Chapter 10 - Whispers of a Storm

For Hikoshu, entering the Spirit World was much like trying to fall asleep after wrestling an iguana-goat. His body felt ready to drift off, but his mind, too alert to outside threat, simply wouldn't let him. So for a long time, he meditated and didn't do much else. With thoughts of the totems fading to just outside of his awareness, he focused on his breaths moving past his lips. Steady, warm breaths.

Meditation wasn't a difficult practice, though he hadn't done much of it in the past year. The Water Tribes didn't use meditation nearly as frequently as the Fire Nation; they didn't need the constant self-control—the demand for inner-calm that allowed firebenders to bend without fear of being overwhelmed by their own element. So perhaps he was a little rusty, as it took some time to keep his thoughts from wandering to Mayami, who usually cropped up behind his eyes whenever he was trying hard to concentrate.

Entering the Spirit World, Hikoshu then realized, was also a lot like falling asleep itself. Long after he'd forced Mayami to a darker recess of his thoughts and lost himself in the rhythmic beat of his heart, Hikoshu seemed to fade into the back of his mind, the emptiness of his meditative trance replaced by another emptiness of non-existence. He simply was without reason for being. And if he could think about it—if he could think about anything—he would question if he hadn't simply fallen asleep where he sat.

But as his eyes flew open and his heart slammed into the back of his ribs, Hikoshu was distinctly aware he wasn't dreaming. This was something far more real, but still intangible. Still holding the same qualities of a dream, but with the certain knowledge that he could neither control it nor wake up at will.

Carefully, he pushed himself to his feet and straightened the heavy, crimson silk robes of his old Fire Sage uniform. Despite the thick swaths of elaborately trimmed fabric that enveloped him, Hikoshu didn't feel unusually warm. Nor, when he moved, did the tall, conical hat slip down his head as it would have done in the physical world. He couldn't see himself, but Hikoshu didn't need to; he wore this attire because it had come to represent him even in his own mind. A Fire Sage was how he identified himself, and in the brief moments it took for him to adjust to the new environment, Hikoshu felt a rare pang of homesickness.

It faded quickly as he examined his surroundings. He wasn't in the South Pole anymore. Or perhaps he was, though it looked nothing like Rajio Bay. The ground below his feet was the only source of light, the smooth, ice-like surface emitting a muted white glow. The glow didn't reach very far, as above him, the sky was an inky black. It seemed to roll on itself, as if the black made up waves, and occasionally, a shape of an even deeper ebony crept among the folds.

From the writhing night hung a forest of kelp, their ends swaying with thin, feather-like fronds over the faintly glowing floor. They were as thick as a person, their leaves dotted with snow, and from the dark sky fell heavier flakes. Reaching out, Hikoshu caught one of them in his palm and realized that they weren't cold. Nor were they snow—they were bubbles, the tiny spheres bursting against his skin.

"Hello?" he called, and it sounded like he was shouting through water. His voice, muffled and distant, didn't seem to reach past the reddish-green kelp beside him. No one answered him, as Hikoshu half-expected, and the world remained empty except for the kelp.

And…

Hikoshu felt the same presence as he'd felt in the lake. His neck itched under an unknown gaze—the pressing, suffocating feel of something wanting his attention. As he turned to search the ice, it was almost as if he were drowning again.

Then there it was: a figure, not a dozen yards away, crouching on the ice. The faint light was enough to catch its clothing—its parka, washed gray, not in any style that Hikoshu recognized, and a braided string of feathers that seemed to float around its neck. In front of it was a large hole cut into the ice, from which a brilliant light shone. Yet even with that, its face was disguised under wet, matted hair, and the night seemed to rest on its hunched shoulders like a cloak.

Abruptly, Hikoshu had an overwhelming desire to leave before it saw him—and a crippling fear that he couldn't. But he knew with absolute certainty that this was the spirit from the lake, and though some deeper, more primal part of him told him he should not go near it, a higher kind of reasoning dictated that he would get far more answers if he did.

Hikoshu moved toward it, though his legs didn't work quite as well as he'd expected. Like running in a dream. Or walking through water. Slowly, advancing with painstaking steps, he crept closer to the spirit, and the spirit held still on the ice as unseen eyes burned into him. Don't come closer, something whispered, and he wasn't really sure if those weren't his own thoughts. Don't come closer…

Then, suddenly, the spirit slipped through the hole in the ice.

It moved like a wisp of smoke, or a diving tiger-seal. So quickly that Hikoshu only knew it went through the hole because he could not imagine it climbing upward into the black. Moments or days later—time flowed so strangely in the Spirit World—Hikoshu reached that hole, as well, and knelt in order to stare into the dazzling light.

Then, beyond his awareness or control, he was falling through the hole, too. No, crawling—sweeping—flying. He was moving, or perhaps the world was moving around him, up instead of down. Everything flashed white as he resurfaced on the other side, spluttering for air he didn't need, soaking wet, his lungs hurting the same as they had the day he fell in the lake. With a groan, Hikoshu dragged himself across the snow-covered ground, though it wasn't cold and the flakes more resembled gharial-goose down than snow.

When he finally got to his feet, quite suddenly dry, he was now in a different world. The sky was as white as the feather-snow, and downy-flakes floated languidly to the ground to form hills of soft, inviting fluff. It was the opposite of the place he'd just left, and confused, Hikoshu turned back to the hole.

