A Cog in the Machine

by Masterdramon

Harmonic Convergence is but a year away. Korra has spent her life training with the Red Lotus, preparing for the day she will restore balance to the world. But a dawning revolution, forged in the name of equality, could spoil their plans. To learn more, Korra takes on a new name and infiltrates Future Industries...but what else awaits her in this brave new city? Eventual Korrasami.

21. Book Two, Prologue: Weathering the Storm

A Cog in the Machine – Book Two, Prologue: Weathering the Storm

Disclaimer: In case you haven't figured it out yet, I don't own The Legend of Korra. All Avatar-related characters, settings, etc. are the intellectual property of Viacom, Bryan Konietzko, and Michael Dante DiMartino.

[-]

"Master Katara, have you always had those hair-loopies?" asked the young Avatar, her fists clenched and face screwed up in determination.

This was clearly a very important question.

Katara, for her part, couldn't help but chuckle. "Oh, I've been wearing them off and on since I was about your age," she said, smiling indulgently. "Dropped the look for a while in my teenage years, but they found their way back when I became a mother."

She touched one of the beads that held the style in place, before adding, "By the way, if you ever run into my brother…don't tell him you called them 'hair-loopies.' He's been trying to get that to catch on since I was fourteen, and I don't want to give him the satisfaction."

Despite the vast age difference, both girls burst out laughing at that. Korra might not have had any siblings of her own, but she could certainly appreciate a good jibe.

"Alright, I think that's enough of a break. Shall we get started on the water whip?" Katara suggested to her young charge.

Korra couldn't have nodded and screamed, "Yes!" fast enough.

As the two of them worked through the forms, the elder waterbender found herself taking stock of just how incredible this all was. She'd been teaching Korra for nearly a year now, but it still struck her at random moments that standing right next to her was her husband's spirit, reincarnated into a precocious little girl.

She still missed Aang terribly, of course, but there was no question this experience dulled the pain. It helped that his passing had been far from sudden; he'd been weak and infirm for about six years, and confined to a bed for most of the last two, before all the energy he'd burnt up in that iceberg finally caught up with him.

It'd given both of them a chance to settle their various affairs in order: passing on instructions for the White Lotus through now-Grandmaster Sokka, bequeathing away all of his Air Nomad artifacts and scrolls to Tenzin, that sort of thing.

In any event, the long and protracted nature of his death meant that Katara had had time to get used to a world where he'd be gone – and yet, at the same time, very much not be. She'd spent the following five years keeping an eye out across the tribe, wondering which if any of the babies born in that period might be "the one."

She'd had no guarantee the next Avatar would be born in the South, of course, but there'd been a feeling in her bones she trusted beyond rationality. Still, it made sense. The very nature of the Avatar Spirit was balance, and the last Water Tribe Avatar, Kuruk, had been a Northerner.

The White Lotus, she knew, had been monitoring to the best of their ability both Tribes, as well as the United Republic. Even Foggy Swamp and a handful of Earth Kingdom cities that now hosted sizable waterbending minorities. That was the reasonable thing to do, and she didn't blame her brother one bit for trying to cover all his bases.

But deep down, Katara had to admit that she wanted it to be a Southerner. If only as a sign from the spirits that her life's work – rebuilding the South, both physically and spiritually – hadn't been for naught.

She liked to think she'd sensed it, just a little bit, when she helped bring Korra into the world. In her advanced age Katara now had a team of about a dozen former students to assist the tribe as midwives (or midhusband, in one case), and only occasionally performed the duty herself these days.

Still, as the exiled prince of the Northern Tribe, even with his birthright stripped Tonraq's progeny carried political implications that warranted a "personal touch." After all, Team Avatar knew better than anyone that banishment didn't always last forever.

As such, five years later she still remembered Korra's birth as if it was yesterday. Senna's frantic gasps as her husband carried her into the birthing hut. The stricken expression on Tonraq's face, a far cry from the unflappable warrior he presented himself as to the tribe, as he watched blood and feces pour from his anguished wife.

It'd been a difficult birth, owing to the awkward angle Korra had managed to twist herself into. Ultimately, they'd needed to resort to an incision in the womb, a procedure that nearly always killed the mother.

But the field of medicine had come a long way in recent years, and a combination of cutting-edge surgery and her mastery of healing allowed Senna to survive. It'd been a closer call than anyone was happy to admit, though.

Still, what she remembered more than anything else was holding that beautiful baby up close, and handing her over to her mother, whose soothing voice soon managed to calm her wailing cries.

There'd been a…glow, of sorts, to the infant Korra, that'd caught Katara's eye even then. Every child was special in their own way, of course. But this one…

Well, when Tonraq had reported that his four-year-old daughter was tearing about their home with water, earth, and fire alike, the old master had been far from surprised.

Now, close to one year later, Korra was progressing along at a pace that would've frightened Katara had it come from any other child. Especially given how aggressive her personal style was shaping up to be. Though she performed each move and form with superb accuracy, there was a kinetic energy to each that seemed more at home with its opposing element: fire.

In another waterbender, Katara might've tried to discourage these signs, but for the Avatar it made sense. That was, after all, one of their greatest advantages – the ability to apply the strengths of one element to cover the weaknesses of another.

Besides, in and of itself there was nothing wrong with an aggressive style, so long as it was tempered by discipline. And though she took to it only begrudgingly, Korra did understand discipline.

Well…as much as any five-year-old did, anyway.

