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That Wistful Place Above


Aderia

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Synopsis/Author's Note: Krahka has long been one of my favorite Bionicle characters. I thought I'd write a bit about her journey that brought her closer to being a Toa than she ever expected. This takes place right between The Darkness Below and Legends of Metru Nui, and I have to disclaim that lines of dialogue were taken directly from those books. Also, terms used in the story as the language of her people are butchered Maori terms. Thank you, and enjoy! 

 

 

That Wistful Place Above

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“She fought to protect her home. But too much power, fueled by too much anger, made her a menace,” Vakama said quietly. “Perhaps I saw a reflection of ourselves in her … or what we could become, if we are not very careful.” - Toa Metru Vakama, The Darkness Below 

 


 

    The words of the Toa hounded her, even through the fog of her exhausted dreams. Relentlessly, they swirled around her as she fled back to the echo of her homeland. Sleep had once been merciful, and it had been in its anesthetizing embrace she’d first been able to lock away the piercing, burning memories of the last days of her home and her people, felled by the merciless conquest of the stealers of life.

 

    The Selfless Ones, is what their name meant, in their own fluid tongue. The Krahkani people - Krahka. A wordplay on their shape-changing abilities, yes, but more. Her people had once lived in close-knit covens across the entire island, where the boundary between the good of oneself and the good of another was indistinct. Curiosity, the thrill and novelty of learning together, growing together. But, no longer.

 

    “You will be alone for eternity, Krahka.” The much fresher memory of the Toa’s prediction in their battle, mere hours ago, bludgeoned away the long-buried reminiscence of home and belonging that wanted so badly to be resurrected. 

   

    “They fear you,” another one of the little heroes had spat at her. 

 

    But what did any of the top-dwellers know of fear? Real fear. The kind of fear that blazes fiercely enough to strip you of yourself? Leave you adrift? With not even a pinprick of bitter hope to turn away from? It was the kind of primal fear that any sentient being could conceive of, but was so far, terrible, incomprehensible that it became a ridiculous, foreign concept that was sublimated into story time around a night fire. No, these top-dwellers were safe from even the concept of the scourge, the horde, and the decay and desolation always, always left in its wake. And she couldn’t even find it within herself to begin to wish it upon them. 

 

    “They know you for a deceiver.” Sharp words from the hero with the power of the tides flowing through her veins, held back by only her willpower and naivety, and who had unwittingly earned Krahka’s respect. 

 

    Deceiver.

 

    Deceit. Fear. The two walked closer than brothers in the minds of the top-dwellers. Perhaps that was the price exacted by such grand self-assurance that drove the Toa so boldly down into her solitude.

 

    “Even in the suns’ light, monster, you will always be in night-dark!”

 

    The night-dark. She remembered how it had swallowed her up when she’d first fled into it, in a blind panic, fleeing from the ashes of the only life she’d every known. It had taken her in, she clung to it, drawing comfort from the anonymity it provided. Ironic, that anonymity should be something that one with no shape to call her own would seek. In the night-dark, her consternation had aged into melancholy contemplation.

 

    Endling.

 

    She was no longer a self. And for what must have been ages, in the numbing night-dark of her cold corridors and caverns, there was no need to be. Because the crushing, constricting weight of what had befallen her home and her people - and worse, that she had somehow survived - was too heavy for a lone self to bear.

 

    “She fought to protect her home…” These words, the last she'd heard from the top-dwellers, cut the deepest.

 

    The Krahka stirred awake, shaking off the crust of dried lava from her escape from the Toa Metru along with the fragmented shards of dreams from an era past. Never before had she expended so much energy to create and maintain a transformation. The overwhelming ferocity of what could have only been elemental power flowing through the frame of Toa was like a sweet hum through every fiber and sinew running beneath the armor. Bursting, singing, begging to be used. That kind of power could be addicting. 

 

    But the thrill of raw elemental power was just the crest of the Kikanalo. These Toa - yes, their names drifted back into her working memory as her consciousness dragged itself back from fatigued respite - they’d given her more than one invaluable gift. She’d observed them far longer and far more thoroughly than they could ever be comfortable with. Apart from the stray cataloguer or maintenance worker - both new terms for her - these Toa were the only top-dwellers she’d had the chance to observe. Unwelcome, of course. But Krahka understood a sound defeat, and was no fool. A fool was one who refused to learn from their failures. And long had she been a fool.

