Chapter 3
"Hey Jigan, do you think this was all worth it?" The tanned Lieutenant mumbled to the man sitting on a cot behind him.
They had sieged the Si Wong desert not but two days ago, but there was still a mass of bodies to be dealt with. In search of the Avatar, the 56th battalion had been ordered to lay waste to the lands. The Si Wong desert lay in the barren lands near the Eastern Earth Kingdom and it was miles of nothingness.
The only inhabitants were a tribe of Sandbender, who had only a few hundred members before, was now reduced to a few dozen. Still, they did not successfully intercept the Airbender like they had hoped.
And now, it was all for nothing.
The Lieutenant and his men had but a day or so to just clear the battlefield. He sat resting in the grass woven chair outside his tent under a small, white canopy of shade after a grueling morning or clearing the dead. He stared out at the vastness of the sand hills that rolled before him with strikingly golden eyes set intelligently upon his face. In between those eyes was a crooked, but small boyish nose.
Being a young man of twenty, his hair was cut short and his jaw cleanly shaved. At the moment, he disregarded his armor—even a shirt. It was too damn hot. He ran his hand through his sweaty limp hair as he sipped cold water from his flask.
To everyone on the outside, The Lieutenant looked like your typical snooty Lieutenant who thought himself important just as long as no other officers were around, but little did anyone know of the war that wrestled in his mind.
Besides finding the young Airbender, he wasn't so sure what the reason for this slaughter was. Yet he really had no choice but to do as their General ordered. He didn't want innocent people to die, but of course, the Fire Nation didn't see it that way.
It all seemed less 'grey' and more 'black and white' in the Academy.
He shared the tent with Lieutenant Jigan, a small man who was older than him and not half as intelligent-and Jigan knew he wasn't. This was the reason the Lieutenant liked him so much.
Humbleness is hard to come by in the Fire Nation Army.
He couldn't see Jigan's face, but he already knew what he'd say. "There were reasons…but I just wish we hadn't done it the way we did."
A little comfort weaseled inside him. "Yeah, me too."
The two men sat there, contemplating the horror-inducing events of the past couple of days.
The Lieutenant heard Jigan muttering, "We didn't even capture the Avatar…"
After a few solitary moments of silence, a soldier trundled up to the two Lieutenants' tent, huffing as he got close. The Lieutenant routinely stood from his makeshift chair.
"Sir," The soldier saluted as the Lieutenant returned the gesture, "we have a problem."
"What is it now? I told you, the bodies should be respectively buried-Sand bender and Fire Nation alike."
"No sir, it's…not that."
Jigan walked out to stand beside the Lieutenant. "Well, spit it out then!"
The soldier seemed worried. "We have a prisoner…well a girl, but she, er, there is an incident-
"And why are you telling us this? Isn't Captain Chang in charge of the prisoners?" Jigan yelled, his face turning red.
The Lieutenant put up a hand to calm his friend. "We waste time pointing fingers." He searched the soldier's face. "What wrong?"
The soldier looked mortified as he licked his dry lips. "Sh-she is doing something…horrible to Captain Chang. Please, none of us know what to do!"
With that, the two men followed the soldier through the maze of tents to the far end of the encampment. The lieutenant had no time to put a shirt on and thought he looked rather out of uniform as he approached the female prisoner holding area. A woman guard standing at the entrance to the prison tent allowed them through. She looked at the bare chested Lieutenant with a bit of indignant curiosity as she followed them inside.
The lieutenant had no idea what he would see.
As his eyes adjusted to the darker interior, he saw Captain Chang kneeling in the sand. In front of him was a grotesque image of a corpse leering at him. The Lieutenant and Jigan both recoiled as the Captain cried out in a feeble voice.
"Please! I didn't mean to kill you!" The captain hollered at the deathly specter. He was unaware of the spectating crowd he was gathering inside the tent.
"What is it?" The lieutenant whispered to the guard. "It can't be real, can it?"
The guard's dull eyes looked just as baffled as theirs. "We don't know sir, but she is doing it. She's a witch!"