Today's lesson was a good example. Katara knew that Korra had been eagerly anticipating the water whip, pretty much since the day they'd started training. But she'd only consented once Korra had gone a full two months without complaining about drilling the same, basic forms every day.

Crucially, however, she hadn't told Korra this. The girl needed to learn patience and restraint on her own, or it was never going to stick. She was rewarded precisely because she didn't expect a reward.

"Good, Korra," she said, watching as the young Avatar struck her target – a stone her brother had marked with an astonishingly awful drawing of the late Fire Lord Ozai – with the precision of someone who'd been drilling this for weeks, not minutes. "Now put your whole body into it!"

The girl did as instructed, and the result was a whip that went straight through the stone. Korra laughed jovially.

"This is so much fun!" she exclaimed, and Katara couldn't help but match her ear-to-ear grin. The girl's enthusiasm was constantly infectious. "C'mon, let's do more! Like an ice shield! That, uh…water tornado thingy! Optocus Form!"

Another light chuckle. "I think you mean 'Octopus,' Korra," she replied. "And all in good time. But you shouldn't get ahead of yourself. You're still a few years away from some of those things."

Unsurprisingly, this had Korra pouting, but thankfully it didn't last long. She was too excited to stay mad.

"Okaaaaaaaaay," she mumbled with a sigh. "Then can we do some more healing?"

It always surprised Katara how much the young Avatar had taken to healing – the aspect of waterbending probably farthest from her headstrong personality.

Perhaps it was simply the exclusivity of the art. While the Fire Sages had techniques to sense chi flow with careful manipulation of thermal energy, and even non-benders could disrupt chi paths with enough training…only waterbenders could repair those paths, once damaged.

To a girl Korra's age, Katara supposed some of the things she could do with healing might seem like miracles.

For about the dozenth time that hour, the elderly waterbender found herself smiling in response.

"Sounds like a plan," she said.

[-]

Later that night, after Korra's parents put her to bed, Katara found herself near the edge of a snow-covered cliff, staring at the horizon with a frown.

"A storm is brewing," she told her compatriot, her voice low. "A powerful one."

"Oh, good. So it's only the third one this week! That's a big improvement over last," said Master Konsai, shaking his head and shivering. "Oof…remind me why I agreed to move to the South Pole again?"

"I believe it had to do with a little girl who could decide the fate of the entire world," she replied, the sides of her worn lips twitching. "Or something like that. I forget the details."

Though the middle-aged man's tone was dry and sardonic, Katara could tell his grousing was mostly for show, and responded to his wit in kind. She'd known him quite a while, after all.

Konsai, a waterbender from the United Republic, was the semi-official second in command of the White Lotus, and leader of the delegation they'd sent to guard and monitor the young Avatar. Katara was on friendly terms with most all of the Order's leadership, though she'd never been a member herself; it simply came with the territory of being the sister of its long-serving Grandmaster.

Indeed, she'd been the one to contact the Order on Tonraq's behalf, once Korra's powers began to manifest. For just under a year now a team of thirty-eight White Lotus members had set up camp in the southern capital, ready to provide a path to the rest of the elements once she'd fully mastered water.

All this meant that she'd gotten to know the delegation's leadership – shared between Konsai, an earthbender named Daiya, and the firebender Hong Bao – quite well over the past eleven months. They weren't quite friends, exactly, but closer than simply colleagues. "Drinking buddies," perhaps, might've been the closest term…if only she was ten years younger, and didn't have an ulcer.

"Have you heard from my brother lately?" she asked after a while, changing the subject.

"Grandmaster Sokka was supposed to arrive for a meeting of the Inner Lotus three days ago," said Konsai with a sigh. "I expect these storms are the cause for his delay."

"Oh, wonderful. My life's been painfully devoid of meat and sarcasm these days," Katara commented wryly. "Is anyone else coming? Zuko, Teo, Ty Lee?"

That was another advantage of her brother's position – that the lists of "senior members of the White Lotus" and "old friends she hadn't seen in ages" lined up so neatly.

"The latter were too busy with ongoing operations to attend," the bearded man answered, shaking his head. "But last I heard, the Fire Lord…sorry, former Fire Lord…was on the Grandmaster's ship. No doubt trading kernels of great wisdom."

"Or appallingly bad jokes," suggested Katara, probably more accurately. "Well…to be fair, some of Zuko's aren't all that bad. He just can't deliver them to save his life."

Over seventy years later, none of them were willing to let the poor guy forget "leaf me alone, I'm bushed!"

"Of course…" said Konsai, turning back to the gathering dark clouds. "It's all a moot point if they can't even make landfall. And we can't keep delaying this meeting. With the Avatar actively in training, it's more important than ever we sit down and discuss this."

"Might I ask what this is all about?" she murmured, sensing the severity in his tones. "Or is it for initiate ears only?"

The waterbender adopted a difficult-to-read expression, but ultimately he shrugged his shoulders.

"Normally, yes…but I think all would agree you're an exception, Master Katara," he responded, sighing again. "Let's start at the beginning. Have you ever heard of the Red Lotus?"

"Only a little bit, from Sokka," stated Katara. "Xai Bau's group of rebels, isn't that right? But I thought they were crippled when he died at Full Moon Bay."

"Crippled, yes. But not broken," explained the old man. "Our best intelligence suggests someone new is calling the shots, and they've managed to rally. Which means every White Lotus compound or training facility on the planet is a target. And none more than this one."

"Is that why you've hesitated to announce her existence to the world?" she asked, voicing a question she'd kept at the back of her mind for nearly a year now.