 

    She now had enough of the top-dweller’s language at her command to communicate. That much was clear. That was one gift from the Toa. As close to literally as possible, it opened a whole new world of possibility to her. But possibility was not something she sought, and the first gift of language would have rotted away unused without the second.

 

    The second gift was gleaned from her observation of the Toa, and proven in the way they battled and bickered together. It was precisely that - together. Brothers. Sisters. And, she realized, that’s what had begun to wrench the key stabbed into the lock around her ihio - her people’s word for that inmost seat of self that didn’t change with one’s shape, but was nonetheless shaped by it and that which was around it, whether it be friend or foe, culture or catastrophe. The longing for belonging innate in most sentient beings, at least in her experience and imitation of them. That longing was growling awake after a lonely hibernation, and the part of her that they called animal, other, Rahi, couldn’t help but be stirred to action by it. 

 

    One thing Krahka decided she had taken for granted about her current lava eel shape was that, when exhausted as she was, at least there were no legs for her to stagger up on to.

   

     She took her time slithering toward the surface, drawn by both the hunger from the ache of loss long past and the foreboding curiosity that had whispered that hunger awake. 

 


 

    One thing the Toa Metru had assured her was that the other top-dwellers would never accept her. She was classified clearly as not us, and based on what she saw in the Archives, that black-and-white designation sentenced her to a life in stasis. In retrospect, her timidity in taking on this new world at long last was largely due to spending so much time under the suspended, sorrowful stares of the Rahi lining every corridor.  True, the amount of information and plethora of species she added to her terohki grew exponentially, but she wondered if the knowledge was worth the seed of repulsion and fear for Matoran-kind that was planted. 

 

    Terohki. It wasn’t a term that translated directly for top-dwellers, but it was close to cache, repository, or arsenal, if her people had been of a more belligerent bent. The terohki consisted of the forms held within a Krahka’s working memory that they could take and manipulate at will. The keterohki included forms once taken, but since forgotten. Nonetheless, those forms were considered an integral part of the Krahka who carried them, as they’d shaped the ihio. The keterohki, thus, also became a respectful euphemism to refer to those of the coven who had passed on. Krahka had the last and the largest keterohki, and it was a burden that became much heavier once she ventured out of the shadows. With each exhibit plaque she read and trapped form she ingested into her terohki, she felt the weight of her keterohki grow. 

 

    Your time will come, again, she promised a lovely Proto-Drake in the Amphibians Hall, one day. The part of her they called Rahi was repulsed by the Archives. But that same part instinctively understood that she was in the top-dweller’s territory - acutely, consciously, constantly aware of the fact. Swaggering in and throwing things around like a Brakas gone batty was not the way to get what you wanted, which was a lesson she still dreamed of teaching the so called Toa Metru. The fear that they would or already had sent more top-dwellers down into her home still gnawed at her. But, honestly, the Matoran who toiled here in the museum looked to her almost idyllic. Self-satisfied in their work, and perhaps quietly dreaming of something more, but too modest to ever say so. This was the life the Toa would fight so hard to protect and preserve? She now knew she couldn’t best the Toa, united as they were, in a direct confrontation. But she’d proven over and over that she could outwit 

 

    “Are you lost?” An inquisitive blue mask poked into her field of vision and started her out of her contemplation.

 

    “No,” she took a step back from the minor worms exhibit. “Not lost.” She turned her head and looked at the speaker. “Are you lost?”

 

    He seemed to think that was some witty joke on her part, because a wide grin broke over his concerned expression. “Not officially, but if the Vahki ask, I got hit with a Staff of Confusion and I’m still recovering!” He feigned a confused stumble, almost knocking into the display case of seabed worms.

 

    Too aware that she was stuck in observation mode, she forced a smile onto whichever mask she was wearing today. “Stupid Vahki,” she agreed. It seemed like a safe thing to say. Indeed, the enforcers unnerved her. She’d never encountered a being who she couldn’t ingest into her terohki. It had taken her a few days to realize they were fully mechanical. 

 

    Still grinning, the Matoran shook off the disoriented act, and became intensely interested in the specific specimen she’d been standing in front of.

 

    “Are you here for a research project? Are you a biology student?”

 

    He was a fast talker. His red armor told her he wasn’t one who wasn’t one of those Le-Matoran, who she’d learned to avoid at all cost. Thankfully, not many of them had wandered into the exhibit halls.  It was all she could do to shrug and lessen the width of her smile. It was all she could do to keep the stress of sustained interaction from crumpling her carefully maintained expression of stand-offish disinterest.

