Into the Ashland

In some places, fire could be a very difficult thing to find.

Zuko took another breath, focusing on the air's passage through his nostrils and down into the lungs where it became fuel for his Qi. He could feel the Qi within his body, the network of energy that stretched throughout his fibers and touched the edge of spirit. It was stronger now than it had been in years, thanks to his body's restoration over the last month. He actually felt alive once more, yet the flame within still refused to answer his call, no matter how loudly he called, no matter how long he meditated. The absence within tried to push him away, but he would not back down against a mere absence. There were much greater things to fear, like-

"Pack your bags, Zuzu! Mai has finally come through."

Zuko startled from his cross-legged lotus position, nearly disrupting the short table in front of him and the candles arrayed across its surface. The tongues of flame danced at the wind of his movement, their light splaying chaotically across the walls of his oversized room. It was the first time they had moved since he began his meditation.

Teeth reflexively grinding together at that thought, Zuko turned to regard his sister with his good eye. "I told you to knock before coming in here."

"Oh, I'm so sorry." Her tone was anything but contrite, and she didn't even try to hide that she was rolling her eyes. "I merely thought that you would be interested in news of the one woman in the world with the poor taste to expend effort on your behalf. Mai has determined the location where you can at last restore your honor."

Zuko waited expectantly, but Azula simply leaned against his bedroom's door frame and stared back at him.

His patience ran out before hers. "Where?"

"I'm so glad you asked. Her message was short, little more than the proper codes and headers to get it to me, but the content was quite informative- Crescent Island. I don't suppose you know where that is?"

This time, it was Zuko who refused to speak.

Azula favored him with a smile before continuing, "It's the last Outer Island shown on most maps, and I took the liberty of requesting some additional information while I was at the outpost. The Fire Sages used to keep a temple there, but they sold the land to the military when the Grand Sage needed to make those reparation payments to Uncle. If the name has any ring of familiarity to you, it's for the Waterbender prison that was built there. I presume the Avatar is looking for a teacher, and considers breaking one out of the most secure prison on the planet to be preferable to infiltrating the Dragon of the North's territory."

Zuko ignored Azula's attempt to flaunt her information sources and focused on one core fact. "That island is part of the Homeland. I'd have to break my banishment to ambush the Avatar there."

"Ah, so you can think." Azula gave a nod that was almost approving. "Yes, that's an awkward point, but I've already communicated the problem to Father. Between his influence and outright bribery, I'm sure we can shape the story so that the Fire Lord will accept it. After all, it's just a spot of dirt in the ocean boasting nothing but a prison for foreigners, far from the rest of the Homeland, so perhaps some creative reclassification can be done."

Zuko wasn't so sure, but even if it was true, he'd be putting more trust and dependence on Azula. And Father.

He wondered if having the flame within back would make him feel warmer. "What's our timing for the ambush?"

"Mm, Mai was less than helpful in that regard, so our only choice is to hurry to the island and then wait around for as long as it takes. I've already arranged for a ship to take us there, and June shall convey us to the port on her shirshu. It's better to keep our travel accommodations unofficial, for now." Azula straightened, and gave one last parting nod. "We leave at dawn."

Zuko remembered his first ride on the shirshu as being both painful and unpleasant, back when Azula had first found him and was bringing him to be 'cleaned up.' Now, it was no longer a painful experience, but not the least bit more pleasant.

The company was only part of the problem. June was at the front of the saddle, with Azula behind her, and Zuko at the rear.

The mole-like beast loped quickly across the landscape, cutting a path through the colonies. Zuko watched them pass by, finding a kind of unreality in the sights. He knew the colonies well, had slept in the gutters of little towns and massive cities both, had clawed through the waste of the people of Fire and Earth in search of something to eat, had been pushed around by bullies in armor and bullies in farming rags. He knew the smells, the textures, the windings paths of the colonies, and still experienced them in his dreams. To see them passing so quickly, distant images on the horizon that might as well have been mirages, made the dreams seem more alive than the waking world.

It was a silent trip until they stopped for the first night. While the group had dinner around the campfire, Azula gave a monologue about the path she wanted to take to the port (complete with dramatic motions towards her map). Afterward, June spent the whole evening having a conversation in baby-talk with her shirshu. Zuko kept silent, and endured Azula's regular barbs.