The hole was gone. Instead, he was greeted by a forest of soapstone trees which hid the horizon. They covered the hills of feather-snow, deep shadows blending seamlessly with their delicately carved branches of white. No feature, not the bark or even the veins of the leaves, had been forgotten, details so fine that the trees seemed alive. He stood at the very edge of this petrified forest—a sea of fake snow to one side, an ocean of fake trees to the other.

There was no wind, and the canopies were deathly silent. Yet he could hear something, barely on the edge of perception. The whispering of silk along the stone. Or maybe the echoes of whispered voices in the leaves. And then the sensation of someone watching. It was different, though, from the gaze he'd felt earlier. The heavy, almost stifling sense of dread was gone, as well as the consuming need to run. Instead, the stares were numerous, angry, and everywhere. The same kind of cruel judgment as he had felt among the totems.

"They won't come out," a deep voice said. Wheeling around, Hikoshu was confronted with a young man, narrow-shouldered, slender, who hadn't been there a moment before. He stood among the flakes, though none seemed to touch the unusual parka he wore. It had a yellowish hue, no fur—likely a fishing jacket, worn by someone who spent most of his time at sea.

Starting toward him, the darkly-skinned man smiled a smile of pristine white, nearly all of his teeth showing. His black hair fell in shaggy layers around his face, framing warm blue eyes, and pierced through the corner of his lip was a small, round bone disc, decorated with turquoise. Despite his exotic appearance, the man looked familiar. Extremely familiar. As if Hikoshu could look in a mirror and see the same person.

"Who else is here?" he asked. The man shrugged and stuck his hands in that fishing coat as he came to a stop in front of Hikoshu.

"Spirits, of course. Unhappy ones."

"Is that why Avatar Sidhari isn't here to meet me?"

"She has bad history with this place," he said in agreement and brushed a handful of hair out of his too-familiar eyes. "Or…well…not with this place. But with the spirits of this place. She doesn't come here often."

"So you'll be helping me, Avatar Kwandek?"

"As much as I can, but I don't have a very good relationship with the locals either." Kwandek scanned the environs with mock uncertainty. "The curse of being the exact same person. They don't like me anymore than they like her. Or you."

"But you said they won't bother us."

"Well, that's the blessing of being the Avatar. Not many spirits will."

The odd noise had grown in the meantime, and now it seemed distinctly like whispers. A thousand whispers, coming from every dark crevice, always just out of sight. Yet when he turned his head quick enough, Hikoshu could catch a glimpse of shadows in the trees. Moving.

"So you've come asking about a spirit," Kwandek stated, taking the opportunity to circle Hikoshu in examination. The sensation of a spirit studying him made the hair stand on the back of his neck, and he simply nodded. "Care to explain?"

"You know as much as I. Water Tribesmen are dying—a lot of them. And we don't know who's killing them, nor why."

"Wish I could help you on that, but I don't keep track of the spirits." He circled back into view, still with that impish grin. "Too many of them. Too little of me." Kwandek had been notorious in his time for his lackadaisical attitude. Even after five generations, he was still remembered with stories of his callousness and disinterest.

"Completely unfounded," Kwandek continued from Hikoshu's train of thought. "I just got tired of talking out one side of my mouth and lying out the other. Turns out people don't like it when you stop doing that."

"Please don't read my mind? I'm happy to tell you what I'm thinking." He tried to suppress the annoyance in his voice. Not that mattered—Kwandek would notice it, anyway. Coming to a stop in front of him, Kwandek gave Hikoshu another half-grin and yanked on the front of his fishing coat.

"Can't really help it. You keep thinking and I keep reading. The spirit you're looking for is an old one. A lot older than me."

"Older than the Avatar?"

"Older than me." Suddenly, he dropped into the snow, and clouds of fluff billowed around him. Folding his legs under him, Kwandek propped his elbows against his lap. "Don't let these boyish charms fool you. I must be well over 300 years old now." He paused briefly, as if expecting Hikoshu to laugh. "I don't think the spirit is as old as the Avatar, but it hasn't been in the mortal world since I've been alive."

"Then what does that mean? How is it in the mortal world now?"

"My best guess?" An apathetic shrug, and the whispers seemed to grow angrier. "A Water Shaman did it."

Just as Kinu had suggested. Someone was acting on the spirit. "Did it how?"

"However Shamans do it. Blood sacrifice, soul sacrifice. Whatever it takes to bring a very angry spirit to a place where it doesn't belong." Suddenly, Kwandek's nonchalant, amused attitude was gone. "It's either someone very skilled or someone very unskilled. He—or she—intended for this spirit to do some damage, though there's no knowing if this is the damage he intended."

"What damage is it doing, then?"

The whispers were louder, insistent, and Hikoshu tried hard not to listen to them. He wasn't sure he really wanted to hear what they had to say. Kwandek's grin again slowly spread across his face, as if the thought of random deaths tickled him. Or perhaps he was tantalized by the riddle. Perhaps he didn't even care about the deaths. "Ah, who is dying. The answer to that lies in the Northern Water Tribe."

"But it's not killing just Northern Water Tribesmen," Hikoshu protested, which made Kwandek laugh.

"Minoq, is it?"

"His mother clan was Southern."

"Maybe he wasn't born in the North," Kwandek said, and Hikoshu could've sworn he winked. "But that doesn't mean he never lived there. Sidhari specifically remembers him in the North Pole. You might see if anyone else does, too."