 

    “It’s just, most Ga-Matoran students are in the middle of their exams. I didn’t expect to see any of you out and about for a few weeks yet.”

 

    “I don’t need exams,” she tried, and shifted so she mirrored his inquisitive, focused stance.

 

    The Matoran’s jaw dropped ever so slightly, and understanding gleamed in his eyes. He leaned in and asked quietly in disbelief, “You’re skipping exams??”

 

    Again, she mimicked his body language, leaning in and dropping her voice to match his, and letting the syllables slip out quietly and quickly. “I’m skipping exams.” Whatever an ‘exam’ was.

 

    “Ha!” the Matoran straightened up with a startling exclamation. “Such a Ga-Matoran!” His voice returned to a normal, less attention-attracting volume. She made sure to note the relationship between volume and the attention it garnered. All the rules were different up here, and she didn’t necessarily like them. “Skipping exams to pour over bio-worm exhibits!”

 

    She laughed her best laugh - soft, repetitive syllables to the rhythm of acceptable speech patterns, and thankfully, the Matoran joined in.

 

    “Never a dull moment!” he said, eyes still alight in genuine amusement. It was unnerving. “Come on. I’ll show you how a pro shirks work! I bet you've never been chute-diving before.” He began to trot away, obviously expecting her to follow.

 

    “No,” she shook her head, once, firmly when he turned and looked at her expectantly. “I … have exams.”

 

    The Matoran tilted his head slightly, confused and she also thought she read a note of disappointment. She shook her head again, and he seemed to understand she meant it. “Okay,” he deflated a bit, but piped up again almost immediately, “Well if any Rorzakh come around asking for ‘Takua’, I was never here!” and he sauntered off.

 

    Watching him go, Krahka knew she had a long, long way to go if ever she were to successfully infiltrate Matoran society.

 

    Fool, she decided. No amount of well-meaning and happy-go-lucky joviality could hide that. But the sheer infectiousness of the Matoran’s wide-eyed enthusiasm for what wonders he somehow found in even harbor worms and insignificant strangers - something about that tugged at her attention. No. When you were on your own, there was no leeway that afforded joviality. And therein lay the essence of the virtue of Unity which the Toa and Matoran cherished and - it dawned on her, fought for. 

 

    She was surprised by the sadness that welled up around her ihio as her talkative acquaintance turned a corner and disappeared. But she knew why it was so. 

 

    The Matoran would never be her ihikani - heart’s brethren. 

 

    A short static burst, followed by music pouring out of the Archives’ PA system caused her to flinch. The few other Matoran in the exhibit hall, murmuring among themselves, began to make their way out to the main exhibit hall. She followed cautiously, careful to stay close enough it looked like she was simply one of the crowd, but far enough away that it would be easy to slip into the shadows and disappear. Atelescreen that normally displayed a labeled map of the exhibits available to the public now broadcasted the face of the elder, Turaga Dume.

 

    “Matoran of Metru Nui,” the Turaga’s amplified voice instructed them. “You are required to gather at the Coliseum.”

 

    No, she was as foolish as that Ta-Matoran she’d met earlier, if she thought she was ready to gather with the entire city in an enclosed arena. But she couldn’t deny the slight pull of curiosity. It occurred to her, as the broadcast began to repeat itself, that it could be a chance to face the Toa again. But, of course, what could she do, with the whole city there?

 

    The Matoran who weren’t still watching the Turaga’s announcement began to trickle away toward the exit.

 

    She shimmered smoothly into the guise of an insignificant lava rat and wriggled down through a grate into her night-dark.

    

    Perhaps one day she’d make it to the Coliseum. But not today.

 


 
    Rohuiro, yet another Krahkani term with no Matoran equivalent. For a people with the ability to change form to capture the essence, both physical and immaterial, of another, change was a constant. In conceptual terms, the terohki was the smooth-flowing current, the swirling eddies, the rushing torrents of a river. The ihio was the water itself - able to take many forms but water all the same. Rohuiro was the riverbed. That which made a river a river, and not a lake, not an ocean.  It shaped how the river ran - a trickle, a set of rapids, a waterfall. It hemmed in the river, both limiting it and defining it, but not always containing it.  Over time, the river could force change to its course. A push-and-pull balance of change and constant, willpower and destiny. Without rohuiro, what would stop a Krahkani from dissipating and losing oneself from being submerged in another? Without a riverbed, the river was groundwater. Runoff. Used up again and again. 

