Chapter 1 - The Beginning in the End

Ohun regained consciousness with his teeth wedged into the dirt and snot smeared all over his face. He'd cried.

Contorting his face into a grimace of disgust, he groaned and got up. His muscles were all stiff from the time he'd been laying on the ground in the awkward pose of those knocked unconscious.

With his hands, he wiped his face clean somewhat, after which he spat on the ground a few times to get the muck out of his mouth. It was only then that he looked around, checking his surroundings. They were... familiar, very familiar. But also... off, somehow. Just a couple dozen yards away to the east a mighty forest had its outskirts, where Ohun had always played as a toddler, and to the south were the hills he knew so well, from all the times he and his friends had run through them, playing and screaming. But something still didn't make sense... as if the fiery red-and-orange palate that was nature had a dash of color missing.

He did not much care: he didn't feel like staring at trees. Wiping his face one last time with a callused hand, he started walking for home, trying to recollect whatever it was he'd been doing here. His memories regarding what had happened to him were a blank, just as scrubbed away as the memories of what he'd been doing for the last days... they seemed to be all fuzzy and unclear when he thought of them, and that left him even more confused.

At last, he just shrugged and continued the walk home, knowing the Iron Towers of the capital would be just on the horizon -

Wait... that's not right.

There were no towers to be seen. Ohun frowned a little, scratched his neck and continued on. It'd been a long time before he'd been near the forest so it could not have been that much of an improbability that he didn't remember everything right. He went west, going up the hills with only a hint of worry in his mind. After a little while he arrived at a wide road of grayish cobble, stretching out lazily in a straight line, cutting through the rough terrain. But the sight of it merely disturbed Ohun.

"By the spirits..." he groaned, "I'm walking in the wrong direction!"

But that couldn't be: the road to the Fire Nation Capital, his home, was right at this location! It... should just have been twice as broad. And be made of a darker stone. And have iron rails at the side.

"Am I..."

Am I imagining things? Is that why my head is so fuzzy, because my skull finally cracked like some penguin's egg under all the stress?

He finally started paying attention to the people walking the road: there were hundreds of them, slowly shuffling north. They looked haggard and thin, their eyes dimming and reflecting only a little of the sun's bright light. Why was the clothing they wore so weird? It was all red and woolen, almost as if it'd been homespun, but that was ridiculous! The artisans of decades ago had long been replaced by today's industry.

"What are you staring at, boy?! Move along!" someone said with an air of annoyed authority.

Ohun looked to the left and saw three men approaching, their chests lined with thick leather plates, spears in hand.

"I don't have time for your idiotic war-reenactments right now!" he said, his face twisting into a snarl. The rich middle-class boys with too much free time on their hands indulged in reenactments of the Hundred Years War nowadays, and it never ceased to annoy him. All they did was dance to the tune of propaganda, stereotyping Ozai's Fire Nation of old and kissing the Avatar's ass in their dreams.

"Can't you see I'm busy?" he continued, or at least he tried to. At that moment the guards' faces flashed from annoyance into disbelief, and then anger.

"You filthy peasant!" the one in the fanciest armor said and grabbed Ohun by the scruff of his neck. Fingers like iron tightened around him and it felt like they nearly choked the air straight from his body!

"Look at those clothes of his!" another one said, "They're all... orange! Those aren't clothes good Fire Nation citizens wear!"

My bending, my bending... these people are insane, they're not even kidding!

The third one suddenly jumped into motion.

"He talks odd, he doesn't know how to respect his elders, has abnormal clothing... sounds like Water-Nation to me, boys. Rude bastards, them Water-boys are. When I was at the front fighting the southern tribe I-"

"This isn't funny, you morons! Release me!"

A knee connected with Ohun's crotch and he wailed in pain, losing control of his legs. Nearly falling to the ground, the only thing that held him up was the hand of the very officer that had just kicked him in the balls.

"Shut. Up."

After that he nodded weakly, trying as best he could to keep from screaming. And with that, the two normal guards started prodding him with their pikes and the officer released him.

"You'd better move, boy. We've got a few questions for you."

And so he walked, flashing the guards a few looks. They looked just as haggard as the other people, but these men also had a more dangerous edge... if the normal citizens on the road were dogs, these guards were like starved wolves.

And Ohun felt really, really bad about it all. His head hurt. His balls hurt. His self-esteem has crawled into some dark corner of his being and the normal... seductive thoughts reared their head.

I could just fire-bend myself out of this situation...

No! No bending! I will not accept the taint!

It would just be a little fire, a small flame to show them that I'm no spy...

But that makes no sense! The last war was the Hundred Years War, and that one's been over for seventy years! No bending! NO BENDING!

He didn't know what to think. He didn't know what to see. The whole situation was one, baffling mess. Ohun had never been arrested before: there were a few sides of him the authorities were not to uncover. But that was not the perplexing thing about the entire situation: the perplexing thing was that the guards seemed to care more about him being Water-Nation than him being a potential Equalist.

In the end, Ohun just did the only sensible thing: he fixed his head on the red plates on the back of the officer walking in front of him and shut off his confused thoughts completely. He could cope with this. He had his bending. Surely, this all was just a misunderstanding?

