Jaller pressed his fist against the invisible barrier that separated him from his best friend. "It's not your fault, Takua. If it was built to keep you out, I don't think you're going to be able to weasel your way through."

Tears stood in the Toa of Light's eyes. "Takanuva," he corrected with a shaky laugh. "Get it right, moron."

Jaller swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. He turned to the five other matoran. "Come on, guys; we need to keep moving."

One by one, Hewkii, Kongu, Nuparu and Matoro said their quiet goodbyes to Takanuva. The Toa of Light blinked furiously to keep from crying. "You've gotta make sure Jaller comes back in one piece, okay?" he joked to Hewkii. "It'd be kind of an anticlimax if he died again." His friends tried to smile. Last of all, Takanuva turned to Hahli. "Be careful, Squirt," he said softly, using his pet nickname for her.

The Ga-matoran stifled her tears and pressed herself against the invisible wall, trying as hard as she could to go back, to get out, to give her best friend one last hug. Takanuva stooped and looked her in the eyes. "Hey, stop it. Come on; we Chroniclers have to be brave. You're setting a bad example for the guys!" She tried to smile, but only managed a hiccup of grief.

Jaller stepped forward and put a protective hand on Hahli's shoulder. "Come on. There's nothing we can do." He looked back up at his best friend's golden mask. "Takua, when you get back to Mata-Nui-"

"If you're worried about being forgotten," the Toa interrupted, "don't even think I'll let that happen."

"I know. I was going to say, don't let them follow us," Jaller finished, his voice carefully controlled. "No sense in losing anyone else. Goodbye, Takua."

"Bye, Jaller."

The Ta-matoran turned and led his team up and over the ridge. The Toa watched them until they were out of sight. "Mata Nui be with you," he muttered, kicking at the accursed barrier.

"Okay, this makes no logicsense," Kongu declared, studying a piece of pounded harake paper several hours later. "I've been making a mapguide of where we've groundwalked, and we're footgoing in spincircles!"

Hewkii frowned. "We've been going in a straight line."

Kongu shrugged. "Don't thoughtknow what to speaktell you, sand crawler; my guidemap says we've passedgone this wateryuck before." He gestured at a sluggish stream of brown water that came from some spring higher up in the rocky hills. "Three times, we've groundwalked pastgone. Don't know how, don't know why, but that's what pasthappened."

"And I'm telling you, I've been navigating a huge desert since I could crawl. We are hiking up the side of a mountain; it's very easy to tell which way you're going. And we're going up." Hewkii crossed his arms stubbornly.

"Maybe you're both right," Nuparu chimed in thoughtfully. "There could be more than one stream around here."

"The sametwin wateryuck?" Kongu countered.

Nuparu hesitated, realizing he had just inserted himself into an argument. "Well, we don't exactly know that it's the same one."

Kongu snapped his fingers. "I'll truthprove." He stuck his unadorned wooden walking stick into the ground next to the stream, burying the end enough to make it stand upright. "Now, the next runpass we make, we sharpwatch for the branchstick."

Hewkii rolled his eyes. "You're letting the sun get to you, air head."

"It can't hurt to let him try, right?" Matoro offered, taking Kongu's side. "Let's just keep walking. Jaller and Hahli are already ahead."

As if in answer, Jaller turned and yelled back at them. "Keep up, you guys!"

Kongu snickered. "'Keep groundwalking, let's go, fastmove'. The absolute last word that comes to thoughtmind is 'bossy'."

Nuparu jumped to his friend's defense. "Jaller's not bossy! He's just in charge."

"Kongu just hates not being in charge," Hewkii added laughingly.

The Miru-clad Le-matoran laughed good-naturedly. "What? Like I'm banforbidden to have an mindopinion?"

"Come on!" Jaller called again. His voice echoed against the bare cliffs and hills. "We found something!"