So it meant they didn't have to be Northern men. Suddenly, the danger increased a thousand fold. The spirit could still be targeting men from the North, including men who had simply been there. Was it only limited to those who now lived in the South? Or was the Northern Tribe suffering from the same unexplained deaths? Was it even worse for them?

Kwandek whistled. "Oh, I can't answer all those. I can give you the knowledge of the ages—not so much of the 'now.' But I would certainly look into that if I were you."

Frustration welled in Hikoshu, and it took him a few moments to staunch the emotion. "Then tell me how to stop it. You can't tell me who it is, who it's attacking. At least tell me how to keep it from attacking again."

"I said I'd help you as much as I can. That didn't mean I could really help you at all." Kwandek suddenly jumped to his feet, as lightly as if he were an airbender rather than a waterbender. Though, Hikoshu supposed, he technically was both. "The fact is, Hikoshu, neither I nor the Avatar before me has faced this before. This…well, it's something new. But whatever it is, it's causing quite the disturbance here in the Spirit World. Those shadows behind you have never been so angry."

As if agreeing, the whispers hissed fiercely, their unintelligible words vindictive and mocking. Yet the uncomfortable gazes of those spirits weren't what haunted Hikoshu's thoughts.

"Then can you tell me if it has anything to do with that spirit in the lake?"

The whispers abruptly went silent. Even Kwandek stared without responding, and for a moment, Hikoshu wondered if the world had simply frozen. Only the gharial-goose snow proved that time continued, as they fell more softly to the ground, their occasional touch on his skin now cold.

Whatever trance held the spirits was eventually broken when Kwandek spoke. "You already know the answer."

"But I don't know what it means. What part is this spirit playing?"

The whispers had begun again, far less angry now—almost fearful, instead. Kwandek's eyes, which had been trained on Hikoshu in morbid contemplation, then became unfocused, as if Kwandek had spied something horrific in the trees behind him.

The word he started to say had the guttural tones of the Water Tribe language. "Akitsi—"

Before he finished the last syllable, Kwandek had vanished.

XxXxXxXxX

"Natquik, you didn't," Miyo said with a laugh, reclining her head against her staff. She'd laid the glider along the back of her shoulders, her wrists folding over either side so that her hands hung from it limply. This meant, of course, that Natquik had to walk a short distance to her right, held at bay by the glider.

"Well, how was I supposed to know Hikoshu's a terrible swimmer? He grew up in a fishing village." The top of the snow ridge had been sheered off by strong winds, leaving a large, relatively flat surface that had thawed and frozen again to form a plateau they could easily walk. Still, the abrupt drop-off seemed too close for comfort, and he tried to walk nearer to her. To the North, the black dot that was Hikoshu sat among the totems, glowing and unmoving. As he had for hours now.

"He hasn't been a fisherman's son since he was nine. And I don't think he was all that great of a swimmer then, either." Miyo threw him a mirthful smile that seemed so bright in the fading dusk. The blues and reds of the sunset made the arrows on her hands and forehead stand out.

"Not a great flyer, not a great swimmer. There has to be something he's great at."

"Well, he's a pretty good kisser."

That brought Natquik up short. "Excuse me, Mistress Nun?" She blushed as she looked away.

"I mean…a long time ago." Anxiously, she studied the mountain to the south in order to avoid his eyes, and let silence break the conversation. "Anyway, what were we talking about?"

"Hikoshu, but I'm getting a little tired of the subject." He tried to smother the unusual annoyance building in him.

"Well, that's too bad, because he's about all we have in common." Miyo came to a stop, then, turning to face him in such a way that he had to lean back to dodge her staff. "Without him, we'd have nothing to discuss."

"That's not true. We could talk about…the weather." The staff no longer an obstacle, Natquik could step closer to her. She swayed and took a step back.

"Oh? Like what? How cold it is?"

"I could warm you up, if you want."

Miyo narrowed her eyes at him, and her smile grew bigger even as she stepped back again to match his step forward. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Don't pretend you wouldn't."

She answered him only with a grin, though she continued to retreat, her cheeks turning just about as red as the western sky.

Then abruptly her expression changed to one of horror as she shot downward. Diving after her, Natquik caught Miyo under her arms before she slid off other side of the ridge, and earned a clock over the head with her staff as a reward. Wincing, he dragged her back up onto the snow. She gasped as soon as she was on her feet and dropped her glider from her neck.

"I'm so sorry!" Immediately, Miyo was pawing at the side of his head, as she tended to do when someone was hurt. "How bad is it?"

"It's fine, just a knot," he said hastily, though he didn't loosen his grip on her waist. Her robes felt surprisingly warm under his cold fingers, at odds with how inappropriately dressed she was for the Pole. Slowly realizing that he hadn't released her yet, Miyo let her hands fall away and tried to pull back.

"Are you dizzy?"

"A little." Almost against his own will, Natquik was holding on to her. Now her warmth was soaking through his coat, and he could feel the heat off her ruddy cheeks, see her panicked heart in her wide eyes.

Then she gave a short shake of her head, squeezing those gray eyes shut. The next thing he knew, he had hit the hard snow on his shoulder, nearly sliding over the opposite edge.

"Cut out the flirting, Natquik. I'm a nun and you're about to be married."

"Ow! Come on, Miyo! I was just playing around." He really wished he had been. Sitting up in the snow, Natquik rubbed his arm. "You know how I like teasing you."