Konsai nodded once. "Well, that's part of it," he said. "Plus…a desire to return to tradition, at least a little bit. Just about everyone agrees it was a mistake for the Air Nomads to tell Aang of his identity prematurely. Korra may've forced our hand by discovering her powers early, but I'm still not sure the world is ready to learn its savior is quite so…"

He searched for the right word for several seconds, before finally settling on, "Rambunctious."

"Well, that's one way to put it," Katara remarked, smiling indulgently. "She has a lot to learn, true. But even at this age, she's already so determined. So clever. You know, she's unlike Aang in so many ways, and yet…"

She sighed, a bit wistfully. "Sometimes…I see him in her eyes," she whispered. "I'm certain. Even among Avatars…this one is going to be special."

"The last one ended the Hundred Year War and founded a whole new nation," Konsai reminded her. "Honestly, I could do with the next few incarnations taking it easy for a while. Not that we get a choice in the matter, of course."

"Oh, something tells me that 'taking it easy' simply isn't in Korra's vocabulary. That girl's got a head for mischief," said Katara, rubbing her wrinkled chin as she returned her gaze to the oncoming storm.

Perhaps it was her imagination, but it looked a bit closer now than it had only a few seconds ago.

"I just hope the world will give her a chance to exercise it," she finished, her voice growing muted. "She deserves that much."

[-]

Years of traveling the world and camping in the wilderness had made Katara something of a night cat-owl in her youth, but those were habits that aging joints and weakening muscles had forced her to abandon.

Which is why it surprised her when she bolted awake at – a quick glance over at her bedside clock – two in the morning.

At first, she simply assumed it had to do with the shrinking bladder she'd also been told was part of the aging process. More for men than women, admittedly, but she did need to pee rather badly.

After she pulled herself out from under the covers and did so, however, she began to realize something rather strange.

The night was completely silent.

In all her years living at the South Pole, Katara had never experienced a night that was completely devoid of sound. Always there was the soft chirps of otter-penguins or the buzzing of snowflies, and on any given night a particularly loud crying baby or intimate couple had a good chance of joining them.

Now, however, her incredibly sharp ears – dampened, somewhat, by her advanced age, but still honed far beyond those of most people – were picking up absolutely nothing. It didn't give her a very good feeling.

And if there was one thing fighting in the Hundred Year War had taught her, it was to always trust those sorts of feelings.

Just to be on the safe side, Katara scooped up several water skins as she quickly and silently dressed herself. The snow outside would give her plenty of her element to work with, but the second spent changing its state could potentially be the difference between life, and…

She shook her head. It was possible to be overcautious, too. Most likely, it was nothing.

Still, she kept her guard turned way up as she slipped out of her hut.

At first glance, it appeared that Katara's intuition left a lot to be desired. The sight that greeted her was the very same icy streets and gleaming white buildings that'd stood since the initial postwar reconstruction. In the middle of the night, those streets were barren, and those buildings were shrouded in darkness.

Katara almost had to chuckle at her paranoia. Was she really so surprised to investigate a lack of noise, and find…nothing to make it?

She'd all but decided to head back in, and catch a couple more hours of sleep, when her eye caught a brief flash of red.

The waterbender scowled, her attention instantly sharpening into focus. In and of itself, the sight wasn't too unusual – Fire Nation citizens could freely come and go from the poles now, and it wasn't like members of other nations were forbidden to wear red.

But that person seemed like they were in something of a hurry. And Katara was suddenly very eager to find out why.

She was unable to run as long or as fast as she once had, but fortunately there were perks to being a master bender. A single wave of her hand conjured an ice-sled below her feet, and a couple more practiced motions sent her sailing off at remarkable speed.

Having done this many times over, she weaved and bobbed easily amidst the alleyways, her wrinkled eyes scanning for another glimpse of red amidst all the blue and white.

Katara's mind was so involved with this search that it failed to notice that one of those bits of blue and white was moving. Not until she slammed into it, sending them both sprawling to the ground with harmonized groans.

"Oof…I think I've taken more injuries from your bending than the entire Fire Nation combined," said the man she'd just inadvertently assaulted. "I've already had to replace one hip, do you really wanna make it a matching set?"

Despite her own pain, the familiarity of that voice had Katara grinning giddily, and a moment later she'd seized her older brother around the shoulders, embracing him tightly.

"When'd you get into port?" she asked. "Konsai said your ship was delayed by the storm."

"Ow, ow, ow! Seriously, watch it 'round the hip!" exclaimed Sokka, and his sister immediately eased up on the hug. "Anyway, yeah, it's a pretty bad one. But we had a few waterbenders on board, and they managed to get us out of the rough patch. Finally docked about an hour ago."

He looked much as he always did, having aged perhaps the most gracefully out of the old "gang." Despite his seventy-four years, the White Lotus' Grandmaster still bore the muscles of his prime days, even if the skin over them was loose and wrinkled. His hairline had significantly receded, leaving a noticeable bald spot, but the remainder was still tied into his classic "warrior's wolf tail" style.

At any age, it was still important to let all the other warriors know how fun and perky he was.

Right now, he was wearing the customary uniform of the White Lotus: navy-blue robes with lotus-patterned accents, set over worn but reliable plated armor. The only garment that set him apart as the current Grandmaster was a small broach around his neck, with the White Lotus symbol emblazoned in gold.

"So Zuko's here too, then?" Katara replied, remembering why she'd been out here zooming around like a maniac in the first place. "I thought I saw a bit of red clothing run past a few minutes ago, but if it's everyone's favorite ex-Fire Lord then I guess I got worried over nothing."

