of peasants,” the green one then said. Without any warning, the red person punched him in his face without even looking at him, revealing his identity as Tahu.

“You know that only Kopaka can affront our brother without risking to break a few ribs, Lewa,” the blue female said, still looking at her comrade of fire.

“That, Gali,” Tahu turned to her. “Is what you’re right about.” To give his words strength, he cracked his knuckles.

“Oh please, ain’t there something you can’t loud-crack for once?,” Lewa said, having already recovered from the hit in his face. A small crevice was visible in his Miru, however. Tahu replied by punching him with his elbow in his stomach.

“It’s not like I don’t deserve the mockery. But I’d rather have someone... clever do that to me.” He swung his thin sword, activating the crown of flames around it. Gali rolled her eyes. He always had to act so theatrical.

“Tahu,” his white comrade said.

“What?”

“You’re planning on fighting a living piece of flame,” he pointed at Tahu’s weapon. “With a stick of fire.”

“Yes?..”

“Think about it for a second.”

Tahu looked at his “stick”. “I can still take him on, Kopaka.”

The white one, named Kopaka, shook his head. “That behaviour will be your death.” He turned around to face his sister. “Gali.”

The toa of water nodded with a big smile on her face. She took the two hooks of her back, attaching them to her hands so it looked like she had weapons instead of lower arms. “I’m ready when you are.”

But Kopaka had already started approaching the creature of fire. He switched his position constantly while charging at the creature, making it impossible for it to predict his movements. He skillfully dodged every ball of fire thrown at him. He didn’t even move that fast, just careful and efficiently.

Gali quickly passed him, gathering water from several different sources on her way, taking it with her in the form of two snakes of water. The creature created waves of fire in an attempt to hit the female toa, but every time Kopaka quickly estinguished them with his ice power. After several attempts to turn the two toa into ashes, the creature of fire changed its tactics.

With one roar that echoed through the valley, it took out some of his pointy ribs that were set in place in its mostly fire-based body. The result was that it now wore extremely long and razor-sharp claws, still able to move easily thanks to the support by tiny pistons in its fingers. Other sharp bones, like teeth and some more ribs, rearranged themselves to give the creature some long fangs and menacing horns. Then it charged on all fours at the two approaching toa, leaving a trails of thrown away dirt behind it.

This time, a clear expression of disappointment appeared on Kopaka’s face. Gali looked at him. “Brother, what should I do now?”

He didn’t answer. For Gali, that made it clear. She guided the two snakes of water to Kopaka, then stopped running and focused on keeping the bodies of water under control. Kopaka increased his speed, now only twenty feet away from the devilish creature.

Then he suddenly pressed his feet in the ground, stopping his run abruptly. Gali charged the bodies of water forwards, towards the giant fire creature. The creature, not being dumb, increased the flames at the front of his body to vaporise most of the incoming water. But an almost unnoticable little twist of Kopaka’s sword turned the water snakes into two enormous spears of solid ice, reflecting the last few seconds of the creature’s terrified face on their shining surfaces, before the sharp chunks of ice slammed into its shoulders.

As the unconscious creature lay on the charred ground, two slowly melting spikes of ice pinning it to the ground, Lewa flew down and landed next to his brother of ice.

“You two sure quick-slayed that beast,” he said. His eyes were filled with excitement. Although they were the same age, Lewa was unarguably mentally the youngest member of their team.

When Kopaka didn’t reply, he continued. “You think he can speak-tell us more ‘bout that Argavyx fellow?”

Kopaka looked down at the creature. He listened to the hissing sound of the melting ice for a short moment, then answered. “I almost died three times. Don’t even consider it to turn out being all for nothing.”

The brown toa joined them. He wrapped his arms around his two brothers. “I agree with Kopaka. He probably risked his life more times that week than any of us did in our entire lives. What was it again, Kopaka? A pillar barely crushed you, you almost got choked by vines... Didn’t one of those Elemental Lords almost step on you too?”

With that, Kopaka removed himself from his brown brother’s hold.

“Uh- hey, Kopaka, I didn’t mean to-”

“He needs some alone time, Pohatu,” Gali interrupted him.

“But why would he? There ain’t no reason why cold-brother would be down-sad,” Lewa said.

But Gali shook her head. “No, you’re wrong. He doubts this creature. And to be honest, so do I. It just doesn’t seem as tough as Kopaka’s reports suggest.“

She looked at her brother of ice, who stood next to the Elemental Lord’s head, his sword and shield still in his hands. The group of glatorian had gathered beside him, and Kopaka was talking with their leader.

