Entry Five

I once told my assembled brothers that there are times one can only win by losing… or, at least, appearing to lose. Anyone who had been present during the final battle between Axonn and Brutaka would have thought I had been defeated. The vat holding my essence had been shattered by Axonn’s axe, leaving me without a body again. And the Mask of Life was in the deep ocean, seemingly out of my reach.

Naturally, anyone who thought that would have been wrong. But then, you know that already, don’t you? By now you know that had I truly wanted the Mask of Life, nothing would have stopped my getting it. But I didn’t want it — I simply wanted to control when and how the Toa Mahri got their hands on it.

I could not let them know that, of course, so I behaved as they expected me to. I possessed the body of Toa Inika Matoro to sow confusion and doubt among them, then allowed myself to be forced out of that body. I moved to the armored shell of a Maxilos robot, taunting Matoro by letting him know I was there. I even enlisted his help in a ridiculous scheme to harvest the fragments of the Nui Stone from the remains of the late Toa Tuyet — a marvelous diversion, if I do say so myself.

I must confess to finding Mahri Nui a most interesting place. Where else can one find a heavily armed jailer who has a Matoran the day before, and has no memory of it? And the Barraki — 80,000 years later, the same brutal bunglers, whose plans had the same delicate touch as a rampaging Tahtorak. How amusing it was to watch them fight pitched battles over the mask, scheming against and betraying each other.

(That is not something that will ever happen among my allies. Only one will matters: mine. Only one voice can be heard: mine. Only one fist holds the universe in its grasp: mine.)

Having won in the end, I can afford to admit that all did not go as smoothly as I might have wished. The pathetic attempt by Karzahni to stake a claim to power was an annoyance, and his efforts to frighten me with visions of my possible future a joke. I reached into his mind and tore at it until he saw himself for what he was… a sight he could not stand, as it turned out.

I had ordered one of my brothers to bring to me an artifact called the Staff of Artakha. My stated reason was that I wished to use it to restore the Nui Stone. In fact, I simply wanted to study it. Anything that powerful with that sort of potential for creation could also be turned into an incredible weapon of destruction. He did bring it… but I did not get to keep it.

Brutaka chose that moment to decide to be a hero again. He stole the staff from me, and before I could get it back, he had passed it on to another with the ability to teleport. Just that quickly, the staff was gone from the ocean to I knew not where.

I turned on Brutaka, prepared to destroy him for interfering. He was a formidable foe, and fought with the reckless courage of someone who has nothing to lose. But even with that, I would have easily won in the end, had it not been for one fact he shared with me. The being calling himself Hydraxon had taken the mask and intended to destroy it.

This could not be. If the mask were smashed, there would be no way to restore life to Mata Nui if he should die. The universe would collapse and I would be left the ruler of ashes. I needed that mask far more than I needed the joy of crushing Brutaka. So I left him there, with a vow that we would one day meet again, and went to see out the mask and make sure it wound up in the hands of the Toa.

Naturally, I could not suddenly start acting like their ally. I had to make a show of trying to take the mask away from Jaller. But when he passed it on to Matoro, I smiled inside. My plan was proceeding. The only possible flaw was the Barraki, who might take the mask back or in some other way interfere with my timing. So I challenged them, revealing my true identity, and providing the Toa with the time they needed to sever the cord. Then I let the Barraki “destroy me,” so they would be free to delay the Toa just enough for my purposes.