"Incorrigible," she sighed, offering him a hand. He accepted it with a sullen groan. "You don't have any other girls to tease, so you have to take it out on me?"

"No, but I enjoy your reactions a lot more." He gave her a roguish smile as he let go of her hand. The smile then quickly melted into a frown. "Though now, not quite as much."

That made Miyo grin, and she bridged the distance between them again. "Incorrigible. And maybe a little over-confident." Reaching up, she brushed her fingers over the spot where her staff had connected with his head.

"Well, I'm a better flyer and swimmer than Hikoshu. But I'll leave it up to you if I'm a better kisser."

"I…uh…" Again she was red, and she yanked her hand away as if burned. "I don't really…wait, I thought we weren't talking about Hikoshu." Honestly, her expressions really did make the teasing worth it. Her stammering, her blushing, her ruffled moments when she struggled to regain her nun-like composure. The times when he could break through that collected façade were frequently the times he loved most.

"I think we moved on to the weather."

"Yes…the weather," she murmured absently, her gaze focused on some point beyond his shoulder. Then, suddenly, her eyes widened in terror. "Natquik, the clouds!"

He spun toward the northern horizon past the bay. The skyline was hard to see at first, so dark had the evening grown. But then it dawned on him that twilight wasn't what obscured the sky. There was a wall of clouds on the horizon, billowing toward the bay. Underneath them, the world was nothing but an indistinct gray, the horizon itself invisible.

Now, the calm weather seemed strangely calm. The clouds Miyo had noted earlier had seemed strangely dark. Everything was adding up into a brief appraisal—a quick assessment he'd learned how to do through many Southern winters.

His mouth went dry. "It's a squall."

Natquik didn't even notice that Miyo had moved until he heard her glider snap open. Glancing behind him, he saw her grab the bamboo sails over the back of her shoulders, prepared to leap off the ridge.

"Miyo, wait!" He stepped in front of her, holding out his arms. "You can't go into the air."

"I need to get Hikoshu!" Instead of going through him, Miyo went over him; she jumped high into the air as her glider caught a gust. Then she was soaring down the ridge, a speck of orange against the white.

She wasn't going to make it—couldn't make it, not without a waterbender. So taking action before he could even take stock of the situation, Natquik leapt off the ledge after her.

Just as he landed, the snow crystallized into ice around his feet, instinct guiding his bending more than conscious thought. In moments, he was skiing rapidly down the steep slope on a slab of ice, the wind tearing at his eyes as he leaned into it. He had no way of controlling his descent, but that didn't matter. He didn't really intend to reach the bottom.

Miyo was ahead of him, but Natquik was quickly closing the gap, the speed of his slide much faster than the air currents she rode. Still, she was above him, and he couldn't fly. So sweeping an arm in front of him, Natquik forced the snow ahead upward into a ramp, aimed directly for Miyo's path. He braced his knees for the impact, his body jolting as he hit the ramp. And then he was flying, as airborne as an airbender.

Natquik had done things like this a hundred times, when he was young. But he hadn't done them in years, and he certainly hadn't done them with the intention of catching a person mid-air. So it was likely a mixture of skill as well as sheer, impressive luck that allowed him to crash into Miyo. Scrabbling for a handhold, he managed to seize her waist, and she gave a gasp as she struggled to maintain her grip on her glider.

"Natquik! What are you doing?"

"You have to land!"

That wasn't going to be a problem. Or perhaps it was. They jerked violently in opposite directions as she attempted to keep them both up, and the bay far below them pitched across his vision. Then her shawl broke loose from her sash; suddenly free, his fingers were ripped from her waist as his heart sprung into his throat.

"Natquik!" Miyo cried, releasing the glider with one hand to grab his. There was a moment where they wobbled precariously, balanced on the question of whether she would drop the glider or drop him first.

And then they were both falling, the glider snapping away from her in the first blast of the incoming squall.

Natquik pulled her into his arms, fighting to see past her hair as he clutched her to his chest. She in turn fought to get away from him, which he didn't understand but didn't have time to consider. The ground was swiftly approaching, too fast for his frantic mind to figure a way out.

Somehow, Miyo managed to twist in his embrace within the last few seconds, now with her back to him. And as the snow rushed up to meet them, she bent a blast of air into the ground to halt their descent. It slowed them, but didn't stop them. Yet now that he recognized what Miyo was trying to do, Natquik quickly did the same; he threw an arm out in front of her, bending into the snow.

They plunged into the ground just as the storm hit land. Plowing deep into the ice, Natquik immediately lost his sight, and Miyo's powerful grip on his neck was the only thing that kept her from being torn from his arms. He was barely aware of how hard she clung to him; he couldn't do anything but hold her close with one hand and bend with the other.

Above them, the storm savaged the bay.

XxXxXxXxX

Startled at the abrupt disappearance of Kwandek, Hikoshu slid into a firebending stance, one fist tight near his shoulder, the fingers of his other hand splayed but loose. At any moment, he anticipated a sudden jolt through his head—the feeling of being pulled from the world as he was returned to his physical body.

Yet nothing happened. Anxiously, he turned in a slow circle with arms at ready, though his bending was useless here. Behind him, the whispers filled the trees, still a low, terrified hum that slipped through the bone-like branches. A chorus of confusion and fear seeping from the woods.

