Lalotai did not appear to have changed much since Maui's last time here. It was still a vast, weird world splashed with a riot of colors, pulsating with eerie light, and populated with even stranger creatures. He had wasted no time to take in the scenery on his last visit, however-too overwhelmed with him anger to stick around.

This trip, however, was clearly going to take a while. The crab had to be around here somewhere, but Maui had absolutely no idea where to even begin looking. It couldn't be that hard, though. After all, how many places could an impossibly huge crab really hide?

He'd started his search at the clearing where he had last seen the crab. More accurately, it was the clearing where he'd left him after returning him to the realm of monsters. Hadn't that been a feat, too! Maui still couldn't believe he'd managed to find a way to haul the oversized crustacean all the way down here. Shame he didn't even get a new tattoo for it, but he supposed that one would just have to be a tale to legend.

Raising his hook, Maui took to the air with a flash of light as he shifted to a hawk's form. He'd cover far more ground from above. From his starting point, he began a spiraling pattern out from the center-each circle gradually widening as he broadened his search. He skimmed low whenever anything promising appeared, but thus far had found no trace of the crab even as he cast his search wider and wider.

He had to be here. How could a gargantuan crab with a massive ego, covered in tacky trinkets, possibly be so well hidden? A small thought crept in and Maui felt his wings falter as it hit him. What if Tamatoa was dead? Maui backpedaled in midair, beating his wings to catch the wind again and right himself. No, that could not be a possibility. The crab was nearly as ageless as Maui himself and even here in Lalotai he'd be difficult to kill. No, he had to still be around. Maui pushed the disquieting notion away with an effort.

He was quickly getting frustrated, though, as it became clear this was going to be harder than he initially thought. He was on the verge of landing and changing his whole strategy when a sliver of a warm golden glow caught his eye. Maui banked sharply and swooped low to get a better look.

The light was spilling through a crooked opening at the base of massive spiral shell. The shell was embedded upright in the ground and stretched to the underside of the ocean. An oversized clam shell was wedged where the shell's mouth would be an it was through this opening that the light emanated. It was certainly a flashy enough location to have attracted the crab, that's for sure.

Maui wheeled closer, careful to keep his shadow from falling across the entryway from above. He couldn't see inside from here, but this was the most promising spot he'd encountered so far. What else would explain the warm glow of light in a place dominated by cooler shades of blue or garish neon?

So intently was he scrutinizing the towering structure that he paid no heed to a hissing sound from below-a thin release of steam. When he finally did recognize what the sound was, it was too late and he was caught off guard by a burst of water exploding from below. He swerved sharply, but he was too close. The jet of the geyser caught his wingtip and sent him spinning. Had he been at a higher altitude, he would have recovered easily but flying this low left him no time to right himself. He crashed tumbling into the ground, but rolled with the momentum. Effortlessly, he pulled out of the roll with burst of light and stood back in his human shape, hook held at ready, glowing blue, and ready to fend off any impending attack.

There was no attack. He seemed to be alone on the winding pathway up to the shell. Shrugging off the blunder and brushing the dirt from his shoulders, he got back to business and started up the path.

It was quieter near the immense shell structure as if few creatures dared approach, with only the hiss and splutter of the geyser field to break the unnatural silence. As he got closer, he could see a sprinkling of glittery shells and bric-a-brac on the ground just outside the entry, illuminated by the light inside the lair. Maui smirked. This was definitely the place.

There was no hint of movement or shadow from inside, but nevertheless Maui approached with caution. He was sure the crab was in there and didn't want to tip him off early. Having the element of surprise would make a significant difference in how this all went down.

Maui reached the entrance. He kept out of sight, pressed into the shadows where the warm light didn't reach. He stole a quick look inside, then darted back to the shadows. The cavernous shell was well it from a wide hole in the shell, high above the floor, and Maui could see gleaming treasures scattered haphazardly around the interior. What he didn't see, however, was a giant crab.

Huh. Well, he must have caught the crab away from home, because there was absolutely no doubt that this was the place. This worked well enough for Maui, though. An ambush was even more effective than simply surprising a monster.

Maui left the shadows behind and stepped inside the luminous lair. He moved to the center of the cavern, looking amongst the piles of treasure on the floor. It was always possible that the war club might be among them, which would negate any need to even deal with the-

There was an impossibly heavy thud behind him, shaking the very ground.

Maui whipped around in surprise, eyes wide, to face the inevitable.

Tamatoa stood, sneering with unrestrained malice and blocking the exit with his imposing bulk. He must have dropped down from above the entryway. The crab had always been a skillful climber, Maui remembered now, and had laid an ambush of his own.

"Well, well," Tamatoa purred nastily. "Look who decided to visit."