After a while, the toa of ice walked back to Gali, Pohatu and Lewa. He nodded to his sister. Her eyes widened, muscles tensed. That calm yet meaningful nod. That subtle move with his sword at the unconscious creatue.

Just moments later, the Elemental Lord erupted in flames, vaporising the spears in an instant. The toa and glatorian protected their eyes from the bright light, and once they looked back at where the creature had just been lying seconds ago, it was gone. But not only that. Kopaka was also gone.

It didn’t take long before they found him. The five toa Mata and the group of eleven glatorian had teamed up and had been following a trail of burnt grass. Lewa, lightfooted as he was, caught up to Gali, who was in front of the group.

“So, that flame-roarer’s pretty fast, ey?” he said to her. Her face got more serious. “The problem is that we have never had an encounter with the Lord of fire before, Lewa. Not even Kopaka knew of him. This guy might be a master of mischief,” she said.

A glatorian of jungle who was walking next to them, spoke up. “Are you saying that that ugly creep-face is an Elemental Lord?!” she said with a slight accent, indicating that Matoran wasn’t her original language.

Gali nodded. “Yes. And the toa who just got captured is Kopaka, toa Mata of ice. He has been acting as our informant during his infiltration into the Valley of the Maze.”

“But this big-firespitter’s got himself to the wrong valley,” Lewa added.

“Thankfully, yes. We were planning on capturing him since this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance, but then our brother decided to destroy your wall,” Gali said, nodding to Tahu.

The female glatorian grinned. “I don’t mind, you know? That wall kinda ruined the natural look of this valley.”

“Then why do ye have grey domes scattered all ‘round this place?” Lewa said.

“Brother, stop it!” Gali commanded him. He kept quiet, but he didn’t wipe that big smile off his face.

“It’s alright. Those domes were here before I came into existence, in contrary to that wall. They look kinda ugly indeed, now that you mention it,” the glatorian calmed them down. Then her face got serious again.

“If that creature’s indeed the Elemental Lord of fire, then we’ll need way more people than just us sixteen, seventeen if we include you brother of ice.” The glatorian paused for a moment, then continued. “This Elemental Lord has lead armies. As bestial as he seems, he’s definitely not dumb, and most probably also a tactical genius.”

Gali shrugged. “Not to come over as an arrogant toa, but we’ve been through a lot worse than seven overpowered beings. Of course you weren’t there, it has only been four years since our planets have conjoined and we found out that the Great Beings were still among us.”

“To be precise, we’ve been against entire armies of too-much-power guys, not to forget a large robot,” Lewa said.

The glatorian smiled nervously. “Well, let’s hope your brother of ice can live up to that premise as long as we haven’t gotten to him yet.”

No one said a word. After a while, the female glatorian continued. “Is that red toa the legendary Tahu?” she asked, quickly glancing at the Toa of fire, only to turn away her head when she realised he looked back at her.

Gali sighed. “Yes, yes that is him.”

“If you don’t mind me asking: why is he so much more... grim than the stories are telling?”

As soon as the words had left the glatorian’s mouth, Gali stopped, and so did Lewa. For once, the Toa of air had a pitty expression on his face, as he looked at Gali. He put his arm around her.

“I-I’m sorry if I insulted you, really, I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s alright,” Onua cut her off. He had caught up to them. “It has impacted all of our lives, but it had the most effect on Tahu.”

The glatorian of jungle wasn’t sure what to say, and after a few moments of dead silence, Onua told her.

“About two years ago, we were ambushed by a pack of bonehunters and their Vorox slaves. To buy us time to get away, Takanuva, seventh Toa and Toa of light, fought all of them together with his friend and chronicler, Jaller.” He took a deep breath. “They both died so that we could live on.”

Description
It was a quiet night as the wind blew over the low-cut grass, barely making noise in the valley of jungle. Several agori were still talking with their neigbours outside, enjoying the small campfire they had lit. Young ones sat on their laps and listened as the older ones told stories from both desperate and great times.

They were tales about almighty deities, who created living creatures out of nothing.
There were legends of glatorian, who got turned into powerful landlords, then turned corrupt in a fight over what belonged to the almighty deities.
Stories about the giants who fought on their homeground, bringing back peace after their initial destruction.

