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This is a story that will one day come true. Nothing can change that.

Since time began, there have been stories of powerful gods whose fondest wish is to become mortal. They strive and work and sometimes bleed to make that wish come true. Only the good at heart can join the denizens of mortal kind—and sometimes, in certain stories, the deity has its wish granted, and is given the flesh and blood of a human.

This is not that kind of story.

This is a story that takes place a very long time from now, in a place so different from this, that neither time nor measurement can truly describe the distance of separation. It begins during a time of peace and illumination, and will descend into a world constructed of humanity's greatest nightmares. It is a story of the evils produced by hatred, pain, and even love so strong that it cripples those who have it.

Most of all, it is the story of a young girl who turned away from her humanity and strove to become a goddess.

This is the tragedy of how that girl's fondest wish came true.

Aang skidded to a stop at the double doors and took a deep breath. Sweat trickled down his scalp—Zuko's message had reached him during the morning romp in the bedroom with the missus, and the breakneck speed with which he'd flown over to the castle had given him little opportunity to calm down or cool off.

He pulled open one door, paused, surprised to find not Fire Lord Zuko, but wise and wrinkled Uncle Iroh sitting at the strategy table, a steaming cup in one hand.

"Aang," he smiled, rising. "You've grown so much!"

Aang gave up all manner of Avatar decorum—there was no one else around to see him, anyway—and jogged forward, embracing the old man in a tight hug. "Been too long, Uncle."

Iroh laughed and patted the young man's back. "Better not let Zuko hear you. I believe he's possessive of that title for me."

"Then the Fire Lord's gonna have to accept that you're like family to all of us. How's Toph?"

They both made their way back to the table, Aang noticing that there were only three chairs set out, the last and empty one reserved for the Fire Lord.

"She's incredible. Claiming more suitors every day, which, I have to admit, is very good for the shop's business. I just feel bad for the boys when they fight each other and find out the hard way that their lovely young waitress is also the Jade Dragon's keeper of the peace. She wanted me to ask you if you and Katara are expecting yet?"

"What? Why does she keep bringing that up?" Aang laughed, and color flooding to his cheeks. "No, nothing yet. But not for lack of trying, though. To tell you the truth, Katara's getting kind of worried that nothing's happened yet. In the Water Tribe, most firstborns arrive before the mother's twentieth winter."

Iroh closed his eyes and nodded serenely, humming the same wise tune that Aang had heard more and more over the years. "Do not concern yourself, my Avatar."

"Uncle, please—"

"If I can call the Fire Lord 'nephew' just to annoy him," Iroh said, eyes twinkling, "then I can surely use your title to remind you that you still have a position in this world. So I will offer you a word of wisdom that a man of your position should already know: a person cannot rush art, education, or miracles. You cannot make wheat grow faster, no matter how many seeds you sow, and you cannot hurry a child's birth if her soul isn't ready to inhabit the body." He patted Aang's shoulder. "Try as much as you like. And you'd better enjoy it while you can! Because one day you'll look back at this life and all you'll see is peace and quiet, and they will look so strange to you."

The double doors once again opened. "I'm afraid," Fire Lord Zuko said as he strode in, parchments gathered under one hand, "that the peace and quiet might be over for a while."

Aang and Iroh both stood, offering bows.

Zuko waved his hand. "Stop that, you two." He dropped the rolls of parchment onto the table, hugged his uncle and clapped his hand onto Aang's shoulder. "If I can't have friends and family members treat me like I'm one and the same, then there's something really wrong."

"It seems," Iroh said, a frown knitting his brows as he looked at from Zuko to the papers, "that something might already be so. Nephew, you look worried."

"I do?" Zuko found his elevated chair and fell into it, looking dangerously like he was about to fall asleep out of laziness. "Damn. And here I thought I was fooling everybody."

"Fooled me." Aang had to squint. There was nothing he could see, nothing he could put his finger on that made the Fire Lord look like he was stressed…but still, something in the man's presence made Aang's studious glances stick around. "Don't tell me you're gonna have a kid?"

Zuko—almost—smiled at that. "No, Aang. Tell Katara I said hello, by the way. But I didn't call you both over here to discuss future family members. A major problem's come up concerning a member who's currently around." And, like a match suddenly being lit, Zuko's façade of being relaxed and calm dropped like a cut curtain, forming him into a young man with narrow eyes and a grimly set mouth. It had the odd effect of making him appear younger.

Then again, it was how he had looked during most of his youth.

He reached to the stack of parchment. There must have been twenty pages. "The top few pages are reports from Grey Rock."

