Renascence

This article was written by Chondrya. Please do not add to it without the writer's permission.

Renascence
Short Story
Setting	Unknown
Date Set	Before the Great Cataclysm
Released	December 7, 2018
Writer	Chondrya
Timeline
Previous	Dirge
Concurrent	None
Next	Against the Storm

Renascence is a short story written by Chondrya and the direct sequel to Dirge. It was released on December 7, 2018. It was the fourth story in the Feral Saga to be released and chronologically the second. It is one of the Saga's supplemental stories, as reading it is not required to fully understand the main plot of the storyline.

The story follows Dehka through his transformation from the novice Toa of Iron of Leskya Nui to the impassive machine who would later become known as "Alchemist".

Story

Chapter 1

There was a thump.

Then another.

And then another.

Yet another.

A throbbing rhythm.

Cold air poured through metal tubes and down to a chamber where a fan spun rapidly.

The fan stopped.

It spun the opposite way, blowing air out.

A breath of renewed life.

A torrent of electricity flowed throughout the head.

It spoke.

A series of thoughts.

He opened his eyes. He could not hear over the ringing echoing through his own head. The world before him was unrecognizable and foreign.

He looked around the small, melancholic room he was in. His head did not move, even though his field of view changed as if it did. What he was seeing frightened him less than how he was seeing it. Everything he saw was slightly tinted a yellowed shade of orange which caused even the most insentient object to look choleric and intimidating. His vision was almost kaleidoscopic, fracturing whatever he beheld into bits and pieces that were strangely decipherable. Every time he looked somewhere else the experience should have been unbearably nauseating for him, but there was no such effect.

He finally seized a comprehension of how his vision now operated. Moments after this, a thought banged through his mind.

"Listen."

The monotonous ringing which had been plaguing his hearing was now beginning to recede. What bled through it was an equally droning static, the echo of which tacitly informed him that it was not originating from his own body.

"Listen."

This thought was a foreign one sent by something else. It had a voice to it, an alien one, buried under static-like distortion and with a passive harshness to it. It sounded like the voice death would have.

"Listen."

His audio receptors finally adjusted so that he could hear through the dulcet drone vibrating his body and ravaging his head. There was a voice, not his own, not the one in his head telling him to listen, but one coming from the outside world. He had previously thought that it was simply another one of the odd sounds coming from himself, but now he noticed that it was a distinct voice that spoke understandable words.

“Hello, Dehka.”

The Toa of Iron lifted his head to see a wide glass pane covering a scrawny black and green figure. The color of his armor was one to make one gag at the mere sight of it, uncannily resembling, not only in hue but also in texture, yellow-green bile, similar to the type spewed by Leskya Nuian Matoran when they had the earlier symptoms of the near-lethal virus known as Makuta’s Venom. As the bile was infectious due to the effects of the virus, it was one of the most hazardous materials one could come across on the island. Merely smelling it while too close to it could infect someone. This caused Dehka to associate this being, whatever in the universe it was, with disease and ailment.

“You are not too far off,” said the being through a pair of speakers situated in the far lower corners of Dehka’s room. His voice was rather high-class sounding, condescendingly so, and filled Dehka with a slight bit of anger towards him. “Most others associate me with things of that type. It is my specialty; I am a virtuoso of pestilence, as some of my kind call me, someone who would, rather than killing with a gloriously oversized weapon or bombastic powers, prefer to kill with only the most deadly weapon of all. Strangely, and quite intriguing, at least to me, it is also the smallest weapon one can wield, small enough to penetrate cracks in armor, light enough to infest the air itself, and hidden enough to destroy one’s enemy from the inside in vile ways that could rarely be accomplished by any other means.

“And, if you were wondering, I was, in fact, the creator of Zaludeka Vara, otherwise known among your kind as ‘Makuta’s Venom.’”

“Are you Antharahk?” asked Dehka. Immediately, upon saying this, his throat began to sting immensely, before he expelled from it several bolts and organic fluids.

“My, your body was weaker than I thought,” said the lime-colored being, “maybe I should’ve used stronger anesthetics and let you rest for longer. And, yes, my name is Antharahk.”

“Why am I here? What did you do to me?”

“I could never pass by the opportunity to have a freshly captured Toa of Iron to experiment on, especially one who deserved quite a bit of foul treatment for having nearly uprooted all of my plans.”