They set off again early the next day, but things did not go as smoothly as they had the prior day. The ground grew rockier, like a mountain had died and its bones were left to sink slowly into the ground. Sharp gray cliffs rose up out of nowhere to twist the roads, and there seemed to be a thickness to the air. Zuko didn't understand until midmorning, when June brought her mount to a halt, and pointed ahead. "This is bad. That's an ashland."

He had heard the term, but never seen one. Zuko sat taller in the saddle, and sure enough, he could see a brown smudge on the horizon.

Between the bounty hunter and Zuko, Azula squirmed to try to get a better look over the shoulder of their guide. "A what?"

June snorted. "They're relatively new. When the Fire Nation made that big Comet Offensive, a lot of landscape got scorched. Some of it was so bad, the only thing left were dunes of ash. The Earth Kingdom- sorry, the Colonial Continent- got a lot more little deserts, that day."

Zuko's vision was suddenly eclipsed by Azula's topknot as she craned her neck for her own look. "Interesting. I wouldn't mind seeing such a thing up close."

"Yes, Princess, you would." June shook her head. "When I called them dunes, I wasn't exaggerating. The embers are piled up like sand, except they're lighter and softer, so they gets picked up by the wind much easier. Trying to see or breathe in an ashland isn't fun, not unless some rain is really coming down. We need to go around or wait for more accommodating weather."

"We can't wait." Azula gave a small huff. "Very well. Pick the path you think is best."

June snapped her whip to the right, and the shirshu took off in that direction on a path that would angle around the devastation on the horizon. The creature's pace slowed within the first hour, however, as the road disintegrated into a badlands. The stone cliffs became even sharper and more sudden, and Zuko could see the obvious signs of Earthbending in the structures. For there to be so many, a great battle must have been fought, here.

That would explain the ashland.

The hours slowed. The shirshu was doing more climbing than running, soon, and June had to bring it to a halt regularly to check their course against her compass. Each time, it seemed they had drifted back towards the ashland. Zuko looked up to find the sun at one point in the journey, and discovered that they had passed straight into the late afternoon. With each stop, the shirshu was getting more and more off-course. The air grew harsh with the smell of fresh smoke, and the horizon visible even from the cliff peaks drew shorter and shorter.

It wasn't until Zuko began coughing that they realized what was going on.

"Oh no," June hissed, as he brought the coughing under control. "There's ash in the air."

"I thought we were going around," Azula said.

"We tried, Princess. We're still going to try, but this isn't looking good. They say-"

"Who says?"

"Travelers. Other bounty hunters. Soldiers coming back from long patrols." June turned around in the saddle, and for the first time ever, Zuko saw real emotion on her face.

She was worried.

If Azula saw the same thing, she gave no sign. "And what do these experts say?"

"That the bigger ashlands- the ones where more people died- are haunted."

"And you believe this nonsense?"

"I believe that people say things for a reason, Princess. Sometimes it's because those things are true and sometimes it's because people just want them to be true, but there's always something that inspired the talk. Maybe the ashlands drift more than anyone realizes, and the winds sound like Spirit voices, but it's still looking like we're going to have a tough time outrunning this one."

"Hmph." Azula slid down off the saddle, and went back to where her luggage was lashed to the shirshu's side. "Then we'd better prepare ourselves to handle the inevitable."

She produced a silk tunic, as black as ash, and tore strips off of it. Those became masks worn over noses and mouths, and the rest of the robe became a muzzle for the shirshu. The creature was lucky in that it didn't have eyes worth worrying about; Zuko and the others would have to simply squint at any trouble. Thus prepared, they set off again.

They didn't get far before the world turned to soot around them.

The winds picked up, and with them came the biting of the cinders. Even through the silk mask, the air took on the taste and smell of a pyre, and Zuko had to exert all his will just not to gag. June leaned forward in her seat, patting the shirshu's head and shouting some encouragements to it, but the words were lost to the wind by the time they reached Zuko's ears. Azula curled up and covered her eyes, and every so often Zuko would feel her shaking with coughs.

At last, Zuko had to close his good eye against the storm of ash.

He wondered if he would die, here, in the howling detritus of the Fire Nation's war of conquest.