"The medical institution?" Aang asked.

Iroh's eyes nodded. "Azula."

"Right." Zuko lifted out the top page. "Listen to this. Subject has shown conclusive evidence of complete mental breakdown. Symptoms range from the commonplace—incessant crying, talking to oneself, refusal to acknowledge others—to the violent. Background information reveals that subject is considered an extremely capable bender and former military (leading to culmination of compounding stress?). As required she will be kept immobilized for the continuation of her duration."

Zuko put the paper down. "Immobilized," he clarified, "means that they bound her entire body so it could not move. In stone. They fed her through a tube."

The past tense verb was not lost on Aang. "Fed? Meaning, they aren't feeding her anymore?"

Iroh was silent. Zuko pulled another page; this one was a drawing. Aang noticed that many of the remaining pages had scribbling of charcoal on the edge of their borders.

"This is what Azula looked like on a daily basis. For three years." The drawing showed a coffin-type encasement made of stones with an opening in the top large enough to frame a foaming-at-the-mouth, wide eyed girl with black tangles of hair—the construction of Earthbenders reduced to macabre horror.

Aang felt a pang in his heart. This reminded him of when King Bumi had been captured. The Fire Nation guards had imprisoned him in a box of iron, unable to move his body. They had forgotten to immobilize his head, though, which was just enough for the crafty old man to move around and bend. Judging by the dimensions of the stone coffin and the size of the inmate's eyes, Azula was reaping the benefits of learning from past mistakes.

"How was she supposed to be treated in that?" he asked. "I thought she was there for rehabilitation?"

"The moment the subject has any room to maneuver," Zuko read, "she immediately becomes prone to self-mutilatory tendencies. Oddly, she has yet to attack anyone but herself, and there have been no incidents showing the ability to bend flame." He let the paper drop. "That was three weeks into her treatment. They would talk to her through the window, let her out to walk around and such. The moment she was done stretching she would start clawing at her face and wrists."

Another drawing showed an all too familiar face glaring out of her coffin window, fingernail trenches descending from both eyes like tear paths. The eyes themselves looked agonized, pained. Accusatory.

"Who drew these?" Aang asked. "Was it a guard?"

"No." Iroh answered. "Ty Lee."

"I thought she was on Kyoshi Island."

"She is," he nodded. "Grey Rock is close by to her new home. She goes to visit every chance she has, and I go with her." He sat back in his chair, letting out a pained sigh. "Not always, though. Not as often as I should."

Aang had nothing to say. He hadn't visited more than once. That had been to oversee her transportation to the mental facility. Three years ago.

"That's not why we're here," Zuko said. "Aang, I'm here to warn you."

That made him blink. "What? About what?"

"About Azula." He spilled the papers out of their orderly stack and reached for the bottom, pulling out a landscape drawing of a building in smoking ruins. "She's escaped."

Uncles teacup shattered when it hit the floor.

Nobody paid it a single glance.

"Escaped?"

Zuko nodded, his jaw clenched.

"How? How could she just escape?" The words were coming too fast for him to keep a calm head, and his breathing accelerated into short, shallow sips of air. "I saw the guards. There were hundreds. She's on an island with no vessel traffic. And…for crying out loud, Zuko, she couldn't move!" He could have been pulling out his hair if he'd had any.

"Apparently she found a way." Zuko's voice was tight, anger coloring the inflection. "Nobody left alive saw how she did it. Nobody had ever seen her Firebend before. They got too comfortable with her."

"They paid for it. Now it's our turn." Cripes, he had to leave. He had to go home. Oh, Katara, she'd be the first one Azula would go to for revenge—Aang turned from the table and headed for the doors. He should've brought his glider staff in with him, there was a window in the hallway—

Iroh stood up. "We have plenty of time."

That stopped Aang in his tracks. When Uncle said something with confidence, it was practically written in stone. "What do you mean?"

"Lord Zuko," he said slowly, "you have already sent messages to the others of the group, I take it?"

Zuko nodded. "Messenger doves. Ten per person, just in case, and I sent them out as soon as I received word from Grey Rock. Suki and Sokka should be getting theirs by now. Ty Lee and Mai already know."

"Toph can't read," Aang pointed out. "And Uncle's right here."

"There's plenty of people at the Dragon who can read the notes for her," Iroh said, his voice worried but calm. He was a general again, receiving news of an spy amongst his soldiers. "If anyone tries to lie to her and say it's a love note, she'll be able to tell. And I'm heading back there as soon as possible, anyway. But that is not my point. Aang, please sit." And he took his own advice.