Dehka now realized that his wrists were bolted to the wall. No matter how hard he pulled he was unable to wrench his arms free. As he tried to flail his legs, he realized that they were much heavier than he remembered. He looked down to see that, not only had armor been added on to them, but that they were alien in shape, with four joints in his legs. “Release me!” he screamed, after which another batch of bolts and fluid was heaved up, this time followed by a thick shower of sparks.

“Not yet,” replied Antharahk calmly. “Not until you show me what you can do.”

Foolishly taking the offer to use his underdeveloped powers, Dehka focused intensely on the speaker to his left. He imagined it bursting apart and launching its parts through the window and into Antharahk. However, even though he had nearly accomplished such a feat before, no such thing happened. Instead, it quivered slightly, occasionally loosening a bolt or spitting out a spark. When Dehka gave up on the effort, the most he had done to it was slightly displace its outer gasket.

Raucous laughter exploded from the rightmost speaker, while the left one blasted a loud mess of static that only barely resembled a laugh. Antharahk, whose voice was now distorted by the broken speaker, said, “Very good. As planned, your powers have been siphoned almost completely. Drakah was indeed as large of a help in the experiment as she said she would be.”

“Who is Drakah?” Dehka asked maliciously before coughing up several more sparks.

“Drakah? She is my associate, I suppose, my comrade in the various experiments I’ve been conducting as of late.”

“What have you done to me?”

“I think I’ve explained enough to you. You are my experiment, after all, not my student. The time has come for you to start figuring these things out on your own.”

Antharahk’s visage disappeared as the glass that separated him from Dehka’s room quickly turned smoke gray and opaque. Dehka was jolted by a sudden in pain in his abdomen and looked down to see a robotic arm toying with an appliance on his abdomen. It retreated, and he felt a new sensation flow through his nerves. It felt like raw strength, the same kind he had witnessed when he first started using his Elemental powers to push on his own armor. He tugged at his restraints once more, and almost instantaneously they snapped from the wall and flew forward, landing loudly on the metal floor.

Chapter 2

“Experimentee Containment 4-E” read the label outside of the silver door. Underneath it was a caption in a different language, which effectively translated to “Experiment Prison 4-5”.

Experiment prison? This was one of Antharahk’s beauties of mistranslation she had not yet seen before. She had told him numerous times that “kakon” was the Archaic Matoran word for containment, not “parue,” yet he had somehow either ignored her or forgotten her messages entirely, such that after a week the mistake still hadn’t been fixed. The Makuta made a mental note to herself to bring this up first thing during her next meeting with the plague-obsessed head case.

Still, she couldn’t stop herself from finding the mistake a bit amusing. The whole stupidity of the situation surrounding it combined with the fact that Antharahk had even bothered to put Archaic Matoran captions under the room names made her giggle a bit. For someone who liked to use the language to name his creations as much as he did, it was illogical to think he could still end up making mistakes such as this one.

Deciding not to dwell on it too much, she grabbed the door handle and pushed in. Steam erupted from the door frame, causing her to be unable to see until it dissipated a couple of seconds later. Yet another glitch she needed to bother Antharahk about.

The door split vertically, and each half retracted into its respective portion of the wall. After the steam blocking her view into the adjacent room had cleared, she was met with a tall humanoid covered in gunmetal-colored armor. He looked over at her fearfully, quivering at the sight of her. His disorganized face did not concur with a similar emotion, as its multiple scopes and vents didn’t seem to be designed with the intent of displaying any sort of feeling. Instinctively, he took several steps away from her.

“My, you’ve gotten bigger,” the statuesque being said dispassionately, tilting her head up slightly. Her voice was grainy and its tone was just as dignified as it was deadpan. “I do not remember telling Antharahk that your already impressive height was something he needed to add on to. But, nonetheless, it does make you look less emaciated than I thought you would.”

“Are you the Drakah that Antharahk was referring to?” he exclaimed.

“Just as much as you are Bio-Mechanical Fusion Enhancement 44-R, also known as Dehka, yes,” she answered. “I’m surprised he let you know I existed.”

“Why am I here?”

“Well, that is not a very easy question to answer, you see,” Drakah said. “Antharahk does not give very well-written instructions to anyone. Supposedly, as a part of your second test, I am supposed to ‘test your mental capacity and determine if it has been positively or negatively affected.’”

“Well, that doesn’t sound very harsh on me,” Dehka replied. Although he was speaking with a sense of bravery, he now had his hunched back against the wall opposite to Drakah. “It also doesn’t sound like as vague of a thing as you’re making it to be.”