The downy tundra was just as empty as it'd been when he first arrived. The only thing that may have changed was the breeze carrying the feather-snow, which seemed to swirl with a little more urgency. Swallowing, Hikoshu dropped his stance and looked back to the woods.

An Air Nomad—or what Hikoshu immediately assumed was an Air Nomad—stood before him. The man was bare-cheeked and bald, the shape of an arrow outlined in deep brown on his forehead. Gray eyes were sunken in a creviced face, yet Hikoshu had the sense that he looked decades older than he actually was. His outfit was a patchwork of blue and orange—a combination of wide sashes wrapped loosely around his bony arms and shoulders, seeming as if he wore the ocean sunset itself. Underneath it all was a simple brown sack-cloth which hung to his knees. In one hand, he grasped a roughshod staff.

Hikoshu wasn't surprised. But he was most definitely at a loss for words. The stranger, however, didn't seem to want to talk; when he spoke, he didn't even sound like he was addressing Hikoshu, his voice distant as if he were recounting a story. "Its people called it auyuittuq—the land that never melts. We simply called them the Water Tribe. No matter that they were more than one tribe. No matter that they had little interest in relating to the rest of the world. I tried for years to bring the four nations together, but sometimes…harmony is best achieved by never meeting in the first place."

Suddenly, the stranger burst into a flurry of flakes, which then floated a foot away. There, they spun in a new whirlwind, eventually solidifying into a sturdy, hard-jawed man with one blue eye. The other was lost in a hideous scar that cut a jagged path from his left ear to his right collarbone, the skin pulled taut where it had healed poorly. He wore gray furs for robes, a jawless polar-wolf's head sewn across the front, and he had no coat. Instead, his single, muscular arm was naked. The left limb ended in a stump.

"The world never'd have known what happened in the land of winter." The man's accent was so heavy that it took Hikoshu a moment to realize he wasn't speaking in the Water Tribe tongue. "They knew none about the growing pains of an emerging civilization, or the wars we were fighting over the oasis. To them, we were one people. To us, we were twenty."

Again, he disappeared, and again, the flakes dashed away. Hikoshu quickly turned to follow them, where they reformed as another man with gray-speckled hair, his thin frame wreathed in greens and browns of a foreign style, his gaunt face distressed. "The infighting was so violent. Their aggression eventually spilled into the Continent, and I couldn't stop them! So I've done the only thing I can do. The other land is the same in every respect, but it's on the opposite side of the world." He shook his head, defeated. "Hereafter, there should be two Water Tribes—North and South."

The man dissolved, the flakes moved. A dark-skinned woman—tall, thin, with eyes of deep amber and her black hair in a ponytail—now stood before him. She wore nothing red; in fact, she wore barely anything at all, a mantle of gold over her breasts, loose brown trousers interweaved with a straw skirt covering her legs. The rest of her was exposed, gold circlets around her arms and heavy hoops in her ears.

"It seemed to work well at first. There was still fighting, but by separating themselves, they could share the finite resources of the poles more peacefully. Wars became skirmishes. The North began incorporating trade, and the South retained its heritage. But then the tribesmen started to die…"

Now the line of Avatars transformed so quickly that Hikoshu had to keep moving or he would've lost track of them. Another Air Nomad appeared, female this time. "A few, here, there, all such strange deaths. The Water Tribes were panicking."

"I would search for the source, but just as quickly as the murders began, they ended." The Water Tribe Avatar had barely dissolved before the flakes formed a man of the Earth Kingdom.

"Three years of peace, and another four people would die. The Water Tribes even had a name for it. Aki—"

He melted before he finished the word, and a second Fire Nation woman—now dressed in red, her face painted with flames—continued for him. "I sought out the spirit on the Winter Solstice, to stop it once and for all. It was there that…" She hesitated, visibly shuddering as her white-shaded eyelids fell closed. "I walked among the forest of the faceless."

"It became a cautionary tale among the Water Tribes—"

"A legend—"

"A curse—"

"They found they could control it." It was a Fire Nation man now, and Hikoshu jerked his head toward him. He'd turned in a circle nearly five times by then, the world beyond the strangers' shoulders an indistinct white. "They revived the monster, and fed on its rage."

"Stop," Hikoshu muttered, his head spinning. The Avatars didn't seem to hear. Around him—behind him—the whispers became a fevered hiss, almost a scream.

"But no one could control her. They didn't even know what she was. The deaths increased, the faceless swelled—"

"They wrote her story on a scroll, and hid it in the library—"

"Stop," he repeated more forcefully, grabbing his eyes. Past his fingers, the parade of Avatars continued, and though he could no longer see them, his body automatically followed them in their unending circle.

"She hides in the lake—"

"She dies in the lake—"

"He gave her the shore—"

"She gave him the world—"

Unable to stay on his feet, Hikoshu collapsed to one knee. Around him, the voices of the Avatars droned, until they were practically unintelligible from the frantic, furious whispers.

"They wait for each other, as they devour without ever being full."

"She consumes the flesh, and he consumes the soul."

"But I separated them. He to rot in a sky made of earth. She to bloat in a grave of water. There, they will find their ends. As it should be…"

"Should be…"

"Should have been."

There was silence.

Hikoshu remained kneeling in the snow, one hand still over his eyes as he listened to the faint brush of feather-snow on the silk of his robes. The whispers had stopped, too, and part of him thought that if he opened his eyes, he might find himself somewhere else in the Spirit World.