They had no eyes, but nevertheless looked down through the ash, seeing the son and daughter of a traitor- the heirs of a kingdom of blood- and felt hunger.

Years, months, days, hours later, Zuko felt a presence looming over him, and risked cracking his good eye open enough to look ahead. The sky was nothing more than a brownish glow behind the storm of soot. It reminded Zuko of a nightmare he had, a year or so ago, when he passed out in a heap of garbage in one of the colonies and dreamed of an endless swarm of flies. The memory made him shudder, but he forced himself to truly see the world around him, not the old nightmare. It seemed like a shadow, darker than the semi-night of the rest of the sky, was rising up ahead. He reached over Azula- she was almost bent double in her seat, the ash piling on top of her- to grab June's shoulder, and forced her to turn in the direction of the shadow. He wasn't sure if the bounty hunter was even conscious at first, but after a long moment, he felt her muscles stiffen in his grip, and she snapped her whip towards the shadow.

The shirshu, head covered by its silk muzzle, moved in that direction.

It proved to be a mountain, perhaps the offspring of the one that had died farther back on the road. Even at its base, it rose steeply into the sky, and by hugging the side, at least some of the wind could be blocked. June guided her mount along the mountain's roots, and Zuko wondered if they would be doomed to circle it forever, but then they encountered a new sound, the snapping of canvas in the gales. The shirshu took on new life, bounding towards the whisper on the wind, and before Zuko even realized what was going on, the whole group had passed beneath some kind of covering into a cave.

He brushed the ash from his hair, from his face, and only when the stinging had settled into dullness did he open his eye to look around. It was indeed a cave, blocked from the outside by a canvas tarp hammered into the stone, but the chamber was larger than he expected. The ceiling was as high as the Fire Palace's Grand Hall, or at least as high as Zuko remembered it, and it stretched back beyond easy sight. Rather than growing darker in the distance, Zuko could see a glow like firelight deeper in the cave.

They all dismounted, Azula finally coming back to life to hurriedly shake off the cinders that clung to her body, and then they all worked together to run their hands through the shirshu's fur and relieve it of the weight of the accumulated ash. When that was done, they turned to regard the light in the distance.

"Doesn't make any sense," June said. "No one could live in the middle of an ashland, whether or not they have a handy little cave."

Azula crossed her arms over her chest. "Some of this continent's communities have advanced forms of fungus farming. If they have a water supply, there could be a settlement trapped in a network of caverns here, living off of mushrooms or somesuch. I say we go raid them for supplies and information."

Zuko looked at the distant light, and the emptiness within howled at the sight. "I have a bad feeling about this."

"Oh, well, if dear Zuzu has a bad feeling, then by all means, let's go back into that wasteland and stumble around until we die. That will be so much better!"

Zuko looked over at June where she was stroking the shirshu's nose, but she shrugged at him. "The princess has a point. Even if it doesn't make sense, we don't have much choice. And there were villages in the great forest that used to be here. I guess the survivors could have taken refuge in here when the Comet came and the armies fought." She stepped over to the saddle and swung herself up into it. "Besides, if there is trouble, we've got the advantage in speed and size."

Zuko shook his head, but Azula ignored him and began walking deeper into the cave, towards the beckoning light. June rode the shirshu behind her, leaving Zuko in the dark.

After a moment, he hurried after them.

It was a shorter walk than he expected, and soon enough the light resolved itself into torches and campfires. Each flame emitted a smoke and stench that implied rancid things about the fire's fuel. Their weak, dancing light spilled out in patches across the cave, battling against the darkness to reveal little snatches of civilization: A thin, ragged person here, a cluster of patched tents there, even one moo-sow lying in an alcove with struggled breathing. Everywhere Zuko looked, there were twisted and decaying reflections of his journey through the colonies.

One little shadow darted away from a nearby campfire and scampered across Zuko's path. He stopped short and the shadow dashed in front of him, but he felt an impact against the toe of his boot and the figure toppled to the ground. There was a cry of a child's pain, and a little face turned back to catch the light of one of the fires. Zuko was instinctively reaching to help the child when he realized he knew that face.

It was the face of his own youth.