Sokka's expression, however, dipped into a frown.

"Yeah, he's meeting with Tonraq right now," he said, a couple of fingers stroking his short, charcoal-gray beard. "But he's in green robes today; a bequest from his uncle. I don't think there was anyone wearing red on our ship."

Katara's brow furrowed to match her brother's, but she didn't have a chance to follow that train of thought any further. A burst of static sounded from around Sokka's waist, and with weathered fingers he pulled out a small, portable radio.

The glance toward his midsection allowed her to notice for the first time that her brother was armed to the teeth – a war-club, several throwing knives, two of his signature boomerangs, and above all his one-of-a-kind "space sword," its scabbard gleaming with fresh polish.

"Blazing Komodo Rhino, this is Howling Wolf-Dolphin. Do you copy?" he spoke into the receiver. Katara could only hear one side of the conversation, but it wasn't hard to imagine the expression on the caller's face. "…C'mon, Zuko, that's you! …No, you can't change it! …Because that's what we agreed on the ship! …Wait, what?"

His tone of voice changed so abruptly with those last two words that Katara almost felt a physical whiplash. He was suddenly far more muted…and his grip on his sword, far tighter.

"Alright…I'll be there right away," he eventually concluded, putting away the receiver and letting out a deep, slightly wheezing breath.

"What's going on, Sokka?" asked Katara, the moment he hung up.

The non-bender turned to stare at her with his deep blue eyes, the color within them slightly faded from cataracts he'd developed a few years back.

Then, in sober tones, he said, "We need to meet up with the others. Korra is missing."

[-]

"I put her to bed less than two hours ago," Senna told them, one hand clutched to her chest out of barely controlled worry. "Then with the storm approaching, I decided to check on her, and…"

She wasn't able to bring herself to continue, but the meaning of her words was clear to everyone present.

"Everyone," at the moment, totaled nine people: herself, Sokka, Zuko, Korra's parents Tonraq and Senna, Konsai, Daiya, Hong Bao, and her son Tenzin. The latter's presence surprised her, as while the master airbender worked closely with the White Lotus he wasn't technically a member.

His being part of their delegation suggested the Order was taking this "Red Lotus" threat very seriously.

For some reason, that thought piqued something in the back of her mind. Why was she reacting to the word "red"?

She thought hard for a few moments, but ultimately it slipped away. Katara silently cursed her aging mind. It was still there, ninety-percent of the time, but there were times where her memory simply wasn't what it used to be.

"If she left under her own power, she can't have gotten far," said Zuko, breaking Katara from her brief reverie. The elderly firebender was cupping his chin thoughtfully with his right hand. "But we can't rule out kidnapping. Could someone have snuck in without your noticing?"

"It would be difficult…but I suppose not impossible," Tonraq answered, one hand clenched tightly around his wife's. "Look, we can stand here discussing things all night, or we can spread out and search for my daughter. The sooner we start looking, the better our chances."

"If there was less snow about, I might be able to track her with my seismic sense," offered Daiya, shaking her head in contrition. She was a retired member of the Republic City police, and had learned the technique from Toph herself. "But as it is, my range is severely…limited."

Hong Bao pushed the frames of his too-small spectacles up the bridge of his nose, and added in a soft voice, "And the storm will only make things worse. Tonraq is right – we need to act quickly. Before we lose what little visibility we have."

"I'll search from the air with my glider," Tenzin declared, his expression difficult to read. "I can cover more ground that way. Agh…I wish I'd thought to bring Oogi."

"Don't worry, Tenzin. Druk can pick up the slack," Zuko said confidently. "He may not have quite the carrying capacity of a sky bison, but I could bring at least a couple. Sokka, Katara…how about for old time's sake?"

"Hey, you give me an excuse not to be on these aching feet for a while, I'm sure as heck gonna take it," replied Sokka, as he took the opportunity to secure yet another weapon for his arsenal – a small kunai with chain. "Besides, if this is a worst-case scenario…well, not gonna complain if we've got a freaking dragon in our corner."

He didn't explain what he meant by "worst-case scenario," but Katara could tell they were all thinking the same thing.

Right now, every second was precious.

"I know the surrounding area better than anyone, so I'll go out with my snowmobile. Senna, you'd better stay behind…just in case she returns on her own," stated Tonraq, to which she nodded mutedly.

If only for the sake of something to do with her hands, the Avatar's mother was now passing the White Lotus radios around the room, murmuring as she did, "Call me the moment anyone finds anything. I…I'll relay the message to the others."

"Sounds like we have a plan, then," said Konsai, his stocky arms folded. "Don't worry – if things get truly dire, she still has the Avatar State. If nothing else, it'd at least make her much easier to find."

"Let's spread out, everyone," Tenzin responded, turning so that his mother could see his face. Only she caught the slight spark of fear in his eyes. "And hope, for the spirits' sake…that it doesn't come to that."

[-]

"How is Izumi?" Katara couldn't help but ask, after they'd been flying for ten fruitless minutes.

She supposed it wasn't really a good occasion for small talk, given everything that was going on. But then, she hadn't seen Zuko for nearly five years. And they weren't having much luck spotting traces of the runaway Avatar so far.

Plus, she'd never been great with uncomfortable silences.

Zuko seemed grateful, in any event, to have something to fill the time. "She's well. Though she takes after her mother a bit too much in her eating habits…and mine in how little she sleeps," he told her. "Mind, I think her daughter might've gone a little too far in the other direction…"

"Nazrin is only sixteen, Zuko," she said, after doing some quick mental math. "There are worse things at that age then throwing a few parties. The press blew that last one completely out of proportion."

