Chapter 7: The foe
I looked around, and saw that I was probably in a forest somewhere. I tried sitting up, but as I did so, my whole body felt stiff, and it hurt trying to force myself to move.
"So, you're finally awake," a curt voice sounded. Turning to look, I saw the old man from the room underneath Yue's inn, complete with bald head, golden eyes, a slight beard along his jaw and a dark red tunic.
"Where am I?"
"The woods near Hui village."
"What happened? I dreamed that a woman was somehow torturing you."
"You weren't."
"Why do I feel so weird? I feel like I almost can't move!"
"Yue did Bloodbend you quite badly when she found you peeking in."
"Bloodbend?"
"Like the name implies, she bent the blood in your veins."
"Yue doesn't torture people! Besides, she's a Waterbender. She can only bend water!"
"Blood is water. Bloodbending is Waterbending the liquids inside other living beings. It's strange, though; she shouldn't have been able to Bloodbend then."
"Why?"
"My research has indicated that Bloodbending can only be performed during a full moon. All other times, Waterbending shouldn't be anywhere near strong enough to allow for that power."
"Still, Yue wouldn't be comfortable with Bloodbending. It has to be someone else."
"She's the only known Waterbender in the village, and she was definitely the one torturing us with Bloodbending."
"Why was Yue Bloodbending us?!" There was something about this I just didn't like. Yue wasn't the type for something like Bloodbending, was she?
"She was Bloodbending me to try and extract information. As for you, she couldn't let you get away after catching her red-handed. That's the way the Scarlet Rose operates."
"Scarlet Rose?"
"They are a group of Bloodbenders that have been controlling many aspects of society for decades. Their reach is such that there are only a few places in the Fire Nation that they don't have a presence in yet, and these locations' only saving grace is that they're unimportant villages in the grand scheme of things. Who knows how long that will last, though."
"Yue isn't part of them, is she? She's just an innkeeper!" I yelled. She couldn't be part of them. The person who healed my hands and taught me Waterbending couldn't have been part of a secret cult, right?
"That benevolent innkeeper image that she's gotten you to believe is a lie. When she saw you, she Bloodbent you. I have had a week to realize that she is, in truth, a witch who has no reservations about eliminating anything that gets in her way."
I just couldn't believe this. First my mother breaks my hands, and now Yue Bloodbends and almost kills me? "Surely there's an explanation?"
"I just gave it to you on a silver platter, kid!"
"She isn't... she can't be! She can't be a member of this cult!"
"Deny it all you want, but that won't change the truth."
"I need to go back to the inn and ask her about this! You have to be lying to me."
"If you want to throw yourself back into a Bloodbending grip, be my guest. I'm starting to wonder if rescuing you from her was a good idea."
"What do you mean 'rescue'?"
"After she found you, she shifted enough attention to you that I could knock her out. You're safe for now, but she's still very much alive."
"Why 'for now'?"
The tree behind me suddenly shriveled, and I felt myself encased in ice the very next second. I tried to feel the water in the ice, but I couldn't move to direct the water. Another tree shriveled, and I saw water in that tree fly at my 'savior', who thrust a fist at it and shot a jet of orange flames that exploded in mid air. I saw another jet of fire shoot towards the trees, and then a shadowed figure jumped out from behind one of them. Two more trees disintegrated and shot streams of water at my fire spitting companion.
The ice had frozen almost every part of me in a large mound, and the only thing that I could do was watch as my supposed rescuer. My arms were locked in place, so I was unable to Waterbend, so I could only hope to get lucky and be hit by a fire blast to melt the ice. I couldn't Firebend either for the same reason. I could only observe, and feel the ice freezing me. The two of them kept throwing jets of water and bolts of fire back and forth, with trees disintegrating to shoot more water.
