THE DISHONORED PRINCESS
CHAPTER VII – AZURE FLAME
I'm back guys! Sorry for the delay, but I've gotten back into the writing groove, I think.
So enjoy this new chapter!
Azula had limped all the way back to the bridge before Iroh had stopped her, finally.
"What happened on the island? Where is the Avatar? And Zhao?"
Azula explained in a tired voice. Indeed, everything about her was tired. Her leg, injured from her escapade on the island with Zhao and his band of minions, refused to cooperate. She sat down roughly and without her usual grace on a nearby chair and asked the nearest crewmate for more herbal tea.
It helped only a little bit.
Iroh was silent for a long time after Azula had brought him up to speed on the events that had transpired. He was either thinking or staring blankly into space, Azula was not sure, but after this pause he spoke quite quickly.
"The Avatar could not have gotten far, then. And Zhao does not know where we are."
"Neither do I, Uncle."
He chuckled, brought her a map and pointed to a small dot near the Earth Kingdom coast.
"We managed to get through the Fire Navy patrols this time, and this village we're docked at has offered to help us repair and resupply."
"How generous of them."
"Yes, well, I think they were motivated by the Fire Nation Princess being aboard."
"I'm still surprised no one has let that slip from the Palace."
Iroh's smile was gone, replaced by a frown. Azula could not tell if it was from anger or sadness.
"Can you really blame them, niece? With men like Zhao around, all Firebenders are irredeemable."
Azula assumed there was great wisdom in this, but chose not to think too hard, lest her skull threaten to implode.
A second later, it do so anyway, to her great chagrin. She downed another cup of tea and shakily stood from her seat.
"I'm going back to sleep Uncle. Have some guards search the village for the Avatar's whereabouts, and then wake me no earlier than noon tomorrow."
"But Azula, its noon right now!"
She had already returned to her chambers.
Everything about her felt off. She had no idea why, and a tingling feeling told her to be suspicious.
But the succulent feel of the bed sheets against her tired body was too great a temptation. She was asleep within moments.
Another dream came to her.
The terrifying male face, the one she now recognized as Avatar Roku's, came to her again.
The scene of his arrival was not the Garden of Lilies, however. It was the temple dedicated to his memory, though now it bore the signs of Zhao's invasion. The spires of the shrines gave birth to flames that spread into the sky, dark smoke following them. This mixed with a blood red twilight sun to form a hellish looking landscape. Azula shuddered despite her slumber.
"The day approaches even quicker. Fire among ice, blood among water, and life among death."
Azula's voice found her at last.
"Avatar Roku?"
The figure seemed to focus on her this time, his eyes looking at her rather than through her.
"Why have you sent me these visions? I am not the Avatar."
Roku's face was impassive, but Azula felt rather than noticed a change in his being.
"Fire among ice, blood among water, and life among death. Each shall play their part, as it was meant to be."
"What does that mean?"
But the figure was already vanishing.
"Damn you spirit!"
Azula awoke with her anger. She felt thoroughly unrested, but the adrenaline of her own frustration had given her enough energy to move about her chamber. She had a feeling that it was not even close to the noon of the next day as she had commanded Iroh to summon her by, but she felt compelled, somehow, to walk, to think. She began to pace about her cabin
Roku's words made not the slightest sense to her, but the way he had spoken to her suggested that she was involved somehow.
"Fire among ice, blood among water, and life among death."
He had spoken as though those were people, characters, rather than objects. But the pain in Azula's body had subsided enough so that she could think. And so she did.
In the previous dream, the 'sanctuary' that Roku mentioned was likely either the one that she had escaped from Zhao from, or some other kind of temple. To her knowledge, neither the Earth Kingdom nor the Water Tribe had the same reverence for their ancestors as the Air Nomads did, so from her assumptions she guessed that Roku referred to some Air Temple that she had not yet discovered.
Of course, there was also the possibility that she was simply losing her mind, but there was an odd comfort in not thinking of this outcome.
Another thing that bothered her was how Zhao had seemingly become obsessed with the Avatar's capture, much as she had.