“That is because you haven’t thought about it hard enough,” Drakah replied as she took a long step forward. “This test is really supposed to determine if the upgrades we made to you took a toll on your mind or did the opposite as it was supposed to. A term such as ‘mental capacity’ does not fit this, as one’s mind is made up of much more than comprehension and memory.”

“During what part of these tests do I get to leave?”

“When your assessment is done.”

“Then let’s get this over with.”

“I am glad to hear you’re enthusiastic about completing your assessment, but these tests will not be as such that you could just ‘get them over with’ and be on your merry way by the end of today.”

“Did I sound enthusiastic at all when I said that? Don’t you realize that I don’t want to be here?”

Drakah did not reply. She glared down at Dehka with the same emotionless expression she had been maintaining throughout their encounter. This was until a smirk appeared under her mask and her eyes lit up with glee. With no warning, her stiff posture buckled as she burst into raucous laughter, her knees bending as she leaned forward to prepare for a drunken step forward. When she was done laughing, she continued walking casually toward Dehka.

“It’s not too hard to tell you don’t wanna be here, darling,” she said, her voice now bubbly and sarcastic and layered with aftershocks from her fit of laughter. She also spoke faster, as opposed to the slow and articulate way she had previously been speaking. “Y’know, I didn’t expect you to be so snarky. I kinda like it.”

Dehka was more frightened of her than he had been.

As Drakah strode over in Dehka’s direction, he slid across the wall, attempting to reach the corner. He eyed the gap between her and the adjacent wall as if he were planning an escape.

“What, are you thinking of leaving, darling?” Drakah exclaimed. She looked over her shoulder and threw her hand back to the door, which immediately shut with another billow of steam. “We haven’t even gotten to the fun part yet,” she added as she looked back at Dehka.

“Fun part?”

“Oh, yes. The fun part of all of this is, if I remember...” Drakah couldn’t seem to finish her sentence and looked at the ceiling as if she were trying to remember something. She put her lean, clawed finger on her chin, and made a sarcastically loud hum. “Gee, I don’t actually remember. It was probably so boringly written that I forgot. In the meantime…” her mask glowed and she looked down into Dehka’s eyes. The Toa of Iron felt a strange feeling throughout his body but did not know exactly what it was until he attempted to move from the corner and discovered that he could not. “...just stay right there, darling.” Drakah turned on her heel and gleefully pranced out of the room, making sure to shut the door behind her. In her absence, Dehka’s sense of confusion concerning what was going on did not fade in the slightest.

---

When Drakah abruptly returned with a notepad and a pen, she exclaimed, “Well, it looks like that was it.”

As Dehka was magically allowed to move again at Drakah’s command, he said, “That… was it?”

“Yup, pretty much,” Drakah said as she scribbled on her notepad. “Apparently, old sawbones doesn’t think testing ‘mental capacity’ is a very arduous task. Of course, that isn’t the only thing I’m mad about.”

“Sawbones?”

“Antharahk. I call him by that because it offends him.”

“I see… wh—what were the results?”

“Well, that’s what angers me the most about all of this..”

“How so?”

“So, basically, sawbones and I decided to jam this computer into your brain to try and make you think faster and make more decision based on logic and whatnot. However, it seems that didn’t really do anything. You acted the same as you always did when we were spying on you on Leskya Nui.

“You know how I acted on Leskya Nui? You… spied on me?”

“Well, kinda. It was more of a control test to see how you reacted to different stuff.”

“So, what does this mean?”

Drakah finished writing, slid her pen into a sleeve on the side of her notepad, and looked back to Dehka with a rather sanguine look. “It means we get to mess with you more after the other tests are done, darling.”

Chapter 3

Experiment Title: Bio-Mechanical Fusion Enhancement Experiment Number: 44-R Experimentee Title: “Dehka” Status: Incomplete Location: To be decided Recorder: Makuta Antharahk Starting Date: To be recorded Completion date: To be recorded Objective: Enhance comprehension, learning, and thought speed via cerebral implants, near-complete replacement of organics with mechanical prostheses Experiment Recording: To be recorded See Also: Bio-Mechanical Fusion Enhancement Experiment 44-P Addendum 44-R-1: Under no circumstances is Teridax to know about this. Addendum 44-R-2: On Destral, the others said this wasn’t going to work and wasn’t worth wasting resources on. It isn’t in their right to dictate that.