Zuko froze, unsure of his sense of reality, trying to see past the illusion to find the true face of the child on the floor in front of him. From behind, a gruff voice called out, "Where are you, boy?! When I catch you I'll shove your filthy hide in the campfire and see how you talk back then!"

The boy gasped and scrambled away into the darkness, while Zuko stood there and tried to make himself believe that it wasn't his face on the child, it was just his single eye fooled by the low light. Eventually, he sighed and turned around to find the owner of the gruff voice stumbling into view. The man might have been heavier once, perhaps even muscular, but now his skin hung just as loosely from thin arms as his ragged clothes. He slowed when he saw Zuko and the others, his gaze coming to a stop on the shirshu. "Fire Nation." He spat into the darkness. "Where did you fools come from?"

Azula stepped forward with her shoulders squared, and Zuko expected her to simply kill the man for his impertinence, but she merely said, "We're travelers who became lost in the ashland. We require survival supplies, along with any other assistance which your people can offer."

The man snorted. "Do we looking cracking rich to you? You want to wait out the storm, we aren't going to bother to stop you. And if you see that boy again, you tell him he better run." With that, the man whirled and shuffled back towards one of the tents.

Azula threw a glance at Zuko, but he could only offer a shrug in return. They both looked to June as she slid out of her saddle and found her regular cheeky smirk back in place as she said, "Well, if we're lucky, these losers will have some hooch they can share. Let's go find out!"

To Zuko's relief, the refugees did not have any alcohol of any kind they could share. As soon as June learned that, she had declared that she was done for the day, and went to set up her sleeping bag beside her shirshu, at the edge of the tent town.

Unfortunately, the refugees also didn't seem to have any water, either, which was a bit more distressing.

"You're sure the ash-storm won't last past tomorrow morning." Azula's question sounded more like a statement to Zuko's ears, but the old woman who had consented to share her campfire for the night- Youling- didn't seem to notice.

She scratched at her oily gray hair and answered without ever looking at any of her guests. "Stands to reason. Only so much wind to go around, right?"

Far too familiar with the sight of Azula's rolling eyes, Zuko turned his attention away from the others and to the campfire itself. It reeked just like all those in this camp, but he was growing used to the smell, to the thickness it gave to the air in the cavern. There was a smothering feeling to the atmosphere that reminded Zuko of the heavy blankets he had as a child, piled up on his little body during the cold months. He had found them oppressive in their weight, pinning him to the bed and discouraging him from movement even in his most restless sleep. Now, he experienced the memory almost like a fond dream, and felt his head growing heavy. Perhaps he would rest his eye for just a moment, close it and think back to his days in the Fire Palace, when things had been better and Azula hadn't discovered cruelty yet and Mother was there and Father-

"Ah!"

Zuko's eye snapped open at Azula's cry and he turned to find her standing, staring at a group of refugees who were passing by. "What is it?"

Azula ignored him, dashing past the campfire and grabbing at one of the people. She yanked her target's arm to reveal a woman in a cloak, one Zuko did not recognize. The woman didn't seem to be alarmed by Azula's accosting, her eyes dead and posture drooping. After a moment, Azula released the woman and returned to the campfire. Youling ignored the entire incident.

Zuko shifted so that he was sitting closer to his sister. "Why did you do that?"

Azula gave him a glare, but then sighed and turned to look into the flames. "I thought that woman looked familiar for a moment. It must have been the poor lighting and abysmal air quality in here."

"Familiar? Who did you think she was?"

Azula did not look at him. "It doesn't matter. It wasn't her, and it never will be her. Now be a good big brother and kindly shut up."

It was too strange for Zuko to take any offense; Azula usually had more control than that. Unable to figure it out, he turned his own attention to the campfire, seeking the heart of the flames, the brightest and hottest point within the burning. Perhaps if he meditated, here in this soporific atmosphere, he could find the core of fire within himself. Zuko took a lotus position, tucking his legs together and extending his arms loosely, and began regulating his breathing, sending his conscious within himself.

His concentration was ruined when he heard his mother ask, "Have you seen Zuko?"

Zuko's eye snapped open again, but she was nowhere to be found. Instead, the same woman Azula had accosted was talking to Youling, saying, "My son and husband were fighting again, and when I got home just now, the neighbors told me that little Shugao ran off. I can't find him anywhere."