 

    In practical terms, and what the term came to mean when spoken among the people rohuiro, essentially, was survival and resilience despite and because of that which you could not control. Adapting to live another day, change another day. 

 

    This day, though, she hadn’t expected to be buried alive in what felt like half the city’s worth of rubble and collapsed tunnels. Then again, she reasoned sardonically with herself, nobody really expects that to happen to them.

 

    She clawed her way up, up, and up through the dozens of layers of rubble. She barely recognized the remains of the Wings and Water exhibit of the Archives when she finally surfaced. Her senses and instincts jumped instantly to high alert, as they always did when she left her own territory to impinge on another’s.   Cracked, leaking stasis displays lay all over the floor, support columns in pieces or soon to be. Almost on instinct, she transformed into the shape of the most recent Onu-Matoran she’d seen. If Archivists were to find a stray Rock Raptor in the ruins of one of their exhibits, it certainly wouldn’t bode well for that raptor. She kept a sharp ear out for approaching Archivists and maintenance workers as she worked as quickly as she could to free a Dermis Turtle stirring back to consciousness. The Onu-Matoran, she discovered, had surprisingly keen low-light vision, which helped the process.

 

    Where were the Matoran? Why weren’t they swarming this scene of the tunneling accident? Because, surely, that’s what it was. She’d seen it before, too many times - the wrong grade or quantity of explosives set in the maintenance tunnels to widen or expand. But to cause devastation all the way down through the sub-levels, the borders of her territory she’d been patrolling?

 

    The labored breathing of a Shallows Cat drew her in next. One of its hind legs was crushed beneath a fallen support beam. It didn’t budge when she tested it, carefully skirting clear of the cat’s snapping jaws. There was still no sound of approaching Matoran.

 

    She shimmered into the form of the Toa Metru of Earth, hoping desperately that Whenua wouldn’t be part of the first responder’s team to this miner’s fiasco. She drew upon his strength and connection to the earth, shifting both the ground and the pillar simultaneously to free the cat and prevent further collapse.

 

    “Go,” she urged it in the Toa’s deep voice.

 

    She knelt, palms pressed to the ground, listening, sensing.

 

    Nothing.

 

    Something was wrong, and terribly so.

 

    With the help of the forms of the Toa of Water and Toa of Stone, she created a makeshift tank for a reviving brood of Ghekula toads, who would hopefully have enough sense to leap free once they awoke.

 

    Crouching, she shifted from Toa to Kavinika wolf. If there had ever been anyone to ask, she would have said Kavinika was one of her favorite rohki - one of her favorite forms. It was considered disrespectful, wasteful, even, to take a form without good reason. Although without any of her culture left to disapprove, there had been many a rohki Krahka had taken throughout the years just because. But now, above ground where there were those who might see - not understand, for who was left who could? - but at least see, she was driven more to act with purpose. The Kavinika’s astute sense of smell was what she needed. 

 

    Scenting the air, the stench of death flowed in and shook her deeply, knocking malevolently at her barricaded ihio. It wasn’t the scent of Matoran death she expected, for surely there were a few who were buried in the rubble as well. Nor was it even the scent of deceased Rahi who hadn’t survived their stasis internment. No, this scent was much more astringent and morose. And she only knew it because she’d scented it before, fleeing the ruins of her homeland. This was the scent of the death of a people. 

 

     Yet again, all too soon, Krahka found herself the rohuirani - one who presses on, one who adapts to whatever shape the riverbed has become. A survivor. 

 

    Pushing away a primal slurry of panic and desperation that threatened to overflow,

 

    She fled the Archives, running from the primal slurry of panic and desperation that threatened to overflow, but also chasing the warning instinct that told her to flee. Whether it was fleeing to, or fleeing from, she had no room to ration her way to an answer. She ran through the dark streets, once legend but now ruin. Nothing but toppled buildings, short circuiting electrical works, crushed Vahki, empty homes and vehicles, bleeding chutes. Only once did she encounter a limping, lone Nuurahk, which she tore apart easily. From what she had learned in her brief masquerade among the people of the City of Legends, in what had been their last days, the Vahki never helped anyone, not really. And now, there was no one left to help, so the Vahki had no purpose to serve.