My arms felt numb, but in that feeling, I thought I could also feel something calling out to me. I needed to warm myself up, so with that, I inhaled through my mouth, and breathed out through my nose. As I did this, I noticed the ice starting to melt. Again I breathed, and more ice started melting. Again, more. Breathe, melt, breathe, melt.
Enough of the ice had melted that I was able to break my arms free and urge the rest of the ice to melt into water. The Waterbender and my companion were still bending at each other, not noticing me at all. I tried lifting the water into the air and freezing it so that it formed a large ice pole. That part worked mostly with some practice, but with my raising the water and my level at Waterbending, were they not occupied with each other, they would have had ample time to stop me.
The ice beam was ready, so I lunged it at the cloaked man. As I saw it shoot through the air, it crashed against his head. Right then, my mother's war hammer flashed through my head. I saw him stagger and fall after being hit by the ice, but I also saw how I staggered and fell after my mother, the one who was essentially supposed to prevent harm from coming to me, visited that same harm upon my hands and left me in agony. With that sudden tactic, had I become just like her? Had I become one of those monstrous, torturous beings that the two major women I had met in my life had turned out to truly be? With this, was I going to be the next person to break an innocent child's hands like my mother had done? Was I going to force people's bodies to injure themselves like that basement woman?
"Waterbender, eh?" the man spoke in front of me all of a sudden. "Judging by how you were frozen by that operative, you're not an ally of the Scarlet Rose. But why wait that long to assist me?!"
"Stay back!" I shouted upon hearing the angry tone, feeling a few sparks burst from my hand as I thrust it forward.
"Firebender as well? I guess that all that time being spent frozen in a block of ice messed with the Avatar's reincarnation cycle."
"I can't be the Avatar, can I? I can only bend fire and water."
"The Avatar is the exception to the rule of people only being able to bend one element. You hold Water and Fire, so there's no question."
"So does that mean?"
"What else can it mean?"
"What about the cycle? The next Avatar is from the Water Tribes!"
"Obviously not. This cycle has resulted in a Fire Nation Avatar after an Air Nomad Avatar. Judging by your poor Firebending, though, you will need a teacher."
"My Firebending isn't poor!" I shouted, thrusting my fist forward again and shooting off a few more sparks.
"That... is some of the weakest Firebending I have ever seen. You wouldn't last one minute in an Agni Kai with that level. If you want to Firebend well enough to fight, it should more resemble..." He thrust his fist forward, and a jet of orange flames shot out and through the trees. "...something like that."
"But how can I get my fire to resemble yours?"
"Enough practice should get your Firebending trained up, but I do have one condition."
"What?"
"The Scarlet Rose knows you have escaped their grip. That Waterbender was one of their assassins, and if we don't get moving, there'll be more of them coming here. If I train you, I will have you commit to my fight against them."
"Fighting a rose... could you possibly be named Shandian?"
"THE Scarlet Rose, and yes. I've spent the better part of my life fighting against them, and with your aid in this fight, we can finally end their tyranny once and for all."
"What have they done?"
"They were around since a number of years before the end of the Hundred Year War, and their first leader was the one who invented the ability to Bloodbend. Since the War, they have continued to choke the Fire Nation from the inside."
"But what can I do against people like that?"
"You will train in the four elements, and when you complete your training, we will find and destroy the Scarlet Rose. They know you know of their existence now, and they have seen you, so we will need to keep moving. We're close to Hui village, so we can move through there, but until we get out of the Fire Nation, the Scarlet Rose will keep hounding us."
"So where do we go to get out?"
"We can buy passage from the Capital, but we will need to stay on the move until we get there. If we wait around any longer than necessary, the Bloodbenders will catch up to us."
"How far is the Capital?"
"About nine days away if we keep moving. We will pass through Hui village on the way, so we can rest a slight bit there, but after that we need to get going. I can train your Firebending on the way."
"Thank you, I promise I won't let you down!"
"We have wasted enough time here. If we don't want to be sitting turtleducks for the Scarlet Rose, we had better get moving."