Chapter 4

The strange array of lights that danced before Dehka bemused him and began to put him into a trance. From the looks of it, there were many colors. Of course, he could only tell from the fact that they differed in shade—along with the fact that they somehow just seemed different—due to the way his vision now worked. Over the past couple of hours, the orange shade that once merely tinted his absurd vision now dominated it completely.

“Just one more quick test, now,” said Antharahk’s through a speaker. Even though the message brought Dehka relief, the feeling was undermined by the lasting irritation that the Makuta’s voice brought. “I’ve noticed that your mind has become less and less responsive to color. I fear that what we’ve done to improve your vision has hindered your abilities to perceive color as you did before. Thus, this quick tweak should fix that… hopefully.”

Dehka heard a sharp click inside his head. His monochrome vision began to warp, one again disorienting him and temporarily dissolving the familiarity he had with its kaleidoscopic effects. This ended as abruptly as it had begun, allowing him to grow used to his vision once again. The orange tint still persisted but was diminished to the point where it was insignificant and ignorable. He could now identify the colors before him, which encompassed just about every shade he was physically able to see.

“Success, in the most highest order!” Antharahk sang to an upbeat, march-like tune. “Just a little song Drakah taught me. Originated from this collapsed civilization she seems to have an odd fascination with.”

From the speaker came a harsh clang, followed by the muffled sound of Drakah yelling something at Antharahk. Relieved that his experimentation had come to an end, Dehka decided to giggle a bit at what he heard… or at least, he tried to giggle. His new form didn’t seem to support such an act, and as such his mechanical respiratory system simply spazzed before shutting down and quickly rebooting.

“I’ll be taking it from here,” said Drakah over through the speakers. From the tone of her voice, she was undoubtedly in her stricter mood at the moment. “It seems that the tests have concluded.”

Dehka relaxed and began to sit down in his enclosed cell. No longer afraid of what was to come, he took the time to look around at it. Just like all of the other rooms, it was a smooth concrete box with a single light fixture on its ceiling.

“Or, as Antharahk put them,” Drakah added over the speakers, “the ‘quicker tests.’”

Dehka was no longer so relaxed.

“You ruined the joke!” yelled Antharahk’s distant voice, after which he and Drakah continued squabbling at each other. There was another bang, Antharahk vindictively grumbled something, and it stopped.

“Anyways, this means that you and I are ready for the longer tests, now,” Drakah explained.

Dehka was definitely not relaxed right now. He had assumed a fetal position in the corner.

“For this, you will be paired up with another of our experiments, Bio-Mechanical Fusion Enhancement Experiment 44-P, otherwise known by her self-given nickname ‘Phi’. The two of you will be pitted against another experiment—an abomination, to be precise—which is not of our making.”

The colors before Dehka spontaneously disappeared, revealing that behind them was a closed door. It was much more industrial-looking than the others, with at least half-of-a-dozen barricades sealing it to the wall. He slowly stood up, still hugging the corner of the room, as each one of them slowly retracted into the door frame with a puff of steam. When all of them had retracted, the door split open, revealing that behind it was an ovular, medium-sized arena. Like the other rooms, it was composed of metal but had an oblong mirror lining one of its sides. On the opposite side of the arena was a cage, partially embedded in the wall. Between its bars, past the slim tentacles which were snaking around them, the gleam of a multitude of yellow eyes could be seen. There was distinctly garbled breathing coming from within it, which froze Dehka to the floor with fear.

“You can blame Mutran for this one,” Drakah muttered.

On the side of the arena to Dehka’s left, another door opened, this one similar to his. Out of it flew a tan-and-black streak that emitted an aggressive shriek and was trailed by white fire. It landed on the abomination’s cage and clung to it, allowing Dehka to get a good look at it. Short, tan armor, clawed arms and legs… or at least, one of the arms was clawed. On its back was an unwieldy metal apparatus that he identified as a thruster.

“Phi is the greatest huntress of all!” the tan thing proudly screeched as it shook itself back and forth, trying to tear the bars from the wall. The abomination’s tentacles were swinging wildly as it growled. “She will kill you effortlessly! You will be her next meal!”

“Oh, Phi…” Drakah sighed through the arena’s speakers. She then yelled Phi's name several times in order to catch it’s attention, after which she ordered it to go back near its room. It obeyed without hesitation.