"She punctured the hull of an empire-class Fire Nation battleship, almost leaving thousands to drown at sea! I don't…I don't even know how you do that with a yacht!" exclaimed the former Fire Lord. "Besides, at sixteen I was going around saving the world."

"Only after you came close to screwing it over like twenty times," Sokka pointed out, winking right after to show he didn't mean anything by it.

The corner of Zuko's mouth turned up slightly. "Yes, well…I suppose I can't argue with that," he replied. "I do still love my granddaughter, of course, no matter how much she tends to…try me. I just worry on occasion that she won't be a good fit for the role of Fire Lord."

"Does she even want the throne?" asked Katara. "Because if she wants to abdicate, I've no doubt Little Iroh is more than capable of stepping up, once he comes of age."

Zuko chuckled hoarsely. "Ah, 'Little' Iroh…at thirteen, he's already almost my height. I don't think the nickname really applies anymore," he said. "Anyway, it's never really come up. Izumi's certainly not ready to retire anytime soon, and it's a time of peace. We're in one of those rare periods where the Fire Nation doesn't have to constantly worry about succession."

"Well, in that case, I'd stand back and wait for the years to sober Nazrin up," the waterbender advised her old friend. "She has a good heart, whatever her faults. Give her time for her head to catch up."

"That almost passed for a decent impression of my uncle," declared Zuko, clearly impressed. "When did you get so wise, Water Tribe girl?"

"Oh, you know. Comes with the territory of the gray hair and wrinkles," Katara answered, with a shrug and a smile.

"Not automatically, though!" piped up Sokka. "As I should prove. I mean, I wizened up a good bit when I sat on the Republic City Council…but then I retired, and I realized I really missed being a giant wise-ass."

"I'll be honest, Sokka, and say I never noticed you stopped," said the former Fire Lord, and the three of them quickly descended into a fit of entirely undignified laughter.

It was great to still have moments like this on occasion, Katara reflected amidst the mirth. With Aang, Suki, and Mai dead, and Toph having disappeared off to who-knew-where, such moments were fleeting and far between.

Even in the era of a new Avatar, she'd always be a member of Team Avatar at heart.

"Wait, wait…hold up," Sokka suddenly interjected, cutting their chuckles short in an instant. He was peering over the size of Druk's head with the focused eyes of a messenger hawk. "Can you get Scaly to bring us down? I think I see something."

"Scaly?" Zuko repeated with confusion, but nonetheless he whispered in Druk's ear and directed the dragon into a sharp dive, settling them down onto the snowbanks below.

Sokka immediately dismounted and dropped to the ground, dashing toward the object he'd spotted from the air as fast as his aged legs could take him. Katara and Zuko followed right on his heels, his sister all set to offer rare praise for his still-extraordinary hunting vision.

But they all stopped cold when they realized just what the object was. Katara's hands flew to her mouth.

It was the body of a polar bear-dog, separated from its pack, clearly no more than a pup. And it was dead.

There was no question, however, over whether or not the death was natural. The wound in its neck, still bleeding, still fresh, was far too clean to be the result of anything but a human.

Katara knew that, though increased trade with the other nations had lessened their hunter-gatherer culture, there were still those who harvested these beasts for their fur or meat. They were plentiful, and the hides in particular were incredibly useful as crafting materials.

Yet this animal had been left behind to bleed out in the snow, its body entirely intact. And they wouldn't have gotten much from such a young specimen in the first place.

All told, the slaughter simply felt so…pointless. Enough that Katara could feel tears welling up in the corners of her scraggly eyes.

"Whoever did this, they can't be too far away," said Sokka, leaning down to place a hand over the tiny corpse. "I'm worried it might be the same person responsible for Korra's disappearance. Because the only reason to do something like this is pure sadism."

"Oh, there was most certainly a reason," spoke a calm, low, male voice. "Whether you'd understand it is another story."

All three of their heads whipped around the tundra, but the source of the voice wasn't clear. They were surrounded by dozens of rock formations, and the rushing winds of the advancing storm made it difficult to tell for sure which direction it'd come from.

Before they could do anything else, however, their attentions were drawn once again, as Druk let out a whining, painful roar. Something – they'd missed the precise moment of impact – had just struck the dragon in the head, and he fell to the ground with a gut-wrenching thud, immediately unconscious.

"Druk!" screamed Zuko, shifting instantly into a firebending stance. Sokka drew his sword and a throwing knife, while Katara uncorked one of her water skins.

Several things happened in the next moment. A flash of red flew across Katara's field of vision, quicker than she could see clearly, and slammed into Zuko, sending him sprawling to the ground. An arrow flew from an unknown shooter and pierced Sokka's shoulder, forcing him to drop the knife and scream out in pain.

Then, before Katara could react at all, before she had even the slightest clue who was attacking them or why, the storm finally reached their position.

And all she could see was white.

[-]

"Sokka! Zuko! Call out if you can hear me!" Katara yelled, shifting direction every few steps to try and keep from getting ambushed.

Like the thirty other times she'd shouted it, there was no reply at all.

The storm had come over them at the worst possible time – and, knowing from personal experience that skilled water or airbenders were capable of manipulating the weather, she wasn't entirely certain that was a coincidence.

But whether natural or artificial, the flurry had reduced her field of vision to mere feet, enshrouding everything else in a thick, blinding fog. The heavy snow beat down on her old bones with greater force than she was used to these days, and she was forced to constantly use one arm to shield her face, reducing her combat abilities even further.