Aang had to physically restrain himself from opening the door anyway and flying home immediately to keep Katara safe, but he managed to make it back to his chair. "How much time do we have?"

"I am not certain," Iroh answered. "But we can assume that Azula is still very smart. She had to be, in order to break out. Grey Rock is a mental facility, yes, but it is also a maximum security prison that rivals Boiling Rock—and let's not forget that prison breaks seem to be a specialty in this family."

Zuko didn't find it funny. "I'm doubling Father's guard anyway."

"Your father is one thing. Azula is another. She will not attack so soon, and especially not mindlessly. She has powerful physical skills, yes, but she is more of a mental fighter than anything. She will not attack unless she knows she can win. And all of the obvious facts point out that at this point in the game, she can't."

"What obvious facts?"

"She does not know her enemy anymore," Iroh said with finality. "It has been years since she last saw either of you. Every time Ty Lee and I visited her, we were given strict instructions from the staff not to reveal any news of the outside world. If Azula is still as smart as she once was—and I believe she has to be, in order to successfully escape—then she will need time to prepare and gather information."

The Fire Lord understood. "Which buys us time to ready some defenses."

"And hunt for her, too," Aang added. "We don't have just the Fire Nation to do it this time. We can get the whole world to keep on the lookout for any sightings of her."

"Yes." Iroh did not look happy, but the way he nodded and smiled fit his title of Dragon. "We hold much of the advantage here. Do not sink into despair, and do not let darkness cloud your judgment."

Zuko stood up and turned to a map of the world. Aang stood next to him. "I'll alert the castle staff," he said. "There's a military meeting after this one—Uncle, I'll need you here for that one as well—and I'll mobilize as many search parties as we can form. Mai is already wearing her old blade kit, and we should take her example and start putting weapons on anyone we care about."

"Suki and Sokka probably never take their weapons off, so they're already covered," Aang said. "I'll get Appa and fly to the North Pole. I doubt a messenger bird can make that flight any faster than we can. Then I'll see if Katara feels like moving in with her own people again." He doubted that she would, but still, he had to try.

"We need to spread the word as fast as humanly possible," Zuko continued. "Wanted posters. News flyers in Ba Sing Se. And we especially need to recruit some bounty hunters."

In the far corner of the world, a girl dressed in a filthy traveler's robe knelt in the grass outside a village perimeter. Facing away from civilization and into the forest beyond. Her knees were doubled beneath her, her head lowered as if in prayer. No one from the village could see her—they were insignificant, their village useless to her, and she had taken pains to make certain that she draw no undue attention.

So she simply kneeled. Thinking. Not of the wealth of food that lay inside each hut that could fill her empty belly, nor of gigantic reward that would undoubtedly be in place by now for her capture. She was contemplating the universe.

More specifically, how to escape the one she was in now.

This was not as impossible as it first sounded. Many people during the past had already done this. The Avatar, of course, but he barely counted—the Avatar was made of the universe. But her uncle had done it once. And, after reading and re-reading a certain chapter of Avatar: The Last Airbender, apparently very common folk had done so as well.

In the beginning chapters of that book, the Avatar described his first trip into the Spirit World. It had been to save the life of a friend who had been kidnapped by some otherworldly beast. Said beast had been destroying the lives of a nearby village—the same village that the girl now knelt outside of—and whisking people away into the night. And beyond.

Somehow, she had to find a way to follow that path.

She had been kneeling in the grass for a very long time. So long that, had she been an ordinary eighteen year old, she would have fainted from exhaustion and lack of blood circulating through her lower half. This girl was far from ordinary. And she was prepared to stay there until death.

She spent her time in a state of extraordinarily focused concentration, applying the vast resources of her mind to solving the problem. Females are uniquely intelligent creatures—even ordinary ones—and their minds, when properly focused, are capable of solving many riddles.

Guessing the answer would not do. She had to be certain. Her knowing had to be born of deduction and elimination, not feelings or instincts. She had to be certain.

And when she had kneeled there in the grass outside the village walls long enough to do all those things, so long that night had come and dew coated her form, the answer was obvious. She lifted her head up and looked at the moon. "Is that all?" she asked. "It was just that simple for them?"

The moon did not seem to reply.

She sighed aloud, "All right then," speaking with the unselfconsciousness of a girl who had become used to solitude. Her deductive reasoning had eliminated all of the impossibles. Her one remaining answer was highly unlikely, but it was the only one that also made sense. There was only one way to know for certain.

She began to walk.