“Now,” the Makuta continued, “the goal is for the two of you to kill this foul, Antidermis-devouring creature, which Mutran has affectionately named ‘Lotus’, by working together. This will be a test of skill, experience, and, hopefully, cooperation. Do not fail. You will die if you fail.

“Oh, and I almost forgot…” a moment after she trailed off, part of the ceiling in Dehka’s room collapsed down, and a rack filled with various weapons lowered down. There were weapons of all types, big and small, melee and ranged, long and short, offensive and defensive, blunt and sharp, those that didn’t fit any description. Before Dehka even had the chance to take in his options, Drakah muttered “go,” and he heard the abomination’s cage mechanically unlock.

He turned around to see slim tentacles slithering out of the opened container. Their owner, which he was reluctant to identify by the name Lotus, slowly emerged from the shadows within, revealing its body. It was spherical in shape, almost entirely composed of pale crustacean shells that were littered with black, artificial tubes and silvery apparatuses. Its yellow eyes were robotic, rather than organic, and looked disturbingly similar to Dehka’s own eyes. He assumed it had no visible mouth until the slit between two shells on its face briefly opened and revealed a round, toothy maw.

Dehka’s sight of Lotus was cut off by a pillar of the concrete ground rising up before him. He heard Antharahk try to say something about it, but he was cut off by a continuation of his argument with Drakah. In a state of panic, he grabbed the only weapon on the rack that had a scope and ran to the pillar for cover. Not having seen such a weapon before, he observed it closely, noting the words “Akselum I-9” on its side printed in stylized Matoran. Other than that, there wasn’t anything else that gave him a clue as to how it functioned. Deciding not to worry about it, he glanced at the mirror to observe Phi aggressively flying around Lotus. He knew that his only chance of escape was to continue these wicked tests. As Vandir had once told him, a Toa never gave up. Of course, Dehka didn’t know if he really counted as a Toa at this point.

Beyond the pillar, he could hear Phi flying hither and thither, firing some sort of fully automatic weapon at the screaming Lotus. He attempted to peak past the pillar and utilize his strange vision abilities, but almost as soon as he did so, Phi itself—herself, rather—flew past him, breaking a chunk of concrete off of the pillar's corner and just barely missing his head. She righted herself with her clawed feet and hunched over, facing into the battlefield. Briefly, she turned to Dehka and shouted, "Phi needs help! Come, help her kill Lotus!" With that, she flew back into the duel.

A Toa never gave up.

Dehka looked at the mirror on the wall and saw the reflections of Phi and Lotus dancing around each other. Lotus was faster than he had thought, as it seemed to be able to roll around, spinning its shells independently of its body like a strange wheel. He still had no idea how its tentacles were attached, as they were flailing around too quickly for him to get a good look at them. Deciding not to think about it, he lifted up his firearm, took aim at Lotus's reflection, and fired. With an unexpectedly brutal kickback, it spat out a thick yellow-green laser which, much to his dismay, burned a hole right through the mirror rather than reflecting off as intended.

As Antharahk muttered a string of curse words and something about plasma-based weapons being mixed with laser-based ones, Lotus stopped in place, seemingly sniffed the air with unseen nostrils, and faced the smoking hole in the mirror. It then rushed forward, and, with help from its tentacles, somehow jumped up and crashed through it. Through the combined effort of the resulting cracks and vibrations, the entirety of it shattered, revealing a wide room behind where both Antharahk Drakah stood. Upon seeing Lotus, they fled through a mechanical door as the abomination began to pursue them. It screamed, now with multiple ravenous voices, as it chased them, demolishing any and all apparatuses in its way to the door.

"What did you do?" screamed Phi as she flew up from behind Dehka. "Father is doomed, now! It feeds on them! Did you not hear?"

"It what?" Dehka said with elation as he turned to face her. "Then, great! We can escape here."

"Escape? You want to escape?"

"What else would I want?"

"To save Father, of course! The highest being of all, the Creator of Death, the true Master of the Plagues! Met only in power by his assistant, Drakah, the great Mistress of the Burning Lands!"

Dehka stared at her for several seconds, unable to make sense of what she had just said. With a grunt, Phi flew past him and in through the broken mirror. As he looked back to see her slip through a Lotus-sized hole in the observation room's wall, the foreign voice in his head returned:

"This is no longer the case."

The ringing came back as well. His head felt congested. Not in a physical sense, but rather as if there were a second consciousness in his head. Knowing that these were not his own thoughts, he wasn't hesitant to wonder if such a thing was what was happening.