Ok, clearly there were still some bad feelings. Well, Maui had been under no illusion that this was going to be easy. He brought his fishhook up warningly, but the crab did not draw back. Quite the opposite, the crab advanced on him, slowly and deliberately with menacing steps. He was even larger than last Maui had seen him and was now far more comfortable using his size to intimidate as well.

"And what are you doing here, little mini-god?" Tamatoa crooned. There was a malicious gleam in the crab's eyes that Maui recognized, but had never seen directed at himself before. Maui would not be deterred, though.

"I want Haunui. I want the war club," he demanded brazenly, not cowed by the crab's threatening act. "Just give it to me now. Don't make this any harder than it has to be."

Whatever answer the crab had been expecting, that clearly wasn't it. His antennae twitched and he seemed thrown for just the briefest of moments, then that fleeting expression vanished. Tamatoa laughed, but it was a mirthless sound. "Still trying to break our agreement, even centuries later? And for what? To give it to those useless humans?" His gaze sharpened. "Well, you can't have it."

Maui grit his teeth. "You don't want to fight me on this," he warned. His hook lit up, blue light tracing along the scrimshaw lines.

"I'm pretty sure I do." The crab was still coming towards him, one measured step at a time.

"This is your last chance," Maui told him, his body tensing.

Tamatoa gave him a narrow eyed, toothy grin. "Oh no, I think it's your last chance. Why else would you be here?"

Maui flinched slightly, almost imperceptibly, but Tamatoa had always been able to read him disturbingly well. The crab found the crack in his armor and pushed at it relentlessly, his voice mocking. "Humans not as easily impressed as they used to be? Or maybe you've just never been that impressive to begin with."

Maui felt his temper rising, egged on by the stinging words which hit so close to the bone. The crab took another step towards him and opened his mouth to say something else.

With a roar of wild rage, Maui abandoned all sense and leapt at the monstrous crab.

There was no look of surprise on Tamatoa's face. He'd clearly been anticipating this and dodged nimbly to the side, then retaliated with shocking swiftness. Maui suddenly found himself flying through the air as Tamatoa struck him sideways with a pincer. He slammed hard into the wall of the cavern, but held onto his hook and rolled quickly back to his feet.

The crab had gotten the drop on him twice now, but he was determined not to get caught out again. Tamatoa was coming at him fast again, with a speed that no creature his size should reasonably possess. Maui was ready this time, though, and repelled the attack soundly.

They clashed again and again, but Maui was swiftly gaining the upper hand. He shifted in and out of his hawk's form, raining down blows on Tamatoa from above and darting back out of reach of the crab's snapping claws. Maui knew he'd eventually wear him down this way, heavily armored shell or not.

Tamatoa was already showing signs of fatigue, his reactions slower and his attacks less coordinated.

Maui felt confident that this was just about in the bag. He stood in his human form, preparing to make another run at the crab and hopefully finish the fight, when suddenly Tamatoa jumped back a few steps and struck the side of his lair with a claw, the hollow thud resonating through the chamber. Maui was briefly perplexed at this, wondering what the crab was playing at. Then a shadow passed overhead and the lair was plunged into pitch black darkness. He caught a brief flicker of softly glowing bioluminescence from the crab, but then Tamatoa doused his own lights and vanished into the dark.

One wouldn't think an enormous crab could disappear so effectively, but Tamatoa was entirely undetectable with his own glow suppressed and his movements silent. Maui lit his hook, but it's faint halo of light failed to penetrate all corners of the lair and reveal the hidden crustacean.

Maui stayed alert, listening intently for any sign of the crab. Then Tamatoa's voice rang out in the dark.

"You know, all that time you left me stranded alone on that island-all those uncountable years that you abandoned me there to go play hero for the humans-there was really just one question I had for you. Do you know what it is?"

Maui searched the darkness for him, chasing the sound of his voice. It echoed in the cavernous lair, however, and seemed to come from everywhere at once.

"How does it feel, Maui?" he sneered the demigod's name, as if it's very utterance was an insult in itself. "How does it feel to have grown up to be just like your parents?"

Maui's blood turned to ice in his veins and his face went white.

In the same instant and all happening with lightning speed, the darkness was violently split asunder as Tamatoa's bioluminescence blazed brilliantly and the crab leapt from the shadows without any sound of warning.

It was a calculated move and Maui was caught completely unprepared for the third time. He was still reeling from Tamatoa's biting words when the attack descended upon him. Before he knew what was happening, he was slammed into the ground on his back with enough force to knock the wind out of him. His hook flew from his grasp, landing with a clatter somewhere out of sight in the darkness. He couldn't so much as draw a breath before he was pinned down by one of Tamatoa's legs-planted firmly in the center of his chest with the hard point of it digging into his breastbone.