With a bit of effort, she could cut through the fog using her bending, but any progress she made that way was fractional at best. There was simply too much of the stuff, and the moment she stopped actively bending it away it flowed back to fill the empty space, like curtains forcing themselves resolutely shut.

She wasn't sure how long she'd been walking, at this point, or if she'd managed to put any real distance between herself and those mystery attackers.

Who were they, exactly? Now with the adrenaline kicked in, her mind was working a little quicker, and she was able to make the connection between the red clothing she'd seen earlier and the ones worn by Zuko's assailant.

Red…Red…Red…

The Red Lotus!

Suddenly, with a burst of clarity, it all clicked. The Red Lotus must've been tipped off somehow about this meeting of their greatest foe, and were attempting to strike when they were at their most vulnerable.

Did that mean they were the ones who'd abducted Korra? If that chilling voice was to be believed, they'd killed that poor cub. She could believe anything out of someone capable of that kind of brutality.

Katara forced herself to take a deep breath. The cub couldn't be saved, at this point. Korra still could.

That's where her focus needed to be.

But she wasn't going to get very far on her own, so she cupped her left hand around her mouth and called out, "Sokka! Zuko!" once more.

Unsurprisingly, nobody answered.

This continued on for – well, it was hard to keep track of time in conditions like these, but it felt like at least half an hour – without any noticeable change in the results. Whatever direction she was heading in, it didn't seem to be drawing her any closer to help.

Eventually, however, she saw something that heartened her: the distinct gold-and-orange flumes of firebending, cutting through the fog like a hot knife through arctic hippo blubber.

But her elation was short-lived, as it soon became clear she didn't recognize the bender conjuring the flames in the slightest.

It was hard to make out through the mist, but the figure looked female, and was very tall. She was wearing the same crimson uniform as the others, and seemed to have some kind of black cloth covering the lower half of her face.

The upper half, meanwhile, was marked with…something, directly in the center of the forehead. She couldn't really tell for certain, because the woman was currently in a pitched duel with a waterbender of prodigious skill.

As the fighters shifted their positions through the snowbanks, Katara realized with a jolt that the firebender's opponent was Tonraq, who was bending entirely one-handed. His right arm was held limply at his side, twisted at an awkward angle, and Katara didn't need to touch it to know it was broken.

Still, despite his handicap, the Avatar's father kept up a remarkable offensive. With rapid, forceful motions he changed the ample snowbanks into tidal waves and sent them hurtling at the firebender, one after the other.

Katara was far from the combat waterbender she'd once been, but she wasted little time in joining the former prince, doubling the amount of liquid their opponent had to deal with.

Whoever this woman was, though, she was undeniably nimble, leaping through the air like a circus acrobat as she (quite literally) returned fire. Not one of their moves managed to hit her, though there were some very near misses.

Finally, after a few minutes of this, the firebender landed upon one of the nearby rock formations, knocking away their latest attack with great, sweeping flames. Then, she took a deep breath.

And in that moment, just before it happened, Katara realized exactly what that mark on the woman's forehead was. And where she'd see it before.

Without thinking, she dived to the side and tackled Tonraq out of the way.

Had she acted one second later, the blast would've blown the both of them to smithereens. As it was, another formation directly behind them exploded instead, raining smoking rubble down upon the snow.

"Wh…What was that?" Tonraq asked through gritted teeth, clutching at his broken arm.

"Combustionbending. I've faced it before," said Katara, as she bent a crude cage of ice around the woman. From her experience with a certain Fire Nation assassin, she knew the best way to counter this technique was to limit the wielder's range. "An incredibly rare subset of firebending, that allows the user to create explosions with their mind. We need to close the distance before she can fire another shot."

But the cage bought them less time than she'd been hoping. The woman used regular firebending to melt her way out with ease, and wasted little time in inhaling once more.

Acting on instinct, Katara formed the same "ice-sled" she'd run into Sokka with, grabbed Tonraq by the scruff of his shirt, and shot off like a rocket. They arced their way around the woman's next blast, then swung back toward her position. This pattern repeated for the next three explosions, with Katara veering off to the side at the last second, drawing closer and closer to the firebender each time.

Eventually, they were close enough that Tonraq – who's formed his own "sled" and was right at her side – took a chance and leapt toward their foe, bringing down a point-blank burst of water alongside his one good fist.

The woman tried to counterattack, but the close proximity meant her special ability was too risky to use. She simply wasn't able to switch to normal firebending fast enough, and as a result she took twenty gallons of high-pressure, freezing cold liquid directly to the face.

Katara jogged after Tonraq, though it made her knobby legs ache and burn in protest. But before either of them could approach the woman, smoke bombs burst open at their feet.

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that," stated a voice, and despite the slight difference in tone Katara immediately recognized the cold voice who'd attacked Zuko.

Whoever it was, however, he didn't stick around to press his advantage.

Instead, when the smoke cleared, both figures were gone.

[-]

"What happened?" asked Katara, as she extracted an emergency vial of spirit-touched waters from her coat and used it to envelop Tonraq's broken arm.

"I…I'm not sure," said Tonraq, wincing from the familiar, disorienting sensation of a waterbending healing. "I was out here, looking for Korra, when the storm finally moved in. A few minutes later, me and my snowmobile were both sent flying. I guess in retrospect, it must've been that firebender girl."

"Where is it now?" she murmured. In lieu of answering, he just used his one good arm to point at a snowbank about fifty feet away.