But when he dropped his hand away and climbed to his feet, the tundra still surrounded him. Much to his relief, the Avatars were gone—excepting one. Kwandek had reappeared, his hands shoved into the pocket sewn to the front of his coat. He wore a sad, almost guilty, frown.

"What was that?" Hikoshu was surprised at how shaky his voice sounded. He hadn't realized how much the experience had unnerved him.

Kwandek shrugged, his neck disappearing briefly in his coat as his shoulders rose. "What you wanted."

"How was that what I wanted?"

"Well, what can you expect? You kept asking questions you don't have the answers to." Kwandek sighed and pulled at his ear in unexpressed impatience. "I can't give you any information because I have none to give. On the other hand, a number of our past lives apparently do. But like I said, whatever this thing is, it's causing a serious disruption here in the Spirit World. And I think you just got broadsided by it."

That was an understatement. Having two dozen spirits bombard him at once was a far rougher experience than any ship he'd ever been on. "At one point, it sounded like they were talking about two spirits."

Again, Kwandek shrugged. "From what I gathered, your spirit was born from the clan wars nearly ten thousand years ago. The other spirit…" He trailed off, though Hikoshu could finish for him. Something one of the Avatars had said had already given him an idea of who the other spirit was.

"What is the forest of the faceless?"

"It's a place where Koh once dwelt." Kwandek's voice dropped to a solemn, disquieting murmur. "And where his victims remain."

The silence that followed was eerie. Even more eerie than when he first heard the whispers, or when the Avatars stopped speaking. It was as if mentioning Koh's name had conjured the creature's presence, bringing its attention to their meeting. Hikoshu's skin crawled and his stomach twisted in knots, though he couldn't say if it was simply from the memory of his last encounter with the spirit, or if it really was from being watched.

But before Hikoshu could speak, Kwandek looked up at the sky, his grim expression changing to one of child-like curiosity. "It's time for you to go."

"I still have questions, though." A million questions, now: more than he came there with. "They mentioned a scroll—they said it's hidden in a library."

"There are only two libraries it could be, but I don't know which. One is in the Chief's Household in the North. The other is the Great Library, in the Si Wong Desert." Kwandek never looked away from the sky. "There's a storm coming."

"What kind of storm?" Hikoshu grew uneasy at the tone of his voice. But when Kwandek turned toward him, he had the same blank expression people usually wore when Hikoshu asked a stupid question.

"What…? A storm-storm. You need to go. Be prepared to bend for you life when you wake up."

"Wait, what does that mean?"

Kwandek never answered the question. Hikoshu choked as he was jerked off of the ground, something ripping through his chest. And then he was flying through a void, neither in the mortal world nor in the spirit, neither alive nor dead.

Then everything was dark.

And cold.

And hard to breathe.

Immediately, he tried to sit up, realizing he was on his back. But a large weight rested on his chest, pressing the air out of his lungs, and his eyes stung, making it hard to tell if they were opened or closed.

His disorientation was severe enough that for several moments, he struggled blindly, unaware that he couldn't even move. Finally, though, his senses returned, and upon recognizing that snow held him down, Hikoshu worked his hands loose in order to bend.

The snow exploded as it flew off of him, exposing him to air made gray with frenetic flakes. He took several ragged breaths as he pushed himself up, only to be leveled again by a gust of wind that tore at the bay. Bending a blast of air to combat the gales, Hikoshu sat up once again to peer weakly at his surroundings.

Nothing but a dark gray. Even the totems were now invisible, the columns and the water alike swallowed in the fierce storm that dumped snow on the bay. Shivering, he crawled out of the snow drift he'd been buried in. Yet as soon as he stopped bending, the wind nearly knocked him over again. There wasn't any way he could walk in this storm. Not in this condition.

Collapsing to his knees, Hikoshu stuck numb fingers into the snow and waterbended ice walls out of the ground. The four slabs came to a point high above his head, forming a small shelter. Not enough room to stand, but solid enough at least to hold back the furious winds and stinging snow. Which was what he needed while he tried to get warm, especially since he couldn't firebend. His teeth chattering hard enough to bite his tongue, Hikoshu forced himself to ignore the pain in his knuckles as he scooped snow into his palms. Then, carefully, he bent the snow into water, its surface rippling oddly as it enveloped his fingers. He didn't heal, though; Hikoshu merely warmed the water up, creating a pair of unusual, heated gloves.

He had to concentrate in order to keep the heat bath at the right temperature; however, his patience paid off, as his fingers began to hurt inside the morphing water. They were changing from a death-like white to a pinker hue—a good sign that he wouldn't lose any of them to frostbite. With more time, his body felt warmer, too, and he imagined he could firebend if he could just focus.

Eventually Hikoshu flicked his hands dry and, removing his boots, turned his attention to his feet. The skin was also white and bloodless, the joints stiff, but this time, Hikoshu used firebending to warm them up. As circulation returned to his legs, he began to unfreeze other vulnerable body parts. Finally, as his anxiety settled and his mind cleared, Hikoshu turned his thoughts to Miyo and Natquik. Once his strength improved, he could possibly search the storm with his bending, but the likelihood of him finding anything in the obscurity of heavy snowfall and encroaching night was slim. In fact, he ran a better chance of getting himself into more trouble than he already was in.

He would have to wait, then, for morning or for whenever the storm weakened.

