Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender
Chapter One: Unwilling Sacrifice
It was the dawn of the third day. Nearly forty-eight hours of fighting all led to the lower sanctuary of the Northern Air temple. Ai-Li was exhausted. Ai-Li the Prodigy was exhausted. She could not possibly predict the strength of the five grandmasters around her. Miko the Monsoon stood silent to the right-front of her. Her surrogate father, normally light and carefree, returned to his defensive stance at the sound of more fire blasts. The hallway around them shook. Miko was strangely quiet, saving his words of wisdom for a time when there might be a greater need.
Ai-Li found herself reminiscing in what could possibly be the last few seconds of her life. She always relied on Miko to tell her what was right, to teach her the secrets of airbending, to guide her. What if, suddenly, he was no longer there? To her right was Tan the Two-faced, who saw every side of each argument. He was consistently fair and unbiased. If he had not been a monk she could have predicted him to be a judge, or lawyer. Tan already had written close to half of the existing rules for becoming a respectful monk and airbender.
Next to Tan was Wei the Wishful. Always dreaming, always thinking, always... never quite there. He was known for his crazy half-baked ideas and creative inferences. His bending was inventive and new. Every move was molded with his own personal flair, a style un-mastered by anyone but himself. Ai-Li enjoyed spending her afternoons in his workshop, trying new flyers. Only Ai-Li and Wei were known to fly on top of their flyers, instead of on bottom. A new practice, but not entirely frowned upon by others. Ai-Li would miss him sorely.
Why was she thinking like that? She would see him again, wouldn't she? Yes, she had to. On the other side of Miko was Lu the Loyal. She knew very little of him. Lu came to the Northern Air Temple at the age of a teenager. As a youth, he dabbled in the darker arts of airbending, and as a result, tending to remain isolated and quiet. He was a grandmaster, nonetheless, and worthy of respect. But his cold and calculating attitude diverted students and other monks away from him. Ai-Li had never taken lessons from him. Now she wished she had. And next to Lu...?
"Where is the grandmaster Tien?" She asked aloud.
"He is gone," was the reply, "you have taken his place." Miko's voice was laden with sorrow and untold emotion. He did not look at her. Perhaps he could not bear to fall apart.
So Tien has fallen? She choked back tears.
"Why are they attacking?" She snapped. "We haven't done anything! The air nomads are nothing but respectful and peaceful. What have we done to deserve this!" Nothing made sense.
"We have done nothing," Tan spoke. "And we have done everything. The Fire Lord has been brewing this war since before you were born. He only needed..." Tan paused. "...The right window of opportunity."
"But what have we done?" Ai-Li asked again.
"The air nomads are like a nation also," Tan replied calmly to the shouts and screams above, "A nation of free people. Free to think as we wish, free to act as we wish, and free to travel, to spread peace and prosperity. We are the embodiment of an idea." Tan heaved a great sigh. "By merely existing we stand against the Fire Lord—"
"Than we have signed our own death warrant." mumbled Lu. "We have doomed ourselves. The Wind Council blatantly stood against Sozin—"
"What else should we have done?!" Miko retorted, "Given in to the whims of a dangerous tyrant? Signed away our souls? Throw away our values and morals to live another day?"
"Perhaps to fight another day..." Lu whispered. "The winds are changing. Even I can feel it. The bitter monk locked up in his tower could have predicted what is happening now."
"What is happening now?"
"We're dying." Lu growled. "We are dying."
"Humans may die, but ideas live together." Wei the Wishful's voice sounded like pleasant chimes against Lu's dark rumble. "As Tan said, we are the embodiment of an idea."
The ground shook with unseen blasts from above.
"Why are we waiting here?!" Ai-Li shouted.
"And ideas do not die... they simply fade away, until they are thought of again."
"You have taken Tien's place as the youngest of us." Miko repeated.
"But why are we waiting here? We should be above, helping the other airbenders fight of the invaders!"
"Tien had a plan," Miko looked at her, "should the temple ever fall."
"Our physical bodies may decay, but as long as a memory of us remains, as long as our ideals carry on..." Wei continued dreamily, oblivious to the rumbles and the other conversation, "...we have never truly left."