Katara used her bending to part the fog between them, and though it was still a little difficult to make out the details the machine looked remarkably undamaged. Tonraq immediately started for it, abandoning the half-done healing, and Katara had to hasten to follow.

"Please don't do that, Tonraq," she admonished, speaking to his broad back. "You could severely damage your chi paths if you rip away while they're being repaired."

"I know a thing or two about healing myself, and I know there's no way I'm gonna fix that bone without a good few weeks of rest. Waterbending can only help so much," responded the former prince. "I can't afford that right now. Not while my daughter is out there, in the midst of all…this."

She sighed, knowing that – at least in this regard – he was more right than wrong. At this stage, she could alleviate the pain and prevent any further damage, but not much else.

Still, she said, "Be that as it may, you can't operate that snowmobile in your condition. If it's even still functioning. Driving one-handed simply isn't safe – particularly in this weather."

Now it was his turn to sigh.

"I…suppose you have a point," he eventually admitted, though he didn't break his stride. "Could you drive, then? I can sit behind you."

Katara grimaced hesitantly. "I've…never actually driven a vehicle before," she told him. "And I rather doubt seventy-three is a good age to start."

"You're probably right about that. Still, we're short on better options," Tonraq pointed out, not entirely unreasonably. "You'll have me to guide you, and you just need to follow the tracks back to town. But we need to move quickly – before the snowfall wipes out those tracks completely."

"Back to town?" she repeated, as they finally reached the snowmobile in question. It looked a little beat-up from the crash, but functional.

"We have no idea how many people are attacking, or why. And…Senna isn't answering, when I try the radio," said Tonraq, and in those words was a billion times more pain than he felt in his arm. "I need to find out what's happening there. Need to regroup with the soldiers and the White Lotus. If…If anything happened to…"

The words ceased, as he clamped down his jaw to suppress the continuous pain he was in. But Katara could fill in the rest.

She, in all honesty, had forgotten about the radios entirely. She'd never been a deft hand with technology; one reason she wasn't thrilled by the idea of driving.

Still, she pulled the small device from her pocket and tried to call back to Senna – or to anyone else she might be able to reach. But no matter how much she played with the little knobs and dials, the result was always the same: static.

"I suppose…we have no choice," she eventually whispered, letting out the longest and deepest sigh so far as she settled into the driver's seat.

Still wincing but trying not to show it, Tonraq sat behind her, his powerful arms wrapping around her waist.

And then, following his carefully murmured instructions, the two of them were off.

[-]

Looking back many years later, that snowmobile ride was one part of the story she preferred to block out of her mind.

Unfortunately, it was far from the only one.

Katara spent basically the entire drive absolutely terrified that she was going to fly off or plow right into a boulder or fall down into a spontaneously appearing sinkhole, and it was only Tonraq's steady stream of encouragement that allowed her to keep her wits together at all.

It wasn't a familiar sensation for the normally headstrong woman, especially this late in life, and she couldn't say she really cared much for it. She found herself exceedingly grateful that the only person around to witness her brief loss of composure was Tonraq, whom she'd known for years.

He'd seen her at her best enough to forgive that she'd confused the brake and accelerator for each other at least ten times so far.

Of course, it didn't help that the storm-fog, far from improving, actually seemed to be getting steadily worse. The longer they drove, the less Katara could see, until it seemed as if they were just driving off into one long, unending void of white.

Tonraq did his best to keep the surrounding area clear with his free arm, but all that meant was that Katara could see the next few feet of tracks in front of her. It was a good thing he'd largely come here in a straight line, meaning she rarely needed to turn.

It was far from a cakewalk, but in time the two of them pulled into the Southern Water Tribe capital, now working together to clear as much fog as possible and reveal what it was hiding.

They caught just enough of a glimpse to wish with all their hearts that they hadn't.

Spirits. Every last inch of the city she could see was swarming with spirits.

Big and small, fat and skinny; some barely more than ethereal wisps, their forms vague and shifting, while others resembled twisted versions of creatures from the material world, hissing serpents or roaring beasts.

Yet they all seemed different, somehow, from any other spirit Katara had seen in her life. She'd only ever entered the Spirit World once, with her husband, but she could still tell there was something…off about these.

Perhaps it was their coloration, all dark and muted and sickly, or the way the "outlines" of their bodies seemed blurry and indistinct. Perhaps it was the way they moved – all in fits and starts, as if they were jumping from one position to another in the blink of an eye, with no flow of motion in between.

Perhaps it was the bone-chilling, hair-raising way they sounded.

Regardless, in the brief glimpse they managed through the still-thickening fog, Katara counted at least thirty of these strange spirits. And every last one of them seemed single-mindedly bent on reducing the southern capital to rubble.

The small circle of huts she'd grown up in had, over the course of the last sixty years, transformed into a bustling metropolis, containing a population of thousands. Much of that population was now running through the streets in a blind terror, barely able to see their own hands in front of their faces – much less the spirits that were tearing apart all they held dear.

"Senna!" screamed Tonraq, his face contorted into a stricken panic. "Senna!"

Yet his words, bellowed at the top of his lungs, barely registered over the cacophony that'd taken hold of the city. He was far from the only person calling out for lost friends or loved ones, each rendered an island by the raging storm.

"We have to stick together, Tonraq," said Katara, working doubly hard to clear the fog away from them, as the former prince faltered in maintaining his own part. "I know it's hard, but…"

The rest of the sentence died in her throat, however. Because in that moment, the winds shifted in such a way that a great deal of fog suddenly parted at once, and they saw the district in which his family lived.