She required it to regain her honor, but Zhao had no such reason. Or so she imagined. She found it unlikely that someone of his status could possibly need any higher standing within the Fire Nation than he already commanded, but then again, she had long ago known him to be a greedy, self-centered bastard.
The question of motives transformed into an examination of her own reasons. She sought the honor that had been taken from her, sought the prestige that she had once enjoyed, but for what?
She remembered that the only thing that moved her in the Fire Nation (save her mother) was the hope of one day becoming the Fire Lord and restoring her nation to its proud origins. The perverted and disgusting thing that it was today was abhorrent to her, the way men like Zhao were allowed to exist and permeate the wondrous might of the Fire Nation was something she had vowed to destroy when she was younger, but now she had no resources beyond her own.
Azula stepped outside her chambers, walked the corridors, and arrived at the bow of the ship. It was night, impossible to estimate a specific time, but the moon shone radiantly over the waters. Their tranquility relaxed Azula. She sat down on the deck, legs folded between each other, and closed her eyes.
She felt calm. It was less unusual now than it had been in recent months, but the novelty had not yet worn off, it seemed. She could worry about how to dismantle the Fire Nation's diseased core later. For the meantime, she had to focus on finding and capturing the Avatar to regain her lost value, to the Fire Nation, and more importantly, to herself.
The Avatar escaped from Zhao, and given that the Fire Navy would likely be looking for them along the coasts, Azula guessed that the adventurer she sought after would return to the Earth Kingdom where it was (relatively) safer for his travel.
Azula then reasoned that she would need more than her own soldiers, limited as they were, to search for her prey. Natives would likely not help her, either out of a surplus of fear or a lack of one, but somewhere she remembered that mercenaries in the form of sea pirates were known to frequent the trading routes, such as the one that the Redeemer occupied a dock in.
The Earth Kingdom had few naval vessels that she could interrogate a crewmember on, and moreover, it would be exceedingly difficult to come by one safely. Pirates could be paid to perform either raids or provide information, which suited Azula perfectly.
With her plan constructed, Azula allowed herself a private smile, letting her mind go blank.
A few minutes passed before she had accomplished the feat of falling asleep sitting up.
She was awakened, with some embarrassment, from an overly nervous crewmate that was apparently trying to tell her it was well past noon and that Iroh was extremely sorry.
Azula wiped the drowsiness from her eyes with a hand and mumbled something to the effect of "Don't worry about it," and stumbled around the deck before she truly woke up.
She walked down the gangplank of the Redeemer and smelled the fresh air mixed with the heavy scent of seawater. It felt oddly refreshing, helped her think after sleeping for so long.
It also reminded her that since her sleep had lasted an entire day, she was beyond hungry. Her stomach growled in affirmation, prompting her to walk back to the decks and into the kitchen, where Iroh was making small talk with the cook, though he immediately went over to greet her when he spotted her entrance.
"Oh, good! You're awake princess!"
She nodded, then sat down on a nearby stool, gazing out into the sea from a starboard window for a moment before addressing the cook and ordering him to prepare her lunch. Iroh sat beside her.
"Azula, let me begin by apologizing for not waking you up at the time you wanted, it was my greatest mis-" She interrupted him with a wave of her hand.
"Don't concern yourself uncle. I overslept."
His look of surprise would have been amusing had Azula been looking at him rather than the table, which she attributed to her odd sense of calmness. Iroh found his words after a pause.
"Of course princess."
Nothing was spoken for a time, mainly as Azula was still distracted by the hypnotic quality of the table and lost in her own mind, but eventually she regained her usual composure and beckoned Iroh to follow her into the bridge after she had finished her meal.
Ignoring the apparent tranquility that she had discovered by her sleep, Azula still desired to keep the search for the Avatar on track, and now that she was certain Zhao was after him as well, the expediency of this task must be increased as well.
Rather amusingly, Azula noted that the notion to hire pirates as underlings left her as quickly as she had thought of it. Pirates were untrustworthy to any cause but gold, and as she had been told, the Redeemer's coffins were not as they used to be.
Still, the process of finding the Avatar by other means than personally scouring the earth appealed to her.
"Uncle, if I'm correct, the Avatar has fled back to the Earth Kingdom to avoid Zhao's navy."
Iroh nodded as she continued.