Ai-Li sighed in frustration. "Will someone tell me what's going on? What plan?"
"You must understand." Miko continued. "Fire Lord Sozin will stop at nothing to completely eliminate the airbending culture." He made a cutting motion with his right hand. "He will hunt us in the morning and kill us in the evening. No one is safe, no one who bears the blue arrows of an airbender." He pointed to his bald head and pushed up his sleeves to reveal his tattoos.
"That's genocide!" Pieces of the ceiling began to fall in front of her. "He can't possibly get away with it! Someone will stop him! The Avatar will stop him!"
She had said it. Everyone fell silent. Miko moved to place a hand on her shoulder.
"We don't know the fate of the Avatar." He said grimly. "He is young, and we have not heard from our Southern brothers in days. We do not even know if he has accepted his destiny. We do not know..." He trailed off. "We do not even know if he still lives."
Ai-Li's eyes filled with horror. "Who will keep balance...?"
"The balance is destroyed." Lu intervened. "But hopefully, the airbenders don't have to be. We can live to fight another day."
"I'm confused..."
A crash resounded at the front of the hallway. Miko moved in front to send a blast of twisted wind that slammed two firebenders into the wall. Four men replaced the two fallen ones.
"Do it!" Tan yelled as he sent a slice of air toward the man on the far right. He fell backward as the man next to him sent a blast of fire that Wei intercepted. "Lu! Pull her back!"
"I'm sorry Ai-Li." Lu said gruffly as he grabbed me from behind.
"What are you doing!" She yelled, "Where are you taking me!"
Lu dragged her back into the secret sanctuary. If Ai-Li had not been being hauled, she would have stood captivated by the tall carved pillars and ancient airbender drawings. Colors that she had not imagined flooded her vision. With one flick of the wrist Lu opened a secret door in the sanctum, a door hidden from the outside world for thousands of years.
"You will understand in time."
"Let me GO!" She screamed. "I want to fight! I want to die with you!"
"As the youngest of us you have taken Tien's place."
Ai-Li was forced into the doorway of the hidden room.
"We live with you."
The world went black.
Time slowed as Ai-Li watched the door close in slow motion. There was fire, then there was water, earth and air. Colors spun in circles and shattered into more colors and time slowed, slowed, slowed...
Ai-Li gasped and shot up. She looked around her. Trees... tall trees with many vines shadowed the ground around her, which was wet with various puddles and small streams. It was almost a swamp-like terrain. Her back felt cold, so did her arms. And the back of her hands began to burn.
"Ah!" She winced in pain. Her vision was blurry but she could see well enough to tell something odd was happening to her. She looked down to try to look at her hands but something red flooded her sight. She screamed.
Blood? No, blood was a liquid. It must be fire, but fire burns. She slowly touched the redness. It felt soft.
"It's my hair...!" She whispered softly to herself. "Hair! I have hair?" She puzzled. She stumbled to stand up and fell backwards as the burning on the back of her hands began to move. "What's happening to me?" She felt small simmers of panic begin to grown within her. "Where am I?"
The burning sensation moved slowly and painfully up her arms. Tears streamed down her face. It moved down her back along her spine and up her head. The burn then split down her legs. "This... hurts..." She panted. She rolled along the ground and into the water. It did nothing to soothe the sensation. And as soon as it started, it ended at her feet. She lay panting in the puddle. Her head was pounding.
She looked down at her hands and feet. "My tattoos!" She yelled. "They're gone!" She angrily got to her feet and swung around. "Who did this to me! What did you do!" Ai-Li growled and stamped her feet like a child. "Give me back my tattoos!"
"It was necessary." A voice behind her stated.
"Lu!" Ai-Li pointed a finger at his chest. "What have you done to me! I always knew! I always thought you were... wrong."
"I will not address that," Lu stated sharply. "Your tattoos are gone because it is necessary for where you will be heading. You are right now..." he gestured to the world around him, "...in the spirit world, of sorts."
"How can I sort of be in the spirit world."
"You are temporarily displaced." Lu answered. "Now sit down, it's time for our first lesson."
Ai-Li viewed him suspiciously but sat on a rock in the center of the clearing. In the back of her mind she wondered briefly if that had been there before.