Hikoshu had managed to warm up the majority of his body when he heard footsteps outside. He quickly abandoned his fire in order to listen more closely, which allowed him to hear the distant call of his name, muffled though it was by the walls. Someone was definitely calling for him, however, and as relief flooded him, Hikoshu realized how worried he'd really been. Tugging on his boots, he offered a quick prayer of thanks to the spirits for calming the storm and keeping his friends safe.

But when Hikoshu waterbended down one wall and pushed away the accumulated snow, all he could see was darkness. Night had descended and the storm was still going strong, the winds throwing sheets of snow against his shelter. Gazing out into the dark, he produced a flame that revealed only more snow.

"Natquik! Where are you?"

The gale was deafening, but it didn't hide the footsteps. He could still hear them, somewhere just outside the orange ring of his fire.

Yet no one approached.

"Hikoshu."

The word was whispered so softly that it could have been a trick of the wind. But the wind wasn't in the habit of saying men's names. Nor repeating them. "Hikoshu."

"Who's there?" he uttered.

No answer. Whoever it was, the person stayed outside the light, the sound of his steps fading and growing stronger with each gust of wind. Something icy clutched Hikoshu's chest, and his limbs went cold all over again. Suddenly, he knew—no matter what that voice whispered—he better not leave the shelter.

Perhaps the brave thing to do would have been to go out into the night, confront the murdering spirit, and fight it now. But just as he was sure that the spirit he needed to fight was taunting him from the darkness, Hikoshu was also sure he had no chance of success. Out there, the spirit knew exactly what it was doing. Hikoshu, on the other hand, would be blind, exhausted, and badly weakened.

That was what he told himself, at least. There was, however, a part of him that would not go out there, not because of strategy, not because of instinctive knowledge—but because he was terrified of what he would find. Or, rather, what would find him.

Slowly, holding up the fire as if it would protect him, Hikoshu backed into the ice shelter and bent the wall into place. It did nothing to hinder the sound of those maddening footsteps, nor the whisper of his name on the wind that moaned through the cracks.

His chest burned, and uncomfortable, Hikoshu fumbled under his coat for the source of the pain. He pulled out the talisman that Kinu had given him, the little dhole looking yellowed in his firelight.

The footsteps stopped after that, the voice no longer calling for him.

Huddled by the small flame in his palm, Hikoshu didn't sleep for quite a while. He wasn't sure how long he stayed awake, if he made it to morning or not. Eventually, though, the exhaustion of the Spirit World visit and of his continuous firebending got to him, overpowering even the nightmares that crept at the edges of his mind.

He entered a dark place of ice pillars and hidden whispers.

XxXxXxXxX

"Natquik!" Miyo had twisted around before impact, such that her back was now against the ice and her fists jabbed into his chest. Like diving into a lake, the resistance of the ice had forced his bending horizontally, the whistling of the squall now somewhere beyond their feet but also high above them. This meant they at least weren't standing on their heads, but it also meant he was on top of her, and the cramped space wouldn't allow him to move his weight. "Natquik, what did you do?"

"Saved your life," he grunted, silently wishing she'd stop jerking her knees. As his eyes adjusted, the faint light from the hole he'd punched through the snow filtered down into the tunnel, and he could almost make out the contours of her head. But she was too close to see anything other than her eyes. "What were you thinking, taking off like that?"

"We have to save Hikoshu." She pushed at him like that could make him move any better. "He's stuck out there!"

"Miyo, he's a waterbender. You're not." His hands were pinned to either side of her by the tunnel, making it impossible for him to stop her shoving. So grimacing, Natquik had to bear it. "What would you have done if you hadn't reached him in time?"

"Get us out of here." Obviously, she wasn't listening anymore. Not that she'd been listening in the first place. "If we look for him now, we still might find him."

"Yeah, about that." He'd managed to bend the snow out of their way as they plunged into the ground, which had prevented them from colliding with anything hard. But it also meant the hole he'd created wasn't very big, and had become progressively smaller the deeper they went. "I can't move my arms."

"What?"

"I can't really bend without my arms."

Now, that really made her squirm, her body wriggling under his in a way that he might've actually enjoyed had claustrophobia not been setting in. "Natquik, get us out. I can't breathe!"

"Stop it, settle down! Maybe I can make the hole bigger, hold on."

It was hard to bend packed ice, which was why the hole had grown smaller the deeper they'd gone. At this particular depth, the ice was extremely compressed and less bendable—not the most favorable conditions for someone with such limited range of motion. It also required half-blind, complex bending, and his strengths certainly weren't in that area. So all Natquik succeeded in doing was bending some of the ice loose and forcing it back up the way they'd come, possibly blocking off the tunnel in the process.

During that time, Miyo was panicking under him, her chest heaving against his as she struggled to rein in her terror. She was going to pass out at that rate, and he had to stop at one point to tell her to calm down.

"There's plenty of air. But you have to take normal breaths. Slow, normal breaths."

"You're crushing me!"

"I know, I'm sorry! Just try to stay calm, just a little bit longer."

By the time he'd widened the hole enough to shift his weight off of her, her breathing had returned to a somewhat regular pace. And for a moment, Natquik worried that she'd fainted during the wait. But when he pushed his weight onto his left arm and off of her, she took a deep, shuddering breath and grabbed her chest.

"You okay?" he whispered, his mouth next to her ear. She nodded, which he couldn't really see with the last of the daylight gone, but he felt her hair against his cheek.