Maui struggled under the weight of the leg, trying to break free without much success winded as he was. He cast his gaze about in the dark frantically, desperately searching for his hook. His advantage was lost and he was in real trouble now.

The crab loomed over him with a twisted grin, made doubly horrifying by his glowing facial markings and the brightly flashing colors now filling his eyes. "Without your hook you really aren't anything special, are you?" he taunted coolly. "Just a bit of flotsam thrown into the sea." Tamatoa leaned down, bringing his face closer to Maui. "You are nothing," he whispered, perfectly designed to cut deep.

Maui felt a cold fury fill him like nothing he'd ever felt before, spurred on by the crab's increasingly personal ridicule. With it came a renewed will and he reached up with both hands to grab ahold of the leg pinning him down. With an enraged yell, he summoned up all his strength and twisted.

The cracking sound that filled the room was sickening, cutting even through Maui's blind fury. It did nothing to dissuade him, however. Nor did the high, agonized shriek that followed. The weight lifted from his chest, but Maui held on and was pulled to his feet. Now standing, he braced against the sand and gave the leg another wrenching turn. Tamatoa's scream reached a new volume, but even through the tortured howl of pain, Maui could still hear the crunching pop as the leg broke away in his hands.


It had been going so well, really. Tamatoa had heard the crash outside his lair and had quickly determined its source. He'd had plenty of time to prepare his ambush, clinging silently to the ledge above the entryway. True, Maui had been gaining ground on him, but Tamatoa had been prepared with a trick of his own and, all as part of the general plan, he had managed to successfully separate the demigod from that blasted hook. Victory seemed assured at that point. Perhaps he was indulging in just a little excessive gloating, but that was his prerogative once he had his adversary trapped, wasn't it?

And then it had all gone horribly wrong.

One minute he had Maui pinned down securely; the next was filled with blinding pain. He tried to pull away, urgently drawing his leg back to escape the agony. The demigod clung to him doggedly, though. Then the pain drove up another notch and his vision blurred, going white around the edges. Seconds seemed like an eternity. All he could hear was his own voice-a raw scream that drowned out everything but the excruciating sensation. As such, he heard nothing else when he felt his leg splinter and break-bringing a whole new previously unknown level of piercing, fiery pain.

Then the demigod yanked roughly and Tamatoa felt his leg rip away at the second joint. Everything went white. Unbalanced by the loss of the leg, vision clouded, and in sheer unrelenting agony, he lost his footing and crashed heavily to the ground.

The keening howl-his own voice, he thought distantly-began to fade as his vision went from blinding white to a creeping dark that threatened to overwhelm him and take him down with it. He struggled to remain conscious. If he passed out now, he'd never wake up-Maui would kill him, he was certain.

He opened his eyes and forced them to focus as best he could. His vision sharpened just enough to see Maui standing before him. He'd retrieved his hook and held it ready, his stance wide and his face contorted with fury. The hook glowed harshly blue in the darkness, just as it had the very first time he'd seen it.

He had to get up. If he stayed down, he wouldn't survive.

Tamatoa's remaining legs scrabbled in dirt as he struggled to rise again and face his foe. They slipped, however, in the growing slick of blood pooling beneath him. The blood was blue and glowing faintly with a slowly fading light-his blood. There was an awful lot of it, he thought vaguely. Between the slippery sand and his inability to immediately compensate his balance for the missing leg, he fell back to the earth with a dull thud.

His eyes sought the demigod out, fearing the inevitable. Maui was watching him struggle impassively. Unable to rise and too overwhelmed by searing pain to fight back, Tamatoa felt his resistance slip away and he let his eyes slide closed. Better to not see the coup de grĂ¢ce coming.

He felt Maui climbing on his shell. He tensed, anticipating more pain and to be swiftly shuffled off the mortal coil courtesy of that fishhook. This was it. He waited for the end.

The blow never fell.

He heard Maui jump back to the sand. Confused, Tamatoa opened one eye, then the other. He looked around and found Maui. He was clutching Haunui, the golden war club that they had once quarreled about centuries ago, in his hand. Without another word to Tamatoa, the demigod started to leave.

Still unable to stand, Tamatoa was nevertheless roused sharply enough to anger at the sight of one of his treasures being taken to shout at the demigod. "You filthy thief! This isn't over!" he snarled through his pain.

Maui paused, turning to cast him a baleful glare. "Yes, it is."

With that, Maui walked out. As he left, Tamatoa stared at the demigod's back. Even with his vision still blurring, he couldn't fail to notice the tattoo on Maui's left shoulder shifting and changing. Where once it depicted the demigod and himself pulling up an island together, now the avatar representing himself had relocated to a lower position-locked in defeat against Maui's own depiction.

Then the demigod was gone, leaving Tamatoa bloody, broken, and sprawled in his lair alone.