"Wake up. You must break as you have been broken."

What the voice was talking about, he had no idea. Its mere existence was enough to give him nightmares, and the terrible way it was distorted did not help.

“Don’t disappoint yourself again.”

Dehka’s left arm was beginning to shake uncontrollably. With barely any biological components left, it was the only sign that he was distressed apart from his erratic breathing. His vision began to shut down in certain areas. Gaping holes now riddled his field of view.

Then, he saw nothing.

“What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t know,” Dehka thought, hoping to communicate with this incorporeal voice.

“You are being held back. You hate the evil you see inside those Makuta. You fear it. You suffered from it.”

“For good reasons.”

“False! They are foolish reasons. They mock the very idea of reasoning and logic themselves. They are what got you into this place. They are not going to get you out.”

“Then what would be logical?”

“Go after Lotus. Kill it. Slaughter it.”

“There’s no logical reason to do so.” Dehka stopped his arm from shaking, gripped his weapon tighter, and stood up, using the pillar to support himself. His vision had returned to him spontaneously. His eye-scopes darted around until they locked onto the hole in the mirror, which he began to walk toward.

“No logical reason, you say?”

“This is the only way out.” He stopped again and looked back at the room he had come out of. His scopes zoomed in and out on it. He turned on his heel–rather slowly, to his dismay–and walked toward it instead. As soon as he reached the room, he slid himself past the weapons rack, pulled back his fist, and thrust it into the wall.

Dust and rock burst forth from the crater he dug into it and even more spilled out as he pulled his fist back again. He looked at his hand, which was only slightly damaged and was entirely devoid of pain. He looked back to the wall and continued striking it over and over. After some time, the hole in the wall was deep enough for him to fit his entire lower arm into it. Without hesitation, he took a step back before lunging forward and throwing his oversized foot at the wall. The cracks widened and lengthened to the point where Dehka could break through it with just a mild push.

“Go left.”

“I don’t have to listen to you. I shouldn’t.”

Impulsively, Dehka walked through the hole in the wall and turned to his left to face an eerie concrete hallway. Whether or not he had willingly followed the voice’s command he had no idea. Consciously, he knew it wasn’t helpful. He needed to escape and go back to Leskya Nui. The voice wanted otherwise, claiming to be a “voice of logic”. Perhaps it was his subconscious. Something in the back of his head was telling him that going back to Leskya Nui wasn’t worth it.

“You obey. That is good.”

“What now?”

Perhaps the voice was onto something. His brain had been altered and jammed with computers, after all. Maybe this was a symptom of that, a wider disconnect between his left brain and his right brain that had caused one to take on the role of a second voice in his head.

“Run to it. The beast must die.”

He wasn’t without his doubts, however.

Still, it was his best option, and he could see why. Although his memory of the war-torn Leskya Nui was foggy, he knew with an eerie amount of certainty that it was likely no more. Antharahk seemed not to be toiling over war plans like Dehka expected he would be, but instead was devoting time to unrelated experimentation. There was a chance that he had won.

Even if the Makuta hadn't won, Dehka didn't know what would happen if he returned to Leskya Nui–if he could return to Leskya Nui. He barely had any powers left aside from being a behemoth. If he scared himself, he couldn't imagine how the Matoran would react. How the Toa would react.

Then again, he didn't really care.

With that, he continued walking down the hall towards the area where he would likely find Lotus. He knew without a doubt that he could kill it. He would kill it.

Chapter 5

The metal girder that had been precariously dangling from the fractured concrete and mangled rebar it had once supported finally slid out and plummeted into the foggy, endless gloom below. Although he had spent much of his limited elemental power trying to yank it out, Dehka didn't feel a single bit of a feeling of accomplishment when it fell. He wasn't disappointed, either. He didn't even seem indifferent. He couldn't pinpoint his emotion. It didn't matter, anyway.

He heard some scraping from behind him and stood up from the edge of the floor to look around. Antharahk, who had an additional pair of bladed arms covered in Lotus's slimy, sulfur-yellow innards, had opened one of the workroom's bins and was digging through it with his one arm. Next to him sat Phi, caked in innards, trying to bite into a piece of the creature's flesh she had torn from its corpse. The corpse itself was half inside the workroom and half inside the adjacent room it had tried to burst through before its untimely demise. On the opposite side of the room, Drakah was leaned up into the corner, still looking out on the whole mess with wide eyes and a dead glare as she had been for the last minute while picking the last morsels of flesh out of her armor with her clawed fingers.