And of course there was told about Mata Nui, an extra terestial being who was a gift sent from heaven, created by the almighty deities, who were also known as the “Great Beings”. He was one of the two fighting giants, originally arriving on their homeplanet, which was barren back then. Starting out as glatorian, Mata Nui eventually got himself a giant body, meant to fight his old servant, Teridax, who had obtained an even bigger body.

Children laughed, and tried to replay the scene themselves when the older agori told about Mata Nui eventually throwing a moon at Teridax, thus crushing him. The kids climbed on top of each other in an attempt to appear as their savior, when the storytellers told how Mata Nui pulled the two moons to Bara Magna, to restore the ecosystem and turning the planet back into Spherus Magna.

As the neigbours finished their stories, the fires grew weaker and the amount of lighted windows became lesser, a deep and menacing cracking sound echoed through the valley. Every agori abruptly stopped what they were doing, and turned to where the sound had come from. Doors went open and other agori walked out of their dome-shaped homes to look at what was happening. In the east wall of the valley, which was the only fabricated wall there, appeared a deep crack just above the barred windows. A wild orange light shone through the windows, making the bricks around them look like they were glowing. Agori ran to the far western wall, as far away from the obvious threat as they could get. Children saught their parents, some glatorian accompanied the fleeing group to make sure no one got left behind, while other glatorian made their way to the cracked wall.

As the group of glatorian got closer to the east wall, orange flames licked the bars, and a horrifying skull appeared through a window, its empty eyesockets ablaze with bright yellow flames. The same went for the rest of its visible body. The glatorian halted, not wanting to scratch their warrior’s pride, but even less wanting to turn into a heap of ash. They stood there, staring at the firy being. Its sharp teeth formed a permanent grin, although it somehow seemed scared. Then it lowered down, leaving the wall’s bricks still glowing from the heat. As the orange light grew weaker, and a screech that the glatorian could only guess came from the weird being sounded, their leader gestured to move onward, to the gate. One of them split from the group, walking up a tower to open the gigantic entry to the outside, where the menacing beast of fire was waiting for them.

As the gateway started to open, a low voice from the other side shouted at them. “Don’t open the gate! Don’t open the gate dammit!” Then the same voice roared, and another crack at head level appeared in the wall. Soon after, the bricks started to glow orange.

The voice of metal against rock sounded through the tumult of raging fire, as if a sword was being pulled out of the wall. “Come at me, beast!,” the voice shouted supposedly at the firy creature.

“Tahu, that won’t do,” A calmer, yet colder, voice said, barely hearable for the glatorian of the other sides of the light-grey wall. There didn’t sound any voices for a while, suggesting the two persons were just exchaning looks.

“Keep your nonsense to yourself. I’m making progress on this guy, see?!” The first voice eventually shouted back. A few seconds later, another crack appeared, followed by the bricks glowing orange.

“You’re making progress on the wall.” It was the calm voice again. It somehow sounded menacing to the glatorian, but the first voice apparently didn’t seem to care.

“I said,” another web of cracks formed in the wall, this time a lot higher again. “Keep your nonsene,” instead of another crack appearing, the newest web spread out, the glow of the bricks intensifying. “To yourself!”

One last loud crack, and then a huge portion of the wall collapsed. The glatorian leader quickly shouted commands at his comrades, retreating to a safe distance from the collapsing wall. A cloud of grey dust covered the grass surrounding the gaping hole, and rubble shot in all directions, hitting one glatorian in the stomach, leaving him to a medic in the team.

From the cloud of dust, the group of glatorian, minus the unconsious one and the medic taking care of him, could see the blazing and enormous body of the creature lying on the ground. It slowly stood up, leaning on its arms while trying to get its legs under its body. As it straightened up, the creature somehow slightly seemed to grow in size. Then it turned around, facing away from the hole in the wall. After a few seconds, it stepped several steps forwards, out of the grey mass of blurryness. It scanned its surroundings, not even stopping to inspect the small group of glatorian.

Suddenly, coming from the cloud, a white bolt of energy stricked the creature in its back, throwing it to the ground and temporarily estinguishing the flames covering its weird skeletal body. In addition, the blast had driven most of the floating dust out of the way.

In the opening in the wall, six figures stood there. The one up front was a bulky red person, covered in gold chest- and shoulder armour, and wearing a fancy golden mask. He stood in a pose as if he was tired, yet still hungry for more fighting.