Somehow, Zuko was absolutely sure that the child he had collided with before was this missing Shugao.

For her part, Youling shrugged. "Haven't seen him. If he's missing, then he probably went into the ashlands and choked to death."

Shugao's mother sighed. "That's a shame. I was hoping we'd die together."

Youling scratched at her hair again. "But choking on ash is better than starving. And this way, he won't get shoved into a campfire by his father again."

Even Azula looked up at that, and the ash-streaked expression she directed at Zuko conveyed her weariness. "Is it just me," she whispered, "or are these people even stranger than the usual oppressed and traumatized peasantry?"

Zuko ignored his sister, and watched as Shugao's mother began limping back the way she came. As she passed away from Youling's campfire, the shadows writhed across her face, and when the light touched her features again, Zuko found himself watching his mother walk away in filthy refugee rags.

He stood up, eliciting a grunt of surprise from Azula, and reached out for the woman. "Wait!"

Shugao's mother turned, and once more wore an unfamiliar face.

"I'll find your son."

Youling said, "Out in the ashland?"

"Yes." He immediately turned and headed off in the direction of June and her shirshu, dodging the tents he found in his path.

Azula came trotting up behind him and hissed, "What do you think you're doing? Risking your life for a peasant?"

"I can't let a child die out in that ash."

"Funny, that's what you've done your entire life." Surrounded by the camps of the displaced and the lowly, Zuko came to a halt and whirled on his sister, but she stared him down. "What? Did you develop a taste for rescuing children during these last few years? Or do you expect this to prove that you're the Fire Prince Restored, committing acts of charity from out of the old legends?"

The anger flared in Zuko's heart, but he remembered the last time he had tried to turn that against Azula. He reached within and hoped to feel the flame that had been missing for so long, but the familiar absence was the only thing he found, and he knew that could not stand against the cutting edge that was his sister. So rather than pushing up against her, he met her eyes with his one, and said, "That woman reminds me of Mother."

Even in the poor light, with her face covered in the smeared filth of the ashland, he could see Azula pale at that. "Why- why would you mention- mention her?"

"What do you mean? Why wouldn't I?"

Azula shook her head. "She's not here. It doesn't matter what you see, she's not here."

"See?" Zuko found himself grabbing his sister's arms, pulling her closer. "Did you see her, too?"

Instead of an answer, he got a solid knee to the stomach, crumpling him with a sickening pain that radiated out to his whole body. When he looked up again, Azula was gone. He was alone on the floor of the cavern, ignored by people who blurred together in the dim light and went about their lives as if they had already died.

At last, Zuko understood.

Azula didn't understand.

Mother was gone. Azula didn't even like to think about her, so there was no chance of latent psychological issues coming into play. Azula was possessed of flawless mental health; she knew because Father had told her so.

And yet she still saw Mother's face.

Zuko had, too.

There was something wrong here.

Given the evidence, and with the only alternative being that Azula and Zuzu both were suddenly going insane, she was forced to revise her earlier opinion about ashlands being haunted.

The only question, then, was the extent of the threat.

Azula had left Zuko on the floor of the cavern, clutching his stomach. Father had charged her with taking care of her brother, of making sure he caught the Avatar and came home, and given that he had no Firebending with which to protect himself against Spirits, the most direct way for Azula to complete her mission would be to stay by Zuko's side. However, Azula also knew that sticking to defense was no way to win a fight- just ask the Airbenders. She had to confront the threat, go on the offensive, and Zuko would just be a liability in that situation. Besides, this fight might very well transcend physical considerations, so staying near Zuzu might be no different than leaving him behind.

And he kept talking about Mother. Azula didn't like that.

When she got back to Youling's tent, Azula marched right up to where the old woman was sitting and reached out a hand to seize complete control of the campfire. It shifted into vivid shades of blue and leaned so that the tips of the flames licked at her hand like a loyal hound.

Without moving, Youling said, "That's a neat trick."

"It is the purest expression of Firebending that a human has ever demonstrated. Unless you want to fully understand what that means, you will answer my questions."

"Seems fair."

Azula took a fighting stance, ready to strike as soon as she detected a lie or a deflection. "Are you a Spirit, or are you and the other filthy peasants here merely victims?"