"This means that we are to bring the Redeemer to dock in the nearest Earth Kingdom village and secure some kind of transport to any Earth Kingdom city that we can find. In a place big enough like that, we can hopefully find information on where the Avatar might wish to go."
It was a sound plan, even as Azula knew that she did not have a tendency to make such things. Iroh agreed wholeheartedly.
"I know from my old days as one of the Fire Nation's generals that the Earth Kingdom employs ostrich horses for its fastest military mounts. Perhaps if we could find some we could ride to Omashu. It's the biggest city outside of Ba Sing Se."
"Indeed. Belay these orders to the men, uncle. I am going to meditate."
The words still sounded odd to her but she had accepted that some meditation would be good for her, and she walked to her cabin and sat cross-legged on her bed.
She forced her mind to relax. This process had become much easier the less that she thought about the Avatar, Zhao, or anything else, she had noticed.
She remembered with distinct clarity that she had been overwhelmed by Zhao's soldiers at the Fire Sage's temple, and how she needed to become better both a fighter and a firebender if she was to combat them. The teachings of her uncle and of her old mentor Jeong Jeong had made little sense to her when they were first heard, about how calmness of the mind could lead to the greatest of firebending power, something she saw as chaotic and aggressive, but she knew better now.
Azula steadily breathed, opened her eyes, and for the first time in her life, thought about fire as a force of life instead of death.
And from her palm sprung a small flame, a simple blue fire, dancing in the air.
Uncharacteristically of her demeanors, Azula let out a shriek of excitement. She had heard of firebenders whose flame was so powerful that it was blue rather than the normal orange that fire exhibited, but it was as powerful as it was rare.
Though the attempt to focus herself was more difficult this time due to her excitement, Azula went through the same process she had a moment ago and concentrated her mind on generating this blue flame, and held a hand up.
Like before, the azure flame stood in her palm, ready to be used for whatever purpose.
Azula would not have believed it had she not seen it herself. The flame even felt different to her, more directed, more powerful, but most of all, more intentional.
She had created this. She had willed it into being through her focus. And this possessive quality of the fire made it that much more personal to Azula. She was almost beside herself with prideful excitement, another emotion she was not accustomed to feeling, but accepted nonetheless.
She was not naïve enough to assume that it would be easy to conjure such an ability in something as heated (pun intended) as actual combat, but she was also confident in her means to remain concentrated.
If for no other purpose than to prove to herself that she could, she generated the flame yet again and simply stared at it. It was oddly beautiful, not in the way that was noteworthy (other than the obvious coloration difference), but in how it was unequivocally hers. This was highly satisfying to Azula.
It was also quite some time before her stomach reminded her that another mealtime had come upon her without her knowledge otherwise, and reluctantly she put out the flame she had been toying with to go to the kitchen and find another item of sustenance.
The entire way there, the time spent eating, and the entire way back to her cabin for the night, the image of the flame never left her eyes.
The last thing she remembered before falling asleep peacefully and without ominous dreams or phantom pains in her body was the simple blue fire.
The following morning Azula awoke with a yawn and a good stretch, then walked out to the bow and watched the brilliant sunrise over the early sky, sitting in what had become her usual spot these days.
Iroh found her sometime after, and sat beside her as he occasionally did. Azula wondered why he did this, but did not complain as he did not attempt to disrupt her concentration, and truthfully, she liked his being there, though she would never admit that to anyone besides herself.
This morning, however, Azula sought to break the silence.
"Uncle?"
"Yes princess?"
"How rare is a firebender that can use blue fire?"
"Oh, you mean the dragonsfire? It is quite rare, my princess."
Her silence prodded him to keep speaking, and he did so.
"I myself have not mastered it, and know of only two firebenders that could, and they were even more skilled than I was, and if you would excuse the lack of humility, I am very skilled."
He moved to stand, as did Azula.
"Then uncle, what do you think of this?"
She held the blue flame in her palm for yet another time, no less proud of it than when she first beheld it, as Iroh turned to see what she was referring to. At first his face showed shock as though he was struck by lightning, it faded into such a smile that Azula had only seen once.