"Can you get us out now?" she murmured, and Natquik stretched the cramping fingers of his now free right hand.

"Not immediately, no. But I'm working on it."

"Then can I at least get off my back? I'm hurting."

She'd been stuck against the ice for quite a while, he realized, and airbender robes weren't suited for that long of an exposure. Blindly, he pulled on her arm, motioning for her to turn.

"Try to get yourself on top of me. Make sure you're not touching any ice."

With some awkward fumbling, she worked her way onto his chest, her head just below his jaw, her knees planted to either side of his thighs. Now Natquik definitely wasn't in the best position to bend, but Miyo couldn't have stayed much longer in that position. Not without passing out for real. The ice was now in contact with his back, but fortunately his coat protected him from most of the cold; he only wished that he'd pulled up his hood before they'd switched places.

"Do you think you can airbend us out?" he asked as Miyo used the advantage of her smaller body to push herself off of him a slight distance.

"I might, but it could easily suffocate us in this small of a space." Natquik saw the silhouette of her head turn from side to side in examination; she was a lot calmer now that she had some freedom to move. "Maybe if…" Suddenly, she cut off with an involuntary shiver—one that practically rattled him, too.

"Just stop." Much to her obvious surprise, Natquik pulled her down onto his chest. With a low yelp of indignation, Miyo tried to push away. "I said stop!" Naturally she didn't, fighting him as he planted his palms flat against her back.

"Natquik, don't!"

"I'm just bending the water out of your clothes," he said hurriedly, and Miyo seemed to relax at this explanation, her struggles ceasing. "I figure if you're freezing to death, you can't rescue us." The water had nowhere to go but down, and as he pulled it out of her robes, it trickled into his sleeves. At least it was warm from her body heat.

"I'm sorry," she said softly, resting her head under his chin. "I just thought…"

"What? Thought I was taking advantage of you?" Her silence spoke volumes. "Seriously? How little do you trust me?"

"Well, what else can I think?" she retorted, shivering hard enough that her head jammed into his jaw. "You always seem to see the opportunities when it comes to women."

"But not when I'm stuck in a frozen tunnel of doom with them."

"Reminding me,"—her voice turned sarcastic—"have I thanked you for saving us yet?"

"I'm happy to let you back on the bottom, if you want."

"Well, the top isn't much warmer. I'm colder than I was before."

"That's because I pulled the water out of your clothes. It'll take some time to warm up."

There was a long pause, filled with the sound of Miyo's stuttered breaths. "Natquik," she whispered, her words half-muffled through her lips, "what about Hikoshu? Is he all right?"

He didn't know. There was no way he could know. How strong was Hikoshu's survival instinct in the face of disaster? Was he in the Avatar State right now, or did the Spirit World prevent him from protecting himself? Above them, all Natquik could hear were the whistles and roars of winds that pounded the bay. Sounds which told him that, no matter what condition Hikoshu was in, they were only slightly better off. Sounds that told him they couldn't go looking for their friend any time soon.

But Miyo didn't need to know the worry that plagued him, when she was in no position to help. It'd either drive her to do something crazy, or make her despair even more. So Natquik infused his voice with all of the hope and certainty he wasn't feeling. "Hikoshu can protect himself from the storm. Once it hit the bay, he likely woke up and made a shelter. In fact, he's probably doing better than we are."

"Do you really believe that?"

"I don't know...but we're safe, aren't we? And Hikoshu's the Avatar. He's got...Avatar powers and things. He wouldn't be hurt that easily." It seemed to satisfy her, and even Natquik took some courage from his own faked assurance.

They fell quiet after that, Miyo's shivers slowing over time. Natquik, on the other hand, grew increasingly chiller the longer he lay against the ice, and repeatedly, he regretted not pulling up his hood. But at least he had Miyo as a source of warmth, and after a while, he drew his arms around her again.

"My clothes are dry," she muttered, surprising him. Natquik had thought she'd fallen asleep in the interim, so quiet and steady were her breaths.

"I just had to move my arms," he lied, pulling them back to his sides.

Miyo surprised him again, murmuring, "Don't." In response, he hesitated, not really sure if he'd heard her right. "You need to keep your arms warm," she continued. "And it makes me warmer, too."

"Sure you trust me not to molest you?"

"I'll take my chances." He could hear the grin in her words. "Also, I'll break your nose if you try anything."

"Have I told you how much I admire your pacifism?" Natquik folded his arms over her again, and she gave a soft hmph, curling her fingers into the fur of his coat. They didn't speak anymore, nor did they really need to; this time, the silence was profoundly…comfortable.

There was no reason for it to be comfortable. Natquik had never been afraid of small spaces, but that was because he'd never been stuck in one. Now, though, he was trapped in the dark, unable to move, unable to bend—powerless and insecure. At the very least, he should've been wide awake with the fear of what would happen if they couldn't get out. Not to mention the fear that, if they did get out, what they would find of Hikoshu on the surface.

Yet, despite all of that, he was still indescribably content. There was something about having Miyo with him that kept his thoughts from going to dark places, and there was something about holding her that made him feel a lot less uneasy.

Something that made him feel comfortable. More comfortable than he'd been in a long time. Comfortable enough, in fact, that long after he realized Miyo had drifted off, Natquik fell asleep himself.

And his dreams were, for once, almost pleasant.