 

    Krahka had no idea how long she ran through the once-city, flew above it raining down searching, sonic cries from the form of a Klakk, returning void always. The suns never showed a hint of rising.

 

    The Rahi, whether wild or former captives of the horrible Archives, grew bolder in the perpetual night. It seemed that in a matter of hours, new rulers and dominions sprang up - and for all they knew, it could have only been hours. With no suns or stars, they had only their instincts, which were hazy at best, dulled by the frantic frenzy of unfettered freedom for the first time in a millennia. It wasn’t until she encountered a roving herd of Kikanalo that she saw the city clearly.  The alpha Kikanalo told her that the Matoran, short and tall, had gone. They were free. The realization dawned on her like the twin suns should have, hours ago, and banished any further questions to the Kikanalo about how they knew this, and if they knew it for sure. It made her almost giddy. At long last, and for reasons she cared not to comprehend, the roving and the wild could rise again. The cataclysm of one culture made way for the cacophonous rise of another, as naturally as one riverbed fell away in a crashing waterfall, and the torrents plunged to a new plane of existence, to shape and water the land there. It was natural. How life moves on. Rohuiro 

 

    A particularly bellicose troop of Lava Apes was in an all out war with a family of Ash Bears along the shattered border of what had been Ta-Metru and Le-Metru. Phase Dragons ran wild deeper in Le-Metru, absolutely terrorizing the Brakas who were also trying to make a home there. Furnace Salamanders and Hikaki had a grudging truce with a titanous reptile in Ta-Metru - a beast with earthquake steps and a powerful tail that could fell a fully grown Knowledge Tower with half an effort. A Tahtorak, which she’d thought were extinct. A Doom Viper was staking its claim along the coasts of Ga-Metru, and the Proto Drakes were learning how to share. It was among these she felt most herself. It was as if they spoke her first language. The language of flashy shows of aggression, staking out territory with the carcasses of those that would challenge you, the unique call and response of each tribe. 
 

    And, yet, she couldn't quite shake the simpering, refined, almost mechanical way of communicating and being of the Matoran and Toa. There was something about the people of Mata Nui that set them apart. The way they could articulate, and the principle of their three virtues gifted from their Great Spirit running through their fibres, imbuing even the most menial or repetitive of tasks with a sense of community, the greater, common good, and purpose. Unity, duty, destiny, she realized.
 

 

    She saw both peoples through the eyes of an outsider.  Even still, the accusations of the Toa Metru rang true and stabbed sharp.

 

    “They fear you.”

 

    “The Rahi will flee Metru Nui. You will ben the absolute ruler of … nothing.”

 

    The fear of being feared kept her at bay. It occurred to her that it was a fear she shouldn't have, that the Toa had planted in her. In the shape of a sharp-eyed Avsa Hawk, she poked and prodded at this new fear, the type of contemplation she also never would have before bothered to undertake, from her watchful perch atop a heap of rocks that had once been an abstract monument in the sculpture fields. There was something else lurking below these new layers she'd grown. The industrial grip of the Matoran’s livelihood that had kept so many from a full life had been broken. Shouldn’t that be cause for celebration? Now that she’d finally struggled up into the world the top-dwellers, and had found it even better than she’d wistfully imagined in the refuge her underworld, why this lingering sense of ill omen?

 

    It was later - whether it was a day, week, or hour, none could say, that Krahka understood. The euphoria of the unruly romp of the brutes and the beasts through the broken city came to a burning, crashing halt along the far south coastline of Le-Metru. That’s where she found it - fresh, and leaking the venomous sludge that reeked of decay, and its captive writhing and wailing inside - the first cocoon. 

 


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  • 4 weeks later...

At risk of sounding repetitive from my comment on your other story... I really, REALLY love this. How you dive so deep into Krahka's mindset, and all the implications of her meeting with the Toa, and of a shapeshifter's unique view on the world... I'd never have thought of approaching the story from her eyes, but the way you unpack it is so fascinating; I was completely hooked, reading it.

I loved Takua's little cameo, too! And the way you built up that sense of ominousness at the end, from the view of the Cataclysm through a completely foreign set of eyes, to the Rahi joyfully claiming the city... but all the while keeping that undertone of something truly ominous building... it was really masterfully put together. Absolutely fantastic work! :D

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"New legends awake, but old lessons must be remembered.
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of the BIONICLE."