The other four matoran ran to catch up with their friends who stood almost at the top of a spur jutting out from the mountainside. After a minute or two of struggling over the rough terrain, they found Jaller was standing knee-deep in a stream - which did look a good deal like the one they had just left - examining a mangled lump of rotten wood at the edge of the water.

"Someone else came this way, a long time ago," Jaller explained, pointing to the fossilized remains. "The wood isn't part of a plant; it was cut and smoothed."

Hahli shook her head. "That doesn't mean anyone's here now, Jaller. Who would want to stick around this place?"

"Uh, I thought-think we do, apparently," Kongu gulped. "I stuckplanted that, just down the steephill. At the sametwin stream that we keep runpassing."

"Oh... Mata Nui, he's right," Nuparu gasped, looking frantically back down the hill for the other stream.

Hewkii crossed his arms. "Whoa, whoa. Just because someone else used a marker here a long time ago doesn't mean-"

"But it's in exactly the same position as Kongu's stick, relative to the water and that bunch of pebbles," the Onu-matoran interrupted. "The odds of exact placement replication like that being performed by two different people who never interacted are astronomically low; practically zero."

"Why can't anyone on this trip speak plain matoran?" Hewkii rolled his eyes. "So what you're saying is that Kongu plants his staff in the ground about a minute ago, we walk away from it and a couple yards away, we not only find the stick, but find it older? Does anyone else think this theory is just a little crazy?"

"Like this whole journeytrip hasn't been crazymad?" Kongu shrugged. "Welcome to adventurescrambles, where crosswired is the new normalfine."

Jaller listened to the exchange quietly, gazing around at the seemingly endless range of barren mountains. What was that rhyme Matoro read? 'A world of shadow, famine and plague'; something like that, anyway. But that doesn't explain the stick, or the way we never get any closer to the top. He cleared his throat as he stepped out of the brook. "There's something else; this water is dry."

"Come again?" Hahli asked, bending down to touch the stream. The liquid rippled over her fingers. "That's... It feels like sand. How can...?"

The Po-matoran threw up his hands. "Okay, what is going on? Moving up the mountain takes us in circles, a stick ages years a few minutes, and the water isn't water?"

"Of course, there is a chance that someone else put a second stick there," Nuparu said weakly. "Someone who didn't leave."

The others turned to look where he pointed. A lone matoran stood at the top of the ridge, outlined by the cold sunlight. The figure waved at them, then ran over the ridge out of site.

"Who was that?" Hewkii wondered, grabbing a disk from his pack. "And what are they doing here?"

"Exploring," Matoro panted, coming up from behind the group. "I think I've figured out how this place works; at least a little of it."

Hewkii gestured at the hill top. "That... That was you?"

He nodded. "I was at the top."

"But you were herestanding, and then you were mountaintop, and then groundwalked away from us," Kongu sputtered. "What in Mata Nui's name...?"

"It was sort of Hewkii's idea, actually," he smiled. "He pointed out that everything we expect turns out to be just the opposite. So I tried walking downhill... And suddenly, I was at the top. I wanted to get back to you, so I ran away from you."

Nuparu blinked, trying to take in the paradox. "How does that work, exactly?"

"I don't know. But the point is, it does. We can at least get over the mountain," Matoro offered.

On any other day, Jaller would have declared Matoro insane. Today, running backwards to go forwards seemed far less strange than a tunnel that ate light and an invisible wall built just to keep his best friend out. "Okay," he told Matoro, "lead the way."

The Ko-matoran turned to face away from the mountain's crest and started running; the others followed close behind. The ground seemed to twist itself under their feet, as if it was alive. In a few short seconds, they found themselves at the top, looking down on a vast grey plain of dust. It was perfectly flat and absolutely still - nothing in it moved or grew. There was not a breath of wind, not a noise from a matoran or a rahi or even an insect. The sky overhead was cloudless, but looked grey, as if the sun did not have the strength to give the sky color. It was like something in a dead world.

"Looks like fun," Hewkii commented drily.