"It is a shame..." Lu continued, "...that you never came to me for tutelage. I could have taught you many things, but unfortunately my reputation got ahead of me and reached you before I could. I suppose that is why I was the only grandmaster that never had the honor to teach the great airbending prodigy of the Northern Air Temple."
Ai-Li sighed and nodded.
"I see," He stated coldly and folded his hands under the sleeves of his monk robe. "How sad. I hope you have learned, by now, to never judge a person on their past reputation. Yes, I was a troubled youth, but that should have told you that I had much wisdom to impart."
Ai-Li nodded. Her mind was still whirring with unspoken questions. She chose the foremost one in her mind. "What's happened to me?"
"Yes..." Lu's eyes went distant. "That's a good question."
"Are you going to answer it?" Ai-Li bluntly asked with traces of sarcasm.
"In time, but before we get to you I must first explain what has happened to me." Lu replied. "I am dead."
Ai-Li almost laughed. "You can't be dead, you're talking to me."
"In the spirit sense, yes, I am talking to you, but my body has passed on. Yours however has not, it is with you right now." Lu sighed and rubbed his temples. "You see, Ai-Li, Sozin would have stopped at nothing to destroy our kind. He raided every air temple there ever was. Our people are all dead. Everyone but you..." He pointed to me, "...you survived because you had to. You had to keep our way and our lessons alive."
"Fire Lord Sozin harnessed the deadly power of a comet that only visits our world every one hundred years. It acts as a second son to firebenders. There power is increased beyond imagining. As peaceful monks, we never stood a chance. That is why a haven was created, long ago, by older power that we do not understand anymore."
"The room you put me in."
"Yes." Lu sighed. "It was not supposed to be you. Tien had thought of it originally. We all assumed he would make the ultimate sacrifice. Not you, so young and innocent." Lu trailed off.
"So this room, it brought me here? It did this to me." She motioned to her tattoos and hair.
"Fortunately, yes." Lu said.
"Fortunately!" Ai-Li almost yelled. "I've lost—"
"It will be necessary for you to be inconspicuous. This room was created to send you forward in time. For how long I do not know. What I do know is that if our prediction was correct, the airbenders were hunted and destroyed. We do not want you to meet the same fate. It is your job to revive our race. To bring us back. It will be difficult, as Wei said; we are the embodiment of an idea. You must bring the idea of freedom back into the lives of the future people."
"I have to... reintroduce airbending," Ai-Li said more to herself than anyone.
"Yes. This task was supposed to be entrusted to Tien. But at his death, which I witnessed, his dying wish was for you to take his place. If not for you, we do not know if airbending would exist at all. Now you are a hope. There are some complications... of course..."
"Uh... complications?" Ai-Li reiterated dumbly. "What sort of... complications?
"You are not a grandmaster, which we will fix shortly." He grabbed her hands and pulled up. "Soon you will awaken so we must act fast."
Lu laid a hand on her forehead and took a deep cleansing breath, Ai-Li followed his example. "I am going to impart to you all that the grandmasters know. All that Wei knew, all that Tan knew, all that Tien knew, all that I knew, and all that Miko knew."
"Miko..." Ai-Li focused on his face.
"Do you know why they call me Lu the Loyal?" Lu asked softly.
"Why?"
"Because I never told a secret I knew. You will get this knowledge too, unfortunately. It may help you, it may destroy you. I dabbled in the darker arts of airbending." Ai-Li could feel a chill travel up her spine. "Now, do you except the task entrusted to you?"
Ai-Li paused, then nodded. It was not as if she had any choice.
"Good, than the real lesson can begin."
With that Ai-Li saw stars enter her vision. Then for the second time, everything went dark. She never saw, or heard from any of the grandmasters again. But history was about to change their plans, and everything they had predicted was about to be proven wrong. For, when Ai-Li awakened, the first thing she saw was a blue tattoo.
Aang stood holding his glider close to his heart in the Northern Air Temple's sanctum. The Fire Nation insignia seemed to ridicule him from the ceiling. He heaved a heavy sigh.
"The one room I thought would be untouched has been serving as a war machine for the Fire Nation." He glared angrily at the symbols all around him. "It's been a silent killer."