It was strange, she thought for a second, that a girl like her would literally be following the footsteps of the Avatar. As she walked she kept her mind clear, ignoring the stab of cold from the dew-soaked forest floor, pushing the welling hope down into the back of her mind with practiced determination. When she came to a clearing, she stopped.

There was the rock he had sat on in meditation. Smooth, ready for sitting, like a throne. She did not take one step forward.

Instead she experimented, and acted. She made a fist with her right hand, flexed the fingers outward, then extended her arm as if reaching for something invisible before her. Like dipping through the surface boundary of reflective water, her fingers began to disappear, wiping themselves from existence, followed by her hand—and she smiled, for there was indeed a surface here, but it wasn't water.

It was the surface of the Spirit World.

"So far so good," she muttered. Then she closed her eyes to focus every scrap of attention on her hand that was now in another dimension. She could still feel it as her own appendage, like it was perfectly normal. Until she brought power out from her furnace heart and channeled it down her arm, making her hand burst into flame that she could not see past the wrist.

What she did with that invisible, flame-coated hand was simple: she shot an invisible ball of fire into the invisible sky. A different sky that she had never seen before. When that was complete, she pulled her hand back into the universe she inhabited, and she sat down on the grass to wait.

This time, there was no need to wait for hours. Her experiment was soon rewarded with the sound of the universe being torn in half.

She did not even bother lifting her head as enormous black talons sliced into the world from beyond, ripping a hole in reality, pulling the surface apart in a gruesome parody of birth. Shortly, the rip was large enough that a white-feathered shoulder appeared, bringing with it a vast grey wing, and finally an owl the size of a mighty oak forced itself into the world.

The owl, whose name was Wan Shi Tong, knew how to make an entrance.

The girl bowed her head, still on bended knee. "I'm glad you saw my signal."

The owl's eye glittered in the moonlight. "There was no need for such a display," he said slowly. "I live in a library. I have read the Avatar's book. And I knew that he made a mistake when he didn't kill you. So it was quite obvious that you would escape someday, and come here." His black eyes glittered, and he lowered his head closer to the girl. "I'll ask that you do not set fire to my world the next time you require my attention."

The girl asked, "You knew I would come here?"

"Yes. Just as I know why." One taloned forelimb slammed the girl onto her back, pinning her to the ground. "So tell me. Why would I ever agree to let you into my Library?"

"That's not what I request." The girl did not show the slightest fear. "Let me into the Library or don't. I don't seek anything that I would use on my fellow man."

"The Avatar was not the only one to write of the War's end." The pressure did not decrease. "You have read your brother's book, I assume? Do you remember the one particular phrase he repeats most?"

She closed her eyes and sighed. "Azula always lies."

"So what makes you think that I would believe you?"

"Because you're smart enough to know when I'm lying." Her eyes flew open and narrowed. "I told you already. I'm done with this world. Am I lying?"

"That," he said slowly, "is something you should answer to yourself." He leaned off of her and allowed the girl to sit upright. "If you don't seek the knowledge necessary to regain your throne," he thought aloud, "then you only have one other reason to seek me out personally."

"My father."

This caused the owl's head to cock quizzically. "You wish to rescue him?"

"Yes. Then to find sanctuary for the two of us inside the Spirit World."

"I do not allow tyrants nor children inside of my Library, little one. You and your foolish guardian qualify as both."

"Is there a place you could simply hide us?" she asked.

"There are untold quadrillions of places inside the Spirit World in which a soul can take refuge. Not even I have knowledge of its entire landscape. But I am not a spirit of benevolence. To receive my help, you must earn it."

"How?"

He lowered his head down until both gigantic eyes peered at her from face level. "You say that with the desperation in your voice of a person who would do anything. Do you really believe that you can accomplish any task I lay before you?"

"I do."

"Then, if you truly wish to accomplish all your goals with my help, you must first become my apprentice."

This option confused the girl. "Your apprentice?"

"You must serve, instead of rule. You must accept, instead of fight. To serve me as an apprentice, you will gain all that you need to help your father." He raised his body upward until he was once more a majestic avian predator, staring down at a field mouse. "And you will most likely die before the end. Like all the others before."

"Done." The girl did not blink. "I pledge myself to become your apprentice." She stood up and placed both hands on her hips. "Where do we begin?"

"You do not begin. I, however, have already begun."

Something in the owl's voice, that cool and all-knowing smugness, caused the girl to glance warily at him. "What have you already done?"

"I lied," he said simply, before touching one claw to her forehead and tearing her mind to shreds.