Weak from loss of blood and hopelessly adrift in a sea of pain, he closed his eyes and let darkness wash over him, carrying him to sweet oblivion.

There were no dreams in the swirling dark.

Tamatoa slowly came back to the world, feeling woozy and faint. He was still sprawled on the floor of his darkened lair, surrounded by a dark blue-green stain of his own blood, dried where it soaked into the sand beneath him. He had no idea how long he had been out, but the searing pain that had been so torturous before had dulled now to a barely tolerable throbbing ache. Instinctively, he tried to flex his severed leg and the bloody stump of it twitched hard. He had the odd and unpleasant sensation of realizing that, despite the fact that the leg was mostly gone, he could almost still feel it there. It was disorienting and he wanted nothing more than to drift back into unconsciousness to avoid the reality of his situation.

He closed his eyes and willed sleep to come.

There was a faint clacking noise and the sound of something approaching. He screwed his eyes shut even tighter, stubbornly trying to block it out. Lost in his misery, he just didn't care.

Then there came a voice-a soft, lilting female voice that sounded vaguely familiar, though Tamatoa couldn't place it through his haze. "I told you that you wouldn't like how this ended," the voice said, knowingly but gentle and without ridicule.

Some distant memory stirred in him and Tamatoa opened his eyes. Blinking in the dark of his lair, he could see glowing purple and pink colors outlining the shape of a giant spider. Centuries upon centuries had passed, but he vaguely recognized her. He was larger than her now, a distinct reversal from when he first encountered the spider on the ill-fated adventure that earned him the war club that Maui had just stolen.

She looked at him with glittering emerald eyes, gleaming in the dark. There was pity in her gaze.

He didn't want her pity. Pity was just a step away from contempt, after all. Tamatoa looked away. "Leave me alone," he said flatly.

"Well, Herenui, he's not as charming as before," another voice piped up, this one brighter and upbeat. "But he's still quite handsome!" Much to his dismay, a second, smaller spider-glowing with orange and yellow designs-stepped into his line of sight.

Even the praise failed to bring him around, though. Tamatoa closed his eyes again and tried to will them away so he could sulk in peace.

"You can't just lie there," Herenui said, a frown in her voice.

"I can and I will," Tamatoa replied petulantly.

He heard the larger spider approach with delicate steps. She was close enough that he could easily have reached out and snapped at her with a claw, but he had no energy for it.

"Did you ever really think it would work?" she asked him, not unkindly. "That demigods and monsters could be friends?"

He winced, too raw to hide it, and opened his eyes. "He raised me," he mumbled miserably, unable to stop himself from voicing that admission. He instantly wished he hadn't, as saying it out loud made the betrayal seem all the nearer.

The spider came closer and her gleaming eyes bored into his. "You need to let it go," she told him firmly.

He let out a sullen, dismissive huff.

The spider's eyes narrowed and her tone grew more forceful. "You're the last of the great crabs-one of the most ancient creatures in Lalotai. Stop acting like a child."

Insulted, he worked up a glare.

"Good, get mad. Now get up," she instructed.

He clicked a pincer in annoyance, strongly disliking being bossed around. Sagely, the spider stepped smoothly out of his reach. When he made no move to get up, however, Herenui sharply snapped at him. "Get up, you fool!"

Tamatoa growled, getting angry now. He took a swipe at her with a claw, but she was quicker than him in his drained state and danced easily out of range.

"Get up!" she commanded harshly. "Or end up as food for some other monster!"

She had a point there, but acknowledging that point only stoked his ire further. If he wanted to shut this tormenting spider down, he'd have to get up. His legs twitched as he willed himself into motion. Scraping at the blood soaked dirt, he tried to lift himself up. Off balance, though, he reached out with a leg that wasn't there and crashed cursing back down.

"So close!" came the encouraging shout from Hereiti, the smaller spider. She was quickly shushed by Herenui, who jabbed her with a leg to shut her up.

Tamatoa had the distinct impression that he was being manipulated here, which only annoyed him further. He had to get these spiders out of his home so he could properly wallow in his misery, but to do that he had to get up.

Again he struggled to get his legs under him properly, slower and more carefully now. It took a great deal of effort, but he managed at last to rise. Mobile again, Tamatoa shot the spiders a glare.

"Oh, Herenui! Look how big he's grown since we last saw him!" Hereiti exclaimed radiantly, with a somewhat off-putting giggle.

The larger spider, however, was already shepherding her companion towards the exit-they had apparently found the hidden passage out-before Tamatoa could get it together enough to retaliate for her rough treatment of his bruised ego.

"But Herenui," the smaller spider protested vigorously as she was lead away, "he's hurt and sad and I just wanted to-"

And then they were gone and Tamatoa was alone once more. Alone, but still standing.