And that was at the celebration of her eighth birthday. Azula was tempted to allow tears to fall, another first in a long time, but willed them to stay where they were as much as she willed to flame to continue burning.
"I stand corrected then, princess. I know of three firebenders that are even more skilled than I am."
Azula smiled in response, then bowed.
"Thank you uncle. I only discovered this yesterday. The night before this morning, in fact."
Iroh did not answer, merely looked at her, still with a mix of wonder and pride. She felt immensely pleased by the proceedings. Finally he turned to go.
"We are nearing the port Azula. It will soon be time to find transport to Omashu."
"Yes. Soon."
She was left alone on the deck. The travel had taken the entire morning, so the sun now stood at the precipice of the sky, bathing all the seas in its light. Azula took a moment to gaze upon the horizon and think of the accomplishment she had achieved, smiled again, and then followed Iroh to return to the decks below.
Shortly afterwards they arrived at a small settlement apparently named Yung. The villagers acted hastily out of fear, as Azula had hoped they would, even though she had little intention of actually harming them. A change had set about in her, she noticed. And she rather liked how she felt. No desire to act as a Fire Nation princess 'ought' seemed to appeal to her anymore.
Still, the extra swiftness would not be underappreciated. She even allowed Iroh to pay for the stocking of their ship supplies.
She admitted it was odd, not encountering much difficulty on this excursion, but Azula had often accredited such feelings of ominous fear as simple paranoia, as something that only one as unstable as Zhao would honestly believe.
The events that happened that night, of course, educated her that her feelings were rarely wrong.
Azula had only really noticed the odd feelings of discomfort return to her as she lay in bed that night. She had opted to sleep in the only inn that the village possessed (at the chagrin of the other visitors that were actually paying to stay there, though she didn't care all that much about them) so that she could grow accustomed to falling asleep on the ground as opposed to a ship for the journey ahead.
Maybe the hum of the Redeemer's engine helped her get to sleep before, because without such a thing she could not find sleep at all. She tossed and turned for quite some time, at one point even throwing the measly blanket they had offered her aside.
This would not do. She would need to be well rested in order to make the journey (on foot) to another nearby village, where they had been told that there were ostrich horses for sale, though Azula doubted she would spend a coin.
She got up to pace again, finding that even meditations had not helped in getting her to sleep. Perhaps if she could not sleep she could think. She had assumed that the Avatar was travelling to the various Air Temples for knowledge of something, though what it was for she could not guess. But this business with the temple of the Fire Sages and Avatar Roku's apparition, Azula's hypothesis had been thrown into disarray.
When she had talked to Iroh of this (or more accurately, when he had informed her that the summer solstice was likely the reason of the Avatar's visit to the temple), she had determined that the Avatar's plan was much more complicated than she realized.
The point of an Avatar was to restore balance to the world, that much she knew. She also knew that the Avatar was the only one that could command all four elements and with stunning ability. Yet this boy, this Aang, had only demonstrated the ability to control his native element of air. It was no less impressive, as Azula had been sure that the Air Nomads had been destroyed by her grandfather Sozin, but apparently this boy had escaped even him.
Azula wondered, absentmindedly at first, then with more focus, how the Avatar could even still be a boy. The last Avatar was of the Air Nomads, and as such was the reason for Sozin's genocide. A new Avatar had not been born, so Azula had assumed that the cycle was broken. Yet here this boy was, and he could not be over the age of twelve.
How had he survived?
Azula had already made the mistake of underestimating him, but she could not fathom a reason or a means for his survival after the "crusade" her grandfather had undertaken to find and end him.
It was all moot, Azula noted, as none of that information would have helped her ascertain where the Avatar intended to go next so Azula could successfully capture him. She doubted he had already visited all four Air Temples, particularly the ones that the Fire Nation had already occupied (two of them Azula knew for certain were already in the hands of the Fire Navy), but even if he did, what could he hope to find in the Earth Kingdom?
It was baffling. Iroh's insight was definitely needed on the subject for Azula to make light of anything else.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on one's viewpoint), a sound reached Azula's ears that distracted her from anything her mind could think of; a voice muffled by the floor beneath her, indicating that someone was speaking rather loudly in the room downstairs.
At this time of night? Azula doubted it could be anything good.