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I hope you don't mind, I'll reply to both of these at once because I feel kinda weird replying to my own topics haha. Thanks so much for not only reading, but also taking time to reply!! So happy! 
For this story:

20 hours ago, That Matoran with a Vahi said:

At risk of sounding repetitive from my comment on your other story... I really, REALLY love this. How you dive so deep into Krahka's mindset, and all the implications of her meeting with the Toa, and of a shapeshifter's unique view on the world... I'd never have thought of approaching the story from her eyes, but the way you unpack it is so fascinating; I was completely hooked, reading it.

I loved Takua's little cameo, too! And the way you built up that sense of ominousness at the end, from the view of the Cataclysm through a completely foreign set of eyes, to the Rahi joyfully claiming the city... but all the while keeping that undertone of something truly ominous building... it was really masterfully put together. Absolutely fantastic work! :D

Yeah!! I love Krahka and her abilities, although I think she definitely has the potential to be completely overpowered. I had a good time re-reading The Darkness Below recently, and there was this little part at the end/epilogue when Turaga Vakama explained that he and his team went back to their own Metrus briefly after defeating Krahka before going to the Coliseum to present the Great Discs to Turaga Dume. I love finding those little niches in the canon to fill in the blanks, even though writing canon characters hasn't been my forte. I'm really glad you enjoyed! Haha, and yes, I had a good time throwing Takua in there. I originally had them actually go chute-diving, but how chutes actually worked was tripping me up, so that got cut XD Also, there was originally a third section with her and Pouks and Hordika Onewa, and he tells her about the island they found above (another wistful place above), but it started focusing too much away from Krahka. 

 

20 hours ago, That Matoran with a Vahi said:

Oh WOW, this is really nicely done! I don't think I've ever seen any writing get so deeply inside Turaga Dume's head as you do here, but I love it; the way you build him up as not just the wise leader of Metru Nui but also as a real *person* beneath that role too. You make him a really developed, believable character :D

I really like, too, the way it's possible to see the change in tone in the text, as it suddenly gets dark and ominous; the juxtaposition between the long, casually-paced paragraphs in the first half, compared to the intensity of the many single lines in the second half... it works really well together. And that repeat of the opening line, right at the end, is just such a perfect touch to end it on, works so well.

Really great work!

I think there was a topic at one point asking something along the lines of 'what was Turaga Dume actually like?', and I was like, "wow, good point, I guess we don't really know." So, voilà. And I'm really glad you picked up on the change in tone. I was worried, because it was definitely supposed to be sudden, because that's how a lot of scary things happen (or, I picture them happening), but it's always a trick to convey that over writing. Eheh, and I also had qualms about that first/last line, because canonically, I'm pretty sure they don't actually take off masks to sleep, but a few articles I read on building suspense is to start with a sense of routine/familiar and then jolt out of it. Again, really glad you enjoyed it, and thanks again for the feedback!

Edited by Aderia
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(disclaimer: none of this banner art is original, I just smooshed it together in gimp. Torchic, Matau)
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  • 2 years later...

I know I'm quite late coming to this, but I really love this story. Krahka is a fascinating character that goes quite underutilized in the story, and you've done a lot with her. The usage of terms from her language is a unique approach I don't see often, and it does a good job of conveying how she yearns to fit in with the top dwellers. And Takua was a fun appearance to have. The Cataclysm scene was well done, as well. I love seeing different perspectives on major canon events. Overall, a really well done vignette into Krahka's downtime between books.

So No Head?

 

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This was a great story. The Web of Shadows movie kind of rushes through the return to Metru Nui; you really give it the horror-movie atmosphere and setup it deserves. I was so sucked in I almost forgot about the Visorak until you mentioned the cocoons, perfect piece de resistance.

 

Krahka is such an interesting and morally gray character, it was excellent seeing her fleshed out in such a good story.

"You are an absolute in these uncertain times. Your past is forgotten, and your
future is an empty book. You must find your own destiny, my brave adventurer.
"
-- Turaga Nokama

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Aww, thanks you guys :)  It's always nice to know a story draws in readers. I had fun writing this one, I'm glad you enjoyed the read! 

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(disclaimer: none of this banner art is original, I just smooshed it together in gimp. Torchic, Matau)
ThosePeskyFirespitters.png.3dbdb65e6a28cbbc5957d81c09a685b6.png
Those pesky firespitters... 
Library | The Sculptors and the Smelters | The Ternion Review Topic 

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