It’s been a while since I wrote something in the Bionicle universe. I decided to adapt the scene in Journey to One where Umarak turns from Hunter to Destroyer, to feel more epic. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoy the hour-long loop of the Eye Witness intro music to which I’m currently listening.
The being was a shadow. Created with the foundations of the universe, he was fated to eternally hunt all the elements of the world. It was his destiny to douse the world’s fire, dry up its water, melt its ice, shatter its stone, destroy its earth, cut down its jungles, and finally, to douse its light. But it was also his destiny to fail. Created to be evil, he had no other path but to be defeated by the very elements he innately thirsted to destroy. His name was Umarak, and he was not happy.
This was his plight until one fateful day, someone dared to defy destiny. Tired of being changed by his predestined limitations, he forged a mask, which, when worn, would give him control over all the elements that up to then had bound him to a path of servitude. What Makuta didn’t consider (for Makuta was his name) was that, when attacked, the universe fights back. The mask was torn from his face and shattered to pieces by his very brother, and as a result, he was cast into a dimension of pure shadow. While he could still communicate with the material world, no one wanted anything to do with the traitor who tried to break the universe. No one but one ancient hunter named Umarak.
Fascinated by the attempt to change fate, Umarak chose to join Makuta in a bid of vengeance on the world that had betrayed them, Makuta for his creativity, and Umarak for his very existence. Makuta told Umarak he had a plan. He gave the hunter aid- creatures that he filled with the darkness from his world to be living shadow traps for all who walked in the light most held so dear. He told his hunter to use the shadows of his dimension to fight any opposition he would face on his quest, a quest to retrieve another powerful mask- a legendary mask of control. Through turmoil and toil, Umarak had accomplished his goal. He finally stood before Makuta, merely a shadow cast on a rock off of a being who wasn’t there. Only two crimson eyes burned through the veil between dimensions from Makuta’s home, staring at the mask held in his hunter’s hands. It was a beautiful thing- forged out of pure gold, with two graceful horns sloping from the intricately detailed domed head. A trunk-like protuberance extended down from the face, also adorned with runes from a language long-since forgotten. All those burning eyes wanted to do was put themselves through the holes in the mask, to begin to regain what their owner had lost- but that couldn’t happen; not yet. One final step needed to be completed. A voice whispered to Umark from Makuta’s deep shadow, “Put it on”. Umarak slipped his own mask from off his face- it was sickly looking thing, an angular skull carved from wood long since blackened with rot, its dark color contrasted by the bleached antlers shooting out of its top. As he put on the new mask, said to be a mask that gave control, he saw a new world through its eye-sockets- only in his last conscious moments did he realize that he would control nothing with the mask, but that the mask would control him. Tendrils of power reached through his eyes to the deep, dark pit where his soul had been before he sold it to the master of shadows all those years ago. The mask’s power tore the boundary between the physical and the immaterial, filling Umarak with pure darkness that manifested itself as body mass. His body quickly went from nine feet tall to twelve, and his chest doubled in width. All around him, similar changes were happening to his shadow traps. The darkness crawled out of their bodies, wisps of energy solidifying into strong, sinewy limbs. The creatures rose up, no longer shadow traps, but now terrible beasts. Teeth dripped like liquid from their wide jaws, finally harnessing into crystal when they were long enough to keep their mouths from closing. The mindless animals began to file their fingers into sharp bone claws, the pain overcome by the anticipation of what was soon to come. They lost their sight moments later, their eyes now Makuta’s windows from his world to the solid one. The last words Umarak, now a twisted hulk of pure muscle, heard before he met the same fate were another whisper from the depths- “You are no longer my hunter- you are my destroyer” Then the black closed in. He had avoided destiny, though. Instead of being killed by those he hunted, his fate was sealed by the one thing he trusted- the shadows.