"Aang," Katara said from behind him. "Sokka's been looking all over for you. I thought I would find you here. We're all packed to go to the North Pole. It's time to leave."
"I know Katara." He shuffled his feet and looked at the ground. "I just wish... I just wish I had one piece of home that was untouched by the Fire Nation. I thought this room..."
"I know what you thought, we all thought that. But look what you do have Aang!" Katara turned him around to face her. "You have Appa and Momo, both of whom are with you now, to remind you of everyone."
Aang smiled briefly. "Yeah, but what about when they're gone, when I'm gone?" He gestured around him. "I just want one piece of airbender history to be untouched by firebenders. I want some part of my home to be pure and good. It just makes me so mad that all those paintings were destroyed. A part of my history is lost forever! And no one did anything about it!" He angrily shot a gust of wind into the air that ripped the Fire Nation flag off the wall. The wall behind it was unveiled.
"Look, Aang," Katara pointed. "That wall is untouched."
True enough, the wall that Aang had revealed was as unchanged as the day it had been built, with ancient flowing symbols spiraling up the sides and a depiction of an airbender drawn with vibrant colors. "Wow," Katara said. "That's really beautiful."
"It is." Aang was awed. Then he blushed at his outburst of anger. "Katara... do you think... do you think you could help me take down these flags?" He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm sorry for being so moody."
"Sure, Aang, I'd be happy to." Katara smiled. "And there's no need to apologize, you're my friend. It's alright to be angry every once and awhile. I think I would feel the same way if it were my tribe's history."
Together, they slowly unveiled each wall. The flags they stacked in the center of the room. Teo's father, the mechanist, had already gotten rid of whatever machinery was left over in this room after the Fire Nation attempted to retake the Northern Air Temple. The battle had been long and tiring, but as long as they had the skies, it turned out, the Fire Nation was no match for them. The temple was safe for now. And today, Aang, Sokka, and Katara would be leaving for the Northern Water Tribe to find a waterbending master.
"This room must have been cherished." Katara ran her hand down one of the walls. "You can tell these drawings were well taken care of and preserved."
"But the engravings on the wall..." Aang said. "On only that wall," he pointed to the first one they had revealed, "Are they painted in gold."
"You're right," Katara pondered. "That's odd."
"It's not odd," Aang said, "It was on purpose! The monks wanted this wall to stand out! I bet it leads to another room!" Aang began to explain hopefully. "The sanctuary in the Eastern Air Temple is the same. There are many hidden rooms all throughout that temple! You have to use airbending to open them."
"Aang, that sounds like a long shot." Katara was skeptic. "A hidden room attached to a hidden room?"
"Look at the other drawings! They're pictures of airbending moves. We just have to follow the one on that wall." He ran up to it and began to study the picture. "It looks pretty simple a twist of the wrist and a step. I bet it sends a slice around the door's edges and it will slide open."
"If you want to try..."
"Yes, I do."
Aang readied himself. He took a deep breath and slid his right foot forward and around his front. He spun his wrist in a circle and the air hit the wall in a smooth arc. Nothing happened.
"Aang..." Katara began sympathetically as Sokka ran into the room.
"Why are you guys in here wasting time? We need to get a move on. The North Pole's two days away... What's going on?" He took in Aang's disappointed face and Katara's grimace.
"Nothing, it was stupid—"
"Aang and I were just—"
"What's THAT?!" Sokka pointed to the wall in confusion and alarm. The symbols held an eerie glow to them. Slowly, with a lot of flying dust, a door in the center began to slide open.
"It worked!" Aang joyfully cried. He leapt into the air and grabbed the door. He began to physically pull it, helping the ancient door along its way. "Come on guys! Help me!" he grunted.
Katara and Sokka sprang to action as they each began to force the door along its way. Aang took the other side and began to push. They eventually got it to swing entirely ajar. Aang grinned triumphantly and grabbed the firefly lamp that Sokka had discarded near the entrance. He ran to the entrance of the hidden compartment. Slowly and carefully, he took one step into the dark doorway.
"Uh, guys? I think you better see this."
"What is it, Aang?"
"More firebender stuff?" Sokka asked.
"No..." Aang said, Katara gasped. "I think it's a person."