The next minutes all proceeded in a bit of a blur. Some citizens stared at him, some spat, most just didn't care. It all felt too real, too overwhelming, to be fake. This was reality and it has just slapped him right in the face. The only moment he could later recall clearly, dazed as he'd been, was when he'd broken his silence and asked no one in particular: "What's the date?"

Everyone just stared at him, stopping dead in their tracks. The officer finally just walked on and said: "100 years after the great Sozin defeated the Air Nomads."

Ohun looked up at him, and the officer stared right back. His shocked brain started oozing thoughts about the man's mustache, and that was, oddly enough, all he could think about until he was marched to the foot of the Fire Nation Capital's great volcano.

It was possessed of the sheer beauty Ohun had always imagined it to have when reading the Histories of the Fire Nation: first, there was its actual location: row upon row of the most beautiful rolling hills, as far as the eye could see. In 170 AG, the hills had all been corrupted by factories and lumber mills for the wood gathered farther inland. Then, there was the huge blown-up volcano (actually demolished in Ohun's time to create more space) in which the elites of the city resided, still intact! And finally, the houses themselves, all colored in a beautiful harmony of various shades of red, from crimson to scarlet, and in neutral colors, like beige. Craftsmen, traders and beggars started to add to the trickle of people on the road.

"Hey kid!" the second guard whispered.

"What?"

"You don't want to know what we do to spies here... make my and your life easy, and just admit you are one."

"But I'm not!"

"We don't care. The higher ups are all worked up about something important that's going to happen, something they say "will end the war" or something. And nothing can threaten that, so we're just not into truth at the moment."

Ohun's mind switched on again, and started to process things. He was fucked, well and truly. These people did not have mercy even for seventeen year old boys and why would they? They were at war. He would be executed on the evidential basis of acting odd, and soon. There was no way out, no way...

But Ohun, you do have knowledge only a spy would have...

"I know. You are talking about Sozin's comet," he said, just loud enough for the officer in front of him to hear. The man spun around, his eyebrows seemingly plastered to the top of his forehead.

"And how would a simple spy know that?!"

"I'm not a spy! I'm a firebender and I can show you!"

He felt ridiculous, but it worked. Inside, he braced for what was to come.

"And how would that be?"

Ohun stomped his fists forward, pumping up his inner rage. He screamed and punched at the same time, and tufts of fire appeared, scorching the skin of the officer. His mustache catching fire, the man jumped back, his hands digging into his irritated flash in a reflex. Ohun snarled: "That's how, you fucking prick!" and brushed past him, making for the volcano.

He didn't know how long he ran exactly, but it had to be a few minutes at least. The guards were too paralyzed helping their leader to mount an effective chase, and all the people just stood and gaped at him. Ohun, though scared and still confused to the core, did however not stop a feeling of pride at having avenged his poor balls.

Smiling awkwardly to make it seem to everyone, citizen and guard alike, that he was in fact not running for his life but because he felt like it, he finally arrived at the top of the volcano. Bending forward, he let his hands rest on his knees a little, huffing and puffing for breath.

Before him sprawled the city's gates, made out of mighty slabs of stone, each maybe a few yards big.

I made it. I made it. I MADE IT!

"There's the renegade bender! Take him!"

Ohun looked back. Three very pissed off guards were coming up the volcano road behind him, one of them with burns on his forehead and jaw. He ran for the gates... only to find out more guards were coming from within, and these were masked. Firebenders.

Oh...

Needless to say, they weren't gentle.

"Princess Azula, I present to you, a traitor to the Fire Nation!"

A foot slammed into Ohun's back and he fell to the carpets. Two guards pressed his head against the ground, forcing him to prostrate himself. He felt himself shake.

Terror, adrenaline, or both? Princess Azula is here?!

"Well he can't talk of his treason if he's got his mouth stuck in the carpet can he now? Get him up. I have a coronation to prepare."

The guards dug their hands into Ohun's shoulders and pulled. With a jerk, he was lifted to his knees, allowing him to focus his sight on princess Azula herself.

She was everything he had imagined and she was not. How often had he, a little foolishly, dreamed of the pure Princess Azula that would have been everything the Fire Nation needed? The firm, the precise, the calm, the determined Azula! The one princess that was everything the effeminate Zuko was not: strong where he was weak, ruthless where he wavered. Every time Ohun had whispered: "Amon is the solution" he had thought of another, who would really have been the solution the Fire Nation needed to regain the honour it had only lost when Zuko started to "restore" it.

And yes, she looked the part. At the end of a huge throne room, dark except for the blue fire surrounding her, she shone like some jewel of flawed stone: her skin fine but pale, her gaze harsh and piercing... Her hair looked fine as silk, but, it was all ruffled, which seemed weird. Also, she had thick lines under her eyes. But the most marring was the... anger that seemed to leak from her: not directed at him, but at the chamber, the world in general. Her voice had sounded authoritative, yes, but it had also cracked a little.

Like mine when the news about Amon's actual identity reached the Capital.

But no one here actually noticed. And so, Ohun braced himself and opened his mouth. For now, all he could do was to try to survive and face this... princess Azula.