"So I suppose you've chosen to stay?" she finally muttered to Dehka, not facing him.

"I thought I might as well," he answered flatly.

"Ah, I see you speak now," Antharahk grumbled as he turned to face the former Toa. "I'm not complaining when I ask why you chose to kill Lotus."

"Because you're not complaining," Dehka said. "You're doing the opposite. Judging by the fact that I haven't been contained and locked away for another month you seem to respect me as something more than simply an experiment."

"Oh, I always did!" the Makuta said, taking his arm out of the bin. "You and Phi were always more special than the other subjects in this experiment... and not just because all of the others perished." As he talked, he turned back to the bin and continued scratching through it. He stopped talking, however, when he discovered something and muttered a curse under his breath.

"What is it now?" Drakah sighed.

Antharahk yelled the same curse worse several times as he pulled a shiny, silver, mechanical arm big enough to fit him out of the bin. "Drakah, I hate you."

"I know that," she answered begrudgingly. "What is it this time?"

"I hate you!" Antharahk barked as he turned around to show the device to her in full view.

"Wasn't that supposed to be a gift?"

"I'd say a replacement for an arm someone lost because of your maniacal weapon of mass destruction that you so stupidly underestimated the power of is more than a gift. It's mandatory!"

Drakah had taken a step forward. "Well, it's not my fault that you stayed on Leskya Nui to feel what the Incendiary would do! It's not my fault that after you rationally hid behind a building you so witlessly stuck your arm out from it and exposed it directly to the blast."

"I told you that I was going to stay down there. Wait, no... you told me to stay down there to be a part of your experiment. I don't know why you wanted me to, but I wasn't going to risk starting another grueling argument with you that day."

"Good. Well, now I know that the Incendiary can melt Protosteel rather efficiently."

"Good for you." Antharahk looked at the arm and put its elbow piece onto the mutilated nub of armor that closed off his own upper arm. It fit around the misshapen Protosteel perfectly and even clamped onto it on its own. Antharahk tried to move it around, to no avail. "I'm keeping this now," he grunted.

He continued fiddling with the device some more until it emitted a brief hum, at which point he was able to move it around autonomously. He wiggled its clawed fingers looked up and down it at the multitude of pistons that were making slight movements to keep the arm steady. He noticed that just after the elbow was a small, empty vial made of what appeared to be glass. Darting his eyes back to his hand, it split cleanly in half and folded to retract into his wrist. In its place, a thick needle which was nearly as long as the rest of the arm itself telescoped out.

"Armed with a large needle, just as I requested," the Makuta said as he reverted the prosthesis back into hand form.

Then, although he let his arm dangle down, he continued looking in the direction of the place where he had held it. He squinted before bending down to pick what appeared to be a reel of film the size of his hand, which was lying precariously close to the stinking viscera of Lotus.

Antharahk then looked to Dehka and held the reel out in his direction, saying, "You know what this is, right?"

Nodding, Dehka shifted forward and grabbed it from him. To his content, the Makuta did not recoil upon confirming that the former Toa had a good hold on it. Killing Lotus had formed the framework of trust between the two, as he had wished.

"I presume you picked this up from Leskya Nui," Dehka replied as he skimmed through the words on the reel’s rim, easily comprehending the words which were upside down to him. “Apparently this was used by the Post-Carapine. Where did you find it?”

“I don’t know, it’s likely something my troops retrieved up for me.”

After scanning the room, Dehka was able to spot a rusted projector. Placing the reel inside of it, he fiddled with the machine after placing it on top of a waist-level shelf and aiming it at the clearest wall in the room. He managed to turn the machine on, and it blasted pure stark white out and onto the wall before cutting to a dreadful message written cleanly in Matoran:

--- EMERGENCY ALERT ---

BY THE ORDER OF THE POST-CARAPINE ADMINISTRATION OF LESKYA NUI: AFTER RECEIVING AND READING THE ENTIRETY OF THIS MESSAGE, TURN OFF ALL COMM DEVICES

DO NOT USE RADIO

DO NOT USE TELECOMM

DO NOT LISTEN TO OR WATCH ANY OTHER TRANSMISSIONS OF ANY KIND

IF YOU RECEIVE ANY TRANSMISSIONS OTHER THAN THIS, TURN OFF YOUR DEVICE AND DO NOT TURN IT BACK ON

It then cut to a similar screen, still headed by “EMERGENCY ALERT”, which read:

