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So yeh, I realized in the last chapter, I never Azula's perspective (not that she was there exactly but I left her out none the less) So, I figure giving her a chapter all her own would make up for it.
On with the show!
Disclaimer: …
"You were great once," she heard him say. It was the man, whom she'd come to find was not a healer. His name was Nothus, and he was a rebel leader. He'd taken her to one of his camps shortly after she'd blacked out from the herbs, but she couldn't tell where they were, close to the ocean she knew but only by the sound. Her eyes felt too heavy to open but she knew that the camp had many people, and was much warmer than her cell had been.
"You were a thing of beauty once," even without being able to see his face she knew he was smirking the conceit and reverence in his voice enough to indicate it, "you didn't bend fire. You were fire. Cruel and ruthless and powerful," he drifted off.
Despite the praise, the princess couldn't bring herself to smirk or answer him. Drown, somewhere, sedated by the over whelming scent of burning herbs was anger at the man who spoke to her. The asylum hadn't exactly been home and yes she'd hated it there, but the asylum was nothing compared to the smoke that now kept her blind and sedated and she knew the reverence in his voice was not from respect or admiration, it was the same conceited tone her father had used when speaking of the comet. Similar reverence could be heard on the tongue of a soldier speaking of his weapons, some form of pride but not of the object itself more so of what it could do… What she could do.
A new voice interrupted her thoughts for the briefest of moments and distracted the man from continuing his monologue, "M' lord, scouts have spotted them. They'll be at the main land in a short time."
She didn't hear him approach her but she did feel the hand grabbing her chin and forcing her head to tilt up, so her blind eye's can meet his, "it's time you became the fire once more."
-D.-
She tries desperately to cling to any semblance of order around her but she can't find any. The Around her smell of burning flesh and blood hung, dulled and diluted by the distinct scent of sea salt mix with the heavy stench of brunt herbs. Screams, splashing and the tooth grinding sound of metal being shredded assaulted her ears. The world flew by in an incoherent mess of sound and scent and feeling.
The nauseating confusion diapered as quickly as it came, dissolving into sudden calmness that washed over her, cooling adrenalin heated blood. The stench of sea salt and carnage was dissolved into a softer scent that had clung to her as much as its owner had. Muscles unloosened as if deceivingly soft hands had just run over them, soothing blood and bone and mind. For once in the year since the war she felt clear. Free of drugs, free of herbs, free of hallucinations.
The split second of clarity ended quickly. Shattered by a voice, though whose it was she couldn't tell. Anger rose at the person who had interrupted her precious lucidity, and the world was gone again in a rush.
-D.-
Nothus was ranting. She'd done something wrong, though she wasn't sure what. The clarity of regained sanity-shocked into her by her escape and the elusive scent that she couldn't place- was fogged by the ever burning herbs. As his words blended into incoherent drowning, her thoughts turned to the herbs that she knew surrounded her. If only they'd stop burning she'd be able to think straight, their scent and the constant heat of the fires burning them was uncomfortable. All she wanted was for the fires to stop.
Welcome cool air hit her as the thought ran through her head, and a semi-contented sigh paced her lips with an unintentional breath of flames.
"Stop that, slave," he snarled, she could tell by his voice he was caught off guard by whatever she had done. Her nostrils burned as he forced what must have been a brand of one of the herbs into her face, forcing her to inhale the awful aroma again. And soon the heat was back, her will drown with her anger.
"Up the dosages, she's burning them off faster than expected," she heard him call to one of his lackeys.
The smoke thickened and her senses began failing, but his last words were not lost on her, "it would appear we have another enemy, worse than the false lord and the avatar."