Youling hunched forward, casting her face into shadow. "Can't say I've ever really thought about it."

The lack of answer didn't bother Azula, as it was easy enough to determine by experiment. Human skin would burn at contact with fire, while Spirits would- according to the legends- have their manifested forms reduced. Azula swung a hand covered in flame and aimed for Youling's closest shoulder, something non-vital that could be damaged without threat to life. The blow was about to land when Youling snapped her head up, and looked at Azula with Mother's face.

Azula's flame immediately went out, and it was just a plain fist that smacked into the bony shoulder.

Then something wrapped around Azula's ankles and yanked. She fell to the ground and everything when dark when her forehead struck the stone floor.

Zuko couldn't find his sister, and when he went looking for June, the bounty hunter and the shirshu both were nowhere in the cavern. It was as though they had transformed into refugees, melding into the huddled masses sitting around the various campfires. Zuko wondered whether they would realize if such a thing had happened to them; he wondered if he himself was wearing the face of one of the refugees, and even now his sister was searching fruitlessly for him. Would she search? She said that Father had sent her to bring Zuko back, and Azula always did everything that Father commanded. Would Father-

Zuko let his doubts fade away. In this situation, they would be a liability. He felt that the only way out would be to save the boy Shugao, and he would have to do it alone.

He scrounged up enough cloth for a hood and protective mask that would protect him from the ash, grabbed a torch from one of the braziers scattered between the tents, and made his way back out of the cavern. The fire revealed a lone set of child-sized footsteps leading to the canvas tarp protecting the cave entrance, and the only thing that surprised Zuko was how unsurprised he really was. There should have been tracks from when he, Azula, and June had walked through the tunnel hours earlier, or failing that, the signs of the shirshu's passages still should have been visible, but Zuko now understood that what he was seeing wasn't necessarily connected to reality.

It was just like those stories Uncle had enjoyed telling, before he left for the North Pole.

When Zuko threw aside the tarp, he found not the ashland, but the battlefield outside Ba Sing Se beneath a red sun.

It was just as he remembered it. The Outer Wall was the most obvious feature, standing tall and solid on the horizon, massive even at this distance. The killing fields stretched out between it and Zuko, muddy and ravaged from the days and weeks and months of fighting. The landscape was just as devastated as the ashland, but at least it wasn't trying to rise up and choke anyone. Zuko lowered his torch, and pulled back his hood and mask as he wandered forward, gaze swinging back and forth in the hope of detecting any threats before they found him. He was at least fortunate in that there were no bodies on the killing fields, so it must have been a while since any fighting had taken place.

He tried to reach inside for his fire but found only fear, and he withdrew from that sensation like a hand yanked from a flame.

Voices carried out through the dead air, and Zuko followed them away from the Outer Wall. The mountain with the cave full of refugees was missing, just like the ashland itself. As he walked, he came to recognize the land around him. This was near where the army had camped during his time in service. He remembered the shape of the land, the color of the dirt beneath his feet. He picked out a shape on the horizon that he knew would be the main camp, the collection of tents where the mighty would-be conquerors of Ba Sing Se rested their heads in anticipation of a glory that would never come to them. When he had arrived with Father all those years ago, he had been given a collection of tents that was more like a suite of rooms, decorated with silks and wall-scrolls and weapon racks to hide the cloth nature of the walls. It was Zuko's first home away from home, the first time he had slept and lived outside of the Fire Palace with no exact knowledge of when he would be able to return.

The sounds of voices rose and fell again in the distance with a consistent beat, rising discordant cries of exultation.

Zuko's blood chilled as he recognized those calls. They were a traditional war chant, something soldiers used to prepare their hearts and minds for battle even as they strapped armor to their bodies and stretched their muscles.

He had heard this specific chant for the first time just before the last battle he would ever fight in the war.

Zuko's stomach clenched and his legs turned to rubber, dumping him in the dirt of the path and making him drop his torch. He shut his eye against the crimson glare of the sun and tried to push himself up, willing away the nausea that was threatening to overcome him. None of this was real; it was an illusion of a past that was dead and gone. Father wanted him back now, had sent Azula to make it happen. The Avatar was back, and Zuko would catch him.

And Father was nowhere near the fighting that day. He couldn't have been.

