The Shadow Order
Fire Lord Azulon sat on the modest chair that acted as his throne, reading dispatches, plans and reports by the light of the towering flames that pulsed and flared behind him. Iroh was still stuck in the Earth Kingdom, hammering away at the obstinate walls of Ba Sing Se. Ozai's daughter was progressing nicely, more than enough to make up for his failure of a son.
Good, Azulon thought to himself, his lips curving into a thin, rare smile. She is fit to share my name, after all. I look forward to seeing her fight in my army. Then, maybe Ozai will have contributed something of worth to this family after all.
Azulon was pulled sharply out of his thoughts by a sudden, unexpected rush of air. It blasted through the throne-room, throwing open the huge metal doors on the far end and extinguishing the pillars of fire that Azulon kept such careful control over. All light in the room went out, leaving the Fire Lord alone in the darkness.
"Eiji?" Azulon spoke as he got to his feet, not bothering to ignite a flame in his free hand. "If this is some kind of joke, I'm not in the mood."
After a few beats of tense silence, Azulon sat back down, took a deep breath, and ignited the flames behind him again with an impatient wave of his hand.
It was then that he saw them.
Four figures, dressed all in black gi. Only their eyes were visible, through a thin break in the fabric. And they were all gray. Dark, slate-gray and full of nothing but acid hatred.
Azulon rose to his feet again, smiling wide.
"I see," he mused, his voice low and humming with the anticipation of a real fight, after so many years sitting idle on a throne. "Come, then."
"That's it?" one of the intruders said, sounding brash and young and indignant. He would be the first to do something stupid, and the first to die. "That's all you have to say?"
"No more words need to pass between your people and mine, whelp," Azulon replied, his voice iron. "My father painted his final declaration on the walls of the Southern Air Temple in Airbender blood."
"Li," one of the other intruders said, her voice just as calm as Azulon's, "don't do anything stupid. He's goading you."
"I know," the younger one replied, sounding strained. "Are we going to kill this bastard, or what? I want to put his head on my wall."
Azulon laughed as he walked forward, standing on the floor now.
"That's very violent of you, monk," he said. "How shameful."
"You think I'm a monk?" Li shot back, his voice jagged. "Your ignorance is hilarious, old man. Are all Firebenders Fire Sages?"
"I see," Azulon replied, shifting into a fighting stance. "So once again, it falls to me to repair my father's mistakes. So be it. None of you will leave this place."
Azulon shot a powerful blast of fire out in front of himself, and the four Airbenders were quick to spring away from the attack with graceful dodges. Azulon targeted Li first, sending pinpoint blasts of fire lancing through the air aimed at cutting the Airbender's legs off. But every attack was either dodged or deflected, and Azulon was quick to realize that the other three Airbenders were busy flanking him. He readied twin arcs of lightning, blasting them off towards two of the other Airbenders.
They slipped away, responding with blade-shaped air crescents. Azulon dodged one, but the second slammed into his shoulder hard enough that he felt the bone break.
The fourth Airbender attacked from Azulon's exposed left side, a sphere of compressed air in her hand spinning fast enough that the edges of it began to crack and spark with electric energy. It wasn't long before the surface of the sphere was covered in pulsing lightning, and Azulon had to rocket into the air to avoid it when it was thrown a heartbeat later.
And once he was in the air, the battle was over.
A cyclone formed underneath his feet, while the air that was feeding the flames holding him aloft suddenly vanished. Azulon fell into the vortex, the force of the wind slamming into him again and again before it dropped him, bruised and battered, to the ground. An oppressive air current pinned him where he lay, face-up and staring at the ceiling. The four pairs of gray eyes looked down at him, savage triumph easy to see on the Airbenders' faces. The air was pulled from his lungs, and the Fire Lord could not speak.
"We would have been perfectly happy in isolation, Azulon," one of them said, an older man with a streak of pure white amidst his graying hair. "But your father butchered our people, and drove us to the ends of the earth. Now, we are the last of the nomads. And we will haunt your steps and your dreams, Fire Lord. The four of us are only a few of our Order, and yet we were enough to face you here.
"You have no idea what we're capable of," the Airbender finished, "and you do not want to find out. I promise you that."
"Wait," Li called after the man as he walked away, "we're letting him go?"
"Of course," the woman who had chided Li earlier spoke again. "If Azulon dies here, Ozai will try to take the throne before Iroh returns from Ba Sing Se. We can't let that happen."
"How—" Azulon forced out as air returned to his lungs, detesting the weak sound of his own voice. "How do you know Iroh is returning from Ba Sing Se?"
"Because one of us murdered his son," the old male Airbender replied, his voice cold. "That will be enough to break Iroh's will, and send him limping back here in disgrace. Your line is broken, Azulon."
The Airbenders left the throne room, as silent as they had come, passing by the unconscious bodies of the guards they'd knocked out on their way in. Once they were outside the palace, the woman turned to the old man and spoke.
"Where is Lu Ten now, Yoroshi?"
"Hidden, and safe," the old man replied. "Iroh believes he is dead, and that is enough. I hope your judgment of his character is correct, Inara."
"He will change," the other Airbender replied, her voice certain. "There has always been good in him. Now that will be all that remains. He may join us, soon enough."
"I don't trust him," Li said, but his teachers had another question on their minds.
"Li," Inara said, serious. "You weren't actually going to kill him, were you?"
"Of course not," Li answered, sounding offended. "But Azulon didn't need to know that."
The four Airbenders made their way to a small skiff in the nearby harbor and boarded, using Airbending to propel the craft out into the open water.
Only one bit of decoration adorned the skiff, easy enough to miss if the eye was not searching it out:
The carving of a lotus flower, inscribed within a circle.
…
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A/N: Do ho ho ho ho. Hope you enjoyed it, and please let me know what you thought!