The Lieutenant gave the woman soldier a disbelieving look before he turned his gaze to the spot he had mentioned. The short, untidy guard was pointing to a small, curled up figure at the far right of the tent. It was a girl, perhaps barely out of her adolescent years. Her foot was chained to a small metal stake in the ground. Her strange, sandy hair was matted with dirt and blood, and her scant rags for clothes were tattered extremely in certain places. Her black eyes were fixated on the Captain as she held her hands out as if she were bending.
The Lieutenant's brows furrowed. "Could she be…bending?"
Jigan gave the Lieutenant a look of confusion. "What would she be bending?"
The girl made no indication that she noticed that others had arrived inside the tent-or that they were talking about her. She kept her hands occupied in the air. Her vengfull stare was still fixated on the poor captain.
The lieutenant took a step forward against the warning of the guard, and he inched his way over to the girl. He got closer and noticed the large, bloody streaks across her skinny bare legs. The lieutenant's face changed from curiosity, to anger.
He looked back at the blank-faced guard.
"Who did this to her?" He yelled. The guard gulped, but only shifted her gaze to the captain mumbling in front of the ghostly projection gnashing its teeth.
The gesture itself needed no explanation as the Lieutenant realized the truth. He crawled even closer to the chained girl, and noticed that she didn't look as young as he'd thought. Her face held a deep scowl that reminded him of the exact ghostly figure in front of Captain Change.
He cleared his throat.
"Miss?"
Nothing.
"It's okay…you can stop now."
Black eyes now trained on the young Lieutenant's calm face. Her scowl lessened as she saw him. He tried to keep his face neutral as to not alarm her. The girl's arms lazed a bit, and her lips trembled-a first sign of life.
She coughed and gaged, as if she hadn't spoken in years.
"Hurt."
"I know."
"He needs to pay."
"Yes, and he is; he will, I'll make sure of it."
"Word of a Fire Nation soldier," a laugh bubbled up in her throat but it turned into more coughing, "you are a liar."
Her voice was full of vehemence. She never took her eyes of the Lieutenant now, and the ghostly specter she was somehow conjuring wasn't as prominent. The others in the tent finally started to relax, and even the victimized captain wasn't mumbling as much as he rocked back and forth.
Yet, she didn't stand down and neither did her deathly ghost. It still hung in the air, as if waiting for her commands.
The lieutenant smirked. "I understand that. But, I'm not a…I mean, I'm an officer. I promise this captain will be punished for his…unnecessary treatment of you. Please…" He held his hand out for her to accept. For a moment it looked as if she'd start back up again with her ghastly image-conjuring, but then the blue veins in her neck finally disappeared and she let down her hands with a thud. She rocked in her sitting position, and the rotting, transparent apparition that resembled her finally dissipated into the air.
Condensation started to appear, and trickled down onto the sand beneath. Pretty soon, a puddle of water turned the sand a dark color.
The lieutenant exhaled in relief. He looked at the prisoner.
"Thank you." He said.
The girl frowned but didn't acknowledge. She shifted her gaze back to the whimpering captain. The lieutenant got the hint and turned back to the men behind him.
"Jigan and the rest of you, take him away. I'll take over the prison duties in his place. Put him in the men's prisoner quarters until we figure out what to do with him." The lieutenant barked.
He turned back to the girl and motioned for her to stay calm.
"Guard," he looked at the female guard, "make sure that she is given new clothes and a good wash."
"But sir, water is only given extra for officer use."
"Then use up my ration. When she's proper, come get me." He looked at the dark puddle of soaked up water near where the bizarre illusion had floated only a few minutes earlier-his golden eyes darkened. "I need to ask some questions before we jump to any irrational conclusions."
The guard hesitated. The Lieutenant noticed the fear twinkling in the guard's eyes.
He faced the exhausted, dull eye'd girl sitting on the ground. "That is, if you promise not to conjure any magic tricks again while I'm gone?"
The girl tweaked the corner of her mouth, but only looked at the ground.
The guard finally nodded her compliance. The Lieutenant bit his lip. He sure hoped he had made the right decision. He walked out of the tent without another glance at the mysterious witch inside.