Eventually, Zuko's strength came back. He heaved himself to his feet, opened his eye, and found himself in a forest beneath a sliver of a moon and a sky filled with stars. His torch was gone.

Azula sat in front of the campfire, trying to remember who Azula was. She knew, of course, that she was Azula. Her name was Azula, and that fact was not in dispute. It was a grand name, a powerful name, a name that spoke of a superlative history and proud ancestors. It was just that she couldn't remember any of that history or who those ancestors might be, and she found that worrisome.

It didn't take a tactical genius to know that memory problems were never good.

Azula pulled her dusty green cloak tighter, and looked around at the other people sitting around the campfire. She couldn't remember any of their names either, although their faces seemed familiar. The two who most disturbed Azula were the sad, smiling woman and the scowling man with the long thin chin-beard. She feared to attract their attention, but at the same time, she craved it with a heat that warmed her skin. It wasn't as bad as with the other people- the old fat bearded man, the young man with the white skin and blue lips, the sighing girl, the giggling girl, or even the cobweb-covered corpse that wore a flame crown in its brittle hair- but something about them all nipped at the edges of her lack of memory.

It also felt like someone was missing, but she couldn't imagine who.

Perhaps they were all waiting for him.

Why was she so sure it was a him?

Zuko had no idea what forest he was in, but he could no longer see any signs of the Ba Sing Se landscape, and that was some small comfort.

It was hard going at first, making his way through the forest. With such a small moon, barely any light made its way down through the clusters of little leaves. Zuko stumbled his way from tree to tree, occasionally calling out for Shugao with as much hope of finding the boy as he had that the boy would find him first. But slowly, Zuko realized there was more light to work with than that of the moon and the stars. As his eye adjusted, he could detect a faint luminescence in the trunks of the trees themselves, allowing them to stand out from the darkness around them. It felt like he was wandering for hours, but things became more distinct as time passed, until the entire forest was reflected in dim shades of gray.

With the ability to see came the knowledge that he was being hunted. It was a human, or something shaped like it. The silhouette was shapeless, but the figure was the same general size as a human, taller than it was wide, and it moved like a person, albeit with uncanny grace. Zuko bided his time, letting his eye become more and more attuned to the dim light, letting his ears learn the sounds of the hunter's whispering movements.

When he judged that his perceptions were as good as they were going to get in this forest, and he more or less had an idea of the hunter's position, he bent his path to take him around a copse of tall trees. In that instant when he was lost to the hunter's sight, Zuko turned and took an attack stance, ready to leap on his stalker as soon as the figure stumbled into his trap.

He hadn't expected the hunter to double back around the other side of the copse of trees.

Zuko's only warning was a whistle through the air, and he jumped away just into time to avoid the flying talons made of shadow itself that almost landed in his back. He quickly turned to face his attacker, and in the glow of the nearby tree trunks, he could finally get a good look at her. The woman was young, Zuko's age or perhaps a little younger, with skin so pale it almost glowed in the night. The face was the only part of her that was easily distinctive from her surroundings, as her hair and cloak were both the darkest black. There was something familiar about her, and it wasn't until she moved and threw another set of shadow talons with a snapping motion as fast as lightning that he realized who she was. The throwing style was almost as much of a giveaway as the girlish ox-horn buns style in which she wore her hair. Mai was all grown up, now.

The realization slowed Zuko, and he couldn't dodge this latest set of projectiles. They bit into his clothes but didn't slow, their speed fighting back against his inertia and winning enough to drag and pin him against a tree. Zuko tried to pull away, but his clothing resisted and the talons- no, this close to the glowing bark, he could see that they were shards of volcano glass- refused to relinquish their hold in the tree. Zuko's continued pulling tore at his clothes, but before he could rip free, Mai was standing right in front of him holding a dagger beneath his chin, the blade a sanded and polished work of black volcano glass.

Her eyes met Zuko's single one, and he felt his face burning in shame. "Wha- what are you doing here?"

She tilted her head and shrugged, pushing her cloak to fall back off her shoulders, revealing the pure white funeral garb she wore beneath. "Isn't it obvious? I'm here to mourn for you, Prince Zuko. You'll fail to find the boy Shugao, and then you will die in fire."

TO BE CONTINUED