Next to him stood a white person of about the same size. His expression on his white Akaku was blank, which revealed to his teammates how he felt: disappointed.

Behind them stood a hunched black person with big claws, a brown warrior with big feet and a still glowing Kakama and a female blue fighter, her hooks attached to her back and her arms folded. She stared angrily at the red warrior.

The sixth one, a sleek green fighter with an axe in his right hand, stumbled forward, peeking over the red one’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of the caused damage.

“Good job, Tahu. You got that rage-mad fire guy into a nice-village of peasants,” the green one then said. Without any warning, the red person punched him in his face without even looking at him, revealing his identity as Tahu.

“You know that only Kopaka can affront our brother without risking to break a few ribs, Lewa,” the blue female said, still looking at her comrade of fire.

“That, Gali,” Tahu turned to her. “Is what you’re right about.” To give his words strength, he cracked his knuckles.

“Oh please, ain’t there something you can’t loud-crack for once?,” Lewa said, having already recovered from the hit in his face. A small crevice was visible in his Miru, however. Tahu replied by punching him with his elbow in his stomach.

“It’s not like I don’t deserve the mockery. But I’d rather have someone... clever do that to me.” He swung his thin sword, activating the crown of flames around it. Gali rolled her eyes. He always had to act so theatrical.

“Tahu,” his white comrade said.

“What?”

“You’re planning on fighting a living piece of flame,” he pointed at Tahu’s weapon. “With a stick of fire.”

“Yes?..”

“Think about it for a second.”

Tahu looked at his “stick”. “I can still take him on, Kopaka.”

The white one, named Kopaka, shook his head. “That behaviour will be your death.” He turned around to face his sister. “Gali.”

The toa of water nodded with a big smile on her face. She took the two hooks of her back, attaching them to her hands so it looked like she had weapons instead of lower arms. “I’m ready when you are.”

But Kopaka had already started approaching the creature of fire. He switched his position constantly while charging at the creature, making it impossible for it to predict his movements. He skillfully dodged every ball of fire thrown at him. He didn’t even move that fast, just careful and efficiently.

Gali quickly passed him, gathering water from several different sources on her way, taking it with her in the form of two snakes of water. The creature created waves of fire in an attempt to hit the female toa, but every time Kopaka quickly estinguished them with his ice power. After several attempts to turn the two toa into ashes, the creature of fire changed its tactics.

With one roar that echoed through the valley, it took out some of his pointy ribs that were set in place in its mostly fire-based body. The result was that it now wore extremely long and razor-sharp claws, still able to move easily thanks to the support by tiny pistons in its fingers. Other sharp bones, like teeth and some more ribs, rearranged themselves to give the creature some long fangs and menacing horns. Then it charged on all fours at the two approaching toa, leaving a trails of thrown away dirt behind it.

This time, a clear expression of disappointment appeared on Kopaka’s face. Gali looked at him. “Brother, what should I do now?”

He didn’t answer. For Gali, that made it clear. She guided the two snakes of water to Kopaka, then stopped running and focused on keeping the bodies of water under control. Kopaka increased his speed, now only twenty feet away from the devilish creature.

Then he suddenly pressed his feet in the ground, stopping his run abruptly. Gali charged the bodies of water forwards, towards the giant fire creature. The creature, not being dumb, increased the flames at the front of his body to vaporise most of the incoming water. But an almost unnoticable little twist of Kopaka’s sword turned the water snakes into two enormous spears of solid ice, reflecting the last few seconds of the creature’s terrified face on their shining surfaces, before the sharp chunks of ice slammed into its shoulders.

As the unconscious creature lay on the charred ground, two slowly melting spikes of ice pinning it to the ground, Lewa flew down and landed next to his brother of ice.

“You two sure quick-slayed that beast,” he said. His eyes were filled with excitement. Although they were the same age, Lewa was unarguably mentally the youngest member of their team.

When Kopaka didn’t reply, he continued. “You think he can speak-tell us more ‘bout that Argavyx fellow?”

Kopaka looked down at the creature. He listened to the hissing sound of the melting ice for a short moment, then answered. “I almost died three times. Don’t even consider it to turn out being all for nothing.”

The brown toa joined them. He wrapped his arms around his two brothers. “I agree with Kopaka. He probably risked his life more times that week than any of us did in our entire lives. What was it again, Kopaka? A pillar barely crushed you, you almost got choked by vines... Didn’t one of those Elemental Lords almost step on you too?”