Her curiosity overrode her sensible instinct to grab her armor, as the process of putting it all on would take valuable time. Instead, she slid on a light covering and crept out of her room and to the top step of the stairs, hoping to find the source of the voice.
"…And be quick about it. The princess is upstairs somewhere, but all the others are already dealt with. Take Miko and Meng with you. She's dangerous."
It was a brusque male voice, and one that Azula had definitely never heard before. But she recognized enough to know that whoever he was talking about was coming upstairs to find her (unless there was another princess to deal with around here, to which Azula shuddered), and fast.
She moved as quickly as she could without making a sound, and returned to her room. Underneath the meager nightstand where she had laid her finer robe, she had hidden a small dagger for emergencies, for which this situation definitely classified. It was a stiletto, small and easily concealable, but not at all deadly unless used precisely. Not that she had much choice.
She moved to the wall next to the door and waited, her heart beating furiously against her chest. She heard three sets of footsteps, heavy and obviously not overly concerned with stealth. To her great relief, a new voice called out to the others.
"Split up. One of these rooms is hers."
The footsteps did as they were commanded, and only one set instead of three converged on Azula's room. She held her breath as a figure opened the door and walked into the room. He was a tall, muscly man, built like a bull and probably just as well-mannered as one. Curiously he was armed, but the sword in question was stored in a scabbard.
Azula let out a small breath. These men were likely just pirates looking to capture her for a ransom, then. They weren't trained assassins.
She held her stiletto high and covered the man's mouth with one hand and drew the stiletto to his neck with the other.
"Any sound and you're dead." She whispered into his ear. He nodded, apparently too scared to realize that he could likely lift her with one arm.
"Take your sword and put it on the bed. Do it now, or you're dead."
The man did as he was told. He removed the sword from the scabbard and laid it on Azula's bed. He whimpered in response to her pressing the stiletto's blade a little tighter than she had originally.
"Now close your eyes. We are going to turn around. If you see me or make a sound, you're dead."
She didn't know whether he closed his eyes, nor did she really care. It was a façade to give her the illusion of being much more dangerous than he realized, but she doubted he knew that. They turned so that she could see the doorway.
Suddenly she heard voices coming from the hallway. The other two had apparently finished their searches.
"Hey, what's taking Meng so long?"
"Hell if I know. Find him."
Another man walked into Azula's view and jumped.
"What the-?"
He reached for his own sword and yelled to his companion.
"Shang! The princess's here, she's got Meng!"
More footsteps in the hall. Azula mentally cursed. The time for subtlety had left her.
She kicked the man in front of her, apparently named Meng, and he fell forward. The other pirate was startled enough to give Azula an opening. She moved quickly, jumping off of the prostrate Meng's body and delivered a kick to the other pirate's head, knocking him backwards into the hall.
The last pirate was already nearby. He slashed at her with an axe, she dodged, ducking around his clumsy attack and kicked at his knee. It buckled and he fell, but Azula heard one of the ones behind her already up and likely moving. She couldn't take them all at once, but she could scare them, at least.
She tried to focus enough to project the blue flames again, but her adrenaline proved too great, and the normal orange fire greeted her instead. Regardless, it served its purpose. The walls ignited and the two pirates leaped backwards to attempt to escape it.
Azula did not care whether the fire actually reach them or not, it was but a means of her escape to find out whatever the hell was going on and how many pirates were after her. She turned and fled to the end of the hall, where an open-air window revealed a picturesque night sky. It seemed half-insulting that pirates should attack on such a night.
As the fire spread through the wooden structure like, well, wildfire, Azula offered a small prayer to Agni and decided to take her chances. She took a running start and jumped through the window, rolling over her shoulder as she hit the ground to minimize the impact, though to her relief the sandy ground beneath her did not hurt as much as she had feared.
She glanced over her shoulder to look at the burning building, guessing it would collapse soon enough. Good. A useful distraction.
She then looked around and spotted the Redeemer still docked. At least the pirates had stolen her ship.
If the men under her had not already been captured they would have been fighting, she assumed, and the lack of battle around her suggested they had succumbed to their attackers. She didn't know where they might be in that case, but it would be easier to fight from the Redeemer's decks in any case, and escape was a safer option anyhow.