IF YOU OR ANYONE ELSE EXPERIENCE SYMPTOMS OF DROWSINESS, APATHY, OR IRRITABILITY, TURN OFF ALL COMM DEVICES AND DISCARD THEM

ONLY RESUME THE USAGE OF COMM DEVICES IN THE EVENT THAT A CERTIFIED GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL VISITS AND AUTHORIZES USE OF COMM DEVICES IN YOUR AREA

It then switched between these two screens indefinitely, displaying each for around 10 seconds. Everyone in the room watched it: Dehka with indifference, Antharahk with fascination, Phi with bewilderment, and Drakah with strange happiness.

“I suppose it did work,” Drakah said coolly. She looked back to her partner and muttered, “and you said attacking their communications wouldn’t work with the security they had and my low-level skills in the field.”

Antharahk scowled at her and continued to observe the film with a close eye.

“I remember this message,” Dehka replied. “There were reports of anomalous transmission through our communication devices during the war against you two. After the Post-Carapine found a strong correlation between the broadcasts and a sort of ‘mind-numbness’ spreading like an epidemic across the island, they played this over every telecommunication channel. A similar message took over the radio too.

“Some turned apathetic towards the war, others believed themselves insane… some downright slowed their metabolism and became lethargic and unresponsive. Us Toa were affected less, and although we were able to keep our Matoran battalion away from the anomalous transmissions, they weren’t exempt from the effects. Seeing as the symptoms increased gradually even without repeat exposure, though I imagine their memories of the war are fuzzy. Well, their memories would be fuzzy, I suppose, if they weren’t dead.”

“Oh, that battalion still isn’t dead,” Antharahk said.

Dehka quickly turned to look at him and asked, “Are you sure?”

“I have some rather sufficient evidence, in fact. Not only would they have higher chances of surviving the blast seeing as they were close enough to the epicenter—which was strangely safer than the directly surrounding area—but a scout I sent apparently caught a glimpse of a ship leaving the island which appeared to have some of the battalion’s members on it.”

“Interesting,” Dehka replied as he shut off the projector.

“Do you… miss them?” Antharahk asked, turning to his experimentee.

“I’m not sure. I’m not sure how I really I feel about this… other than indifferent, I suppose.”

“If I were you, I’d feel excited at the opportunity of starting my life anew.”

Dehka looked to his former tormentor. His face would have expressed confusion if it were able to express anything at all.

“Oh, I haven’t told you. You completed all of the tests, Dehka. You were a success in a series of tests that, although more purposeful at first, I’ve only kept running for the fun of it, the giddiness that experimentation gives me. And now that you’ve proved yourself not only self-sufficient but also trusting of Drakah and I, and seeing as we don’t have much more of a purpose for you, I’ve decided to set you free.”

Drakah looked to Antharahk, at first with skepticism and with a rebuttal on her lips, but she stopped. She then began to silently introspect, and eventually shrugged before confirming her agreement with this decision.

“We’ll let you out anywhere the Brotherhood has access to,” Antharahk continued. “Essentially, anywhere in the universe. You can start anew. Maybe find your friends again.”

After a long period of silence, Dehka said, “Well, I did use to be a chemist. It’s a job I enjoy. I suppose there’s no harm in resuming it.”

“Well, there you go, a new career… or an old one, rather, simply continued. Where did you reside while doing chemistry?”

“Nynrah. I was one of the engineers there, a ‘Nynrah Ghost’ as the others would call us. My job was to modify the chemical structures of weapons to make them durable and capable of containing various supernatural powers. Although I was one of the only ghosts who was strictly a chemist, I was the best there. The others always called me the ‘alchemist’ after I managed to turn a bar of tin into pure gold.”

“Nynrah it is, then,” Antharahk exclaimed. “You’ll be the alchemist once more.” He then left the room to order one of his robotic servants to prepare an aircraft for takeoff.

Characters

• Dehka
• Antharahk
• Drakah
• Phi
• Lotus
• Mutran - Mentioned
• Vandir - Mentioned

Trivia

• Renascence and its cover image make reference to humorism, an outdated system of medicine. Used for over 2,000 years until some time in the 19th century, it dictated that diseases were caused by imbalances of four fluids in the human body. Each of the four fluids also corresponded to one of the four temperaments of a similarly outdated theory in psychology, which are referenced in the story by Dehka’s psychological changes and Drakah’s mercurial personality.