With that, Kopaka removed himself from his brown brother’s hold.

“Uh- hey, Kopaka, I didn’t mean to-”

“He needs some alone time, Pohatu,” Gali interrupted him.

“But why would he? There ain’t no reason why cold-brother would be down-sad,” Lewa said.

But Gali shook her head. “No, you’re wrong. He doubts this creature. And to be honest, so do I. It just doesn’t seem as tough as Kopaka’s reports suggest.“

She looked at her brother of ice, who stood next to the Elemental Lord’s head, his sword and shield still in his hands. The group of glatorian had gathered beside him, and Kopaka was talking with their leader.

After a while, the toa of ice walked back to Gali, Pohatu and Lewa. He nodded to his sister. Her eyes widened, muscles tensed. That calm yet meaningful nod. That subtle move with his sword at the unconscious creatue.

Just moments later, the Elemental Lord erupted in flames, vaporising the spears in an instant. The toa and glatorian protected their eyes from the bright light, and once they looked back at where the creature had just been lying seconds ago, it was gone. But not only that. Kopaka was also gone.

It didn’t take long before they found him. The five toa Mata and the group of eleven glatorian had teamed up and had been following a trail of burnt grass. Lewa, lightfooted as he was, caught up to Gali, who was in front of the group.

“So, that flame-roarer’s pretty fast, ey?” he said to her. Her face got more serious. “The problem is that we have never had an encounter with the Lord of fire before, Lewa. Not even Kopaka knew of him. This guy might be a master of mischief,” she said.

A glatorian of jungle who was walking next to them, spoke up. “Are you saying that that ugly creep-face is an Elemental Lord?!” she said with a slight accent, indicating that Matoran wasn’t her original language.

Gali nodded. “Yes. And the toa who just got captured is Kopaka, toa Mata of ice. He has been acting as our informant during his infiltration into the Valley of the Maze.”

“But this big-firespitter’s got himself to the wrong valley,” Lewa added.

“Thankfully, yes. We were planning on capturing him since this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance, but then our brother decided to destroy your wall,” Gali said, nodding to Tahu.

The female glatorian grinned. “I don’t mind, you know? That wall kinda ruined the natural look of this valley.”

“Then why do ye have grey domes scattered all ‘round this place?” Lewa said.

“Brother, stop it!” Gali commanded him. He kept quiet, but he didn’t wipe that big smile off his face.

“It’s alright. Those domes were here before I came into existence, in contrary to that wall. They look kinda ugly indeed, now that you mention it,” the glatorian calmed them down. Then her face got serious again.

“If that creature’s indeed the Elemental Lord of fire, then we’ll need way more people than just us sixteen, seventeen if we include you brother of ice.” The glatorian paused for a moment, then continued. “This Elemental Lord has lead armies. As bestial as he seems, he’s definitely not dumb, and most probably also a tactical genius.”

Gali shrugged. “Not to come over as an arrogant toa, but we’ve been through a lot worse than seven overpowered beings. Of course you weren’t there, it has only been four years since our planets have conjoined and we found out that the Great Beings were still among us.”

“To be precise, we’ve been against entire armies of too-much-power guys, not to forget a large robot,” Lewa said.

The glatorian smiled nervously. “Well, let’s hope your brother of ice can live up to that premise as long as we haven’t gotten to him yet.”

No one said a word. After a while, the female glatorian continued. “Is that red toa the legendary Tahu?” she asked, quickly glancing at the Toa of fire, only to turn away her head when she realised he looked back at her.

Gali sighed. “Yes, yes that is him.”

“If you don’t mind me asking: why is he so much more... grim than the stories are telling?”

As soon as the words had left the glatorian’s mouth, Gali stopped, and so did Lewa. For once, the Toa of air had a pitty expression on his face, as he looked at Gali. He put his arm around her.

“I-I’m sorry if I insulted you, really, I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s alright,” Onua cut her off. He had caught up to them. “It has impacted all of our lives, but it had the most effect on Tahu.”

The glatorian of jungle wasn’t sure what to say, and after a few moments of dead silence, Onua told her.

“About two years ago, we were ambushed by a pack of bonehunters and their Vorox slaves. To buy us time to get away, Takanuva, seventh Toa and Toa of light, fought all of them together with his friend and chronicler, Jaller.” He took a deep breath. “They both died so that we could live on.”