She sprinted to the docks where the Redeemer stood, past more men that she assumed to be more pirates, from the way they angrily followed her, and nearly jumped across the gangplank. More pirates were already coming up from below the Redeemer's deck, so her theory that her men had been captured proved true enough.
She sent a wave of fire towards them, and as they ducked to avoid it, she jumped over their heads and into the decks below, eager to find any trace of her crew. She ran down the halls, but other than finding more pirates, she discovered nothing. She doubted the pirates could match her speed, given that they likely had never tried to catch something as fast as her in their lives, but she knew the claustrophobic halls were no place she could live through a fight in.
Azula then ran back up above deck and to her horror, discovered that the pirates were waiting for her. The burliest of them and the apparent leader, a dark skinned giant of a man, whose bare arms rippled with veins and tattoos, stood towering over a figure held captive in his grasp, none other than uncle Iroh.
Azula gasped. The man acknowledged this as an invitation to speak.
"Stop right there Princess! We've got your old man right here, and you're surrounded."
Azula glanced and realized the man was right. Damnation upon him.
"Now let's come to an agreement, like civilized folk, shall we?"
He was grinning. His face was like a wolf, eager to bite into its prey. Azula would have been frightened of him had he not already inspired the fury she had for him for this situation's events.
"All we want is you little girl. We don't need to hurt your old man, or anyone else here. So just hand yourself over, and they'll go free. No need for any more violence, right?"
The smile only reinforced Azula's belief that he couldn't speak the truth if it could save his life, so instead of paying him any attention she looked at Iroh and begged him to understand her plan without words. He was looking directly at her as well, and when he gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod, she hoped he knew what she was about to do.
Or in any case, she would go down fighting. It wasn't the worst outcome.
Thankfully, it appeared Iroh did understand, for at that moment he surprised Azula yet again. He wrenched his head free of the pirate leader's arm, breathing fire from his very mouth and startling the pirates around him. Meanwhile, Azula kicked out two successive waves of fire from both feet, successfully unbalancing the two pirates nearest her.
She turned her back on Iroh and the pirate leader to focus on several more pirates coming up the ramp from below deck, and tried to keep them at bay with more blasts of fire. One, armed with two large hammers, escaped her attack and charged at her.
She avoided the heavy blow by the skin of her teeth, feeling the air surge past her face where the hammers flew by, but refused to let herself be distracted by it. Azula ducked and kicked out at the man's legs, like she had done with the pirate at the inn, and felt immediate satisfaction when the man's weight caused him to fall over.
She heard yells of pain and shock accompanied by heavy sounds of firebending behind her, so she assumed that either the other crewmembers had escaped or Iroh was again inspiring his title of the Dragon of the West. She jumped out of the way of a sword wielding pirate who lunged at her, rolling to his flank and then shot fire at him from her position. He burst into flame and rushed to the side of the ship, intent on jumping overboard to put himself out, it seemed.
Azula then dodged more attacks from other pirates, countering their slow and heavy offensives with either blasts of fire or kicks targeted at their feet when eventually all the ones around her where either too battle weary to get up or had fled her vicinity.
She looked behind her to see that Iroh had dealt with all but the pirate leader, with whom he dueled at the present in a most intense fashion. They exchanged blows, aggressive punches and kicks, which honestly surprised Azula, as she had not imagined her uncle to be as physically able as the burly pirate leader, but she gave a small smile of triumph when the pirate leader finally overstepped himself and Iroh took advantage of the mistake to knock him down to the deck of the Redeemer with a kick to the torso.
The other pirates had been defeated or escaped, and the crewmates that Azula had thought to be captured had successfully returned. The pleasure of knowing she and her crew had fought off an unknown threat without casualty overrode both the pain of Azula's sore body and protests of a lack of sleep.
Iroh accompanied her to the dormitories, whereupon reaching their respective rooms he promised to explain his knowledge of the situation after a good night's sleep. Azula agreed whole-heartedly and almost passed out on her bed once she reached it.
Her sleep was blissful and dreamless.
Well, that was a blast! Get ready for the next chapter guys!
-Skryr