And the forty-foot-tall spirit that towered over it.

It was humanoid, vaguely, with gangly arms that seemed too long for its body. Unusually, it seemed to have something like a face – though it displayed only one, unyielding expression.

A perpetual, horrifying, rictus grin.

Just as quickly as the fog had spread apart, however, it came back together again, hiding the monstrous thing from view. But not before they saw those overstretched limbs reaching down toward the houses below.

Like a gardener, ready to pluck away some stubborn weeds.

All restraint was abandoned in an instant. Against Katara's cries of protest, Tonraq tore off through the fog with blade and water raised, running toward the colossal spirit at full speed. Within a few seconds, he was gone.

Gathering all her strength, Katara pulled an even greater portion of the fog asunder…or at least, she tried to. But once again, no sooner was the mist parted than it insistently returned, like a stubborn child slamming a door shut.

She recognized the sensation instantly, though for the life of her Katara couldn't figure out why. Yet there was no other explanation for how the fog was now moving.

Another waterbender was actively struggling against her.

Confirmation came in the form of a raspy, chilling laugh. Something about it reminded Katara unnervingly of Azula, though of course the former princess was long dead. But there was the same cold, calculating cruelty in the voice; the same glee at simply being in a situation as dire as this.

The same tinge of deep, implacable madness.

"Stop peeking for spoilers!" exclaimed the voice, as Katara lost control of the mists completely, and was battered by a smattering of accelerated hailstones for her trouble. "Just be a good old girl and wait for your presents, like everybody else!"

Then, out of nowhere, a stream of water tipped with a sickle-like construct of ice sliced through the fog, aiming directly for the old master's head. It was with less than half a second to spare that she forced the ice to turn back to liquid, sparing her life.

She still couldn't see her attacker – she must've been striking from a great distance – but more water-streams swiftly followed, and Katara had a great deal of trouble trying to keep up. In her prime she was confident she could've wiped the floor with an opponent like this, but she hadn't engaged in direct combat in decades.

"You know, I grew up hearing stories about you!" the mystery woman continued on, as water clashed with ice and mist clashed with snow. "Gotta say…more than a little disappointed. This is the greatest waterbender of all time?"

"I never claimed to be the best," said Katara through gritted teeth. "Just one person trying to do good in the world. You seem like you would've been talented enough to do the same."

"Funny. Since that's exactly what we're doing," she shot back. "Spare me the lecture, grandma. The Red Lotus is going to restore balance to the world – even if the small-minded can't quite comprehend it."

"Is that what you think this is?" demanded Katara, pushing back even harder with her bending. The strain on her aged muscles was getting more and more difficult to withstand. "Does this look like balance to you?"

"Go to one of the others if you want some philosophical drivel. Long story short, this is only step one," responded the woman, punctuating each sentence with a renewed strike. "Me? I'm just here for the fun stuff. Bending this storm over to a place where it'd do some good, for example."

"Y…You did this…?" Katara whispered, her eyes going wide as she suddenly realized just what they were in the middle of. "The Everstorm…you moved the Everstorm…"

"Is that what it's called? I kinda snoozed through half the briefing," said her opponent, seizing on her momentary distraction to further press the offensive. "Anyway, I had help. But why am I explaining this to you, anyway? It's not like you'll be around much longer to figure it out."

All at once, the snow around them rose up, forming a dozen more of those frigid streams. It was a variant on the Octopus Form, she recognized immediately – but Katara had never seen someone manipulate this many "tentacles" at once.

She put up both hands to try and redirect the energy in the snow, just as it all came crashing down upon her.

But it wasn't enough. Soon, everything went black.

[-]

When Katara came to, she found she was almost completely buried, with only half her face exposed to the air. Her pain receptors were utterly numb from the cold.

With great effort, she managed to bend herself free, every bit of movement causing her bones and muscles to sting. No doubt that if she could see her skin right now, it'd be tinged an ugly blue.

Warily, she peered around herself, her breaths coming out in shallow, shivering bursts. The blizzard seemed to have subsided somewhat, but the fog was denser than ever, so thick that it seemed almost to have a physical, stifling presence. It barely reacted to her waterbending, weakened as it was from exhaustion.

Seeing no other options, she began to walk in the direction she hoped was the city, each step a breath-stealing labor.

It was incredibly surreal, like walking through a dream. She could hear vague, muted sounds around her – screams of terror, and fury, and despair – but she couldn't tell whether they were distant, or just a few feet away. The fog blended everything into the same, muffled stillness.

All signs of Tonraq had vanished completely. As long gone as Zuko or her brother. For all she knew, they could all now be…

Katara's heart clenched around itself. No…she couldn't think that way. She couldn't. There was too much she still needed to do.

Too many people she still needed to save.

Her train of thought was interrupted by a sharp jolt of pain in her foot. With her vision so obstructed, she'd managed to trip over something buried in the snow, and it was only her half-remembered reflexes that saved her from a potentially nasty fall.

Bending down, she used her gloved hands to uncover the offending object.

And all the anxiety she'd just tried to bury came rushing back like a tidal wave.

It was a staff – wooden, antique. Retrieved from the Northern Air Temple during one of the Mechanist's salvage missions, and personally bestowed onto her husband as Teo's wedding gift. She could still see the faint scorch marks from when the Rough Rhinos had attempted to crash the ceremony.

Of course, the staff hadn't belonged to Aang for quite some time. He'd re-gifted it, as a sixteenth birthday present, to the man who owned it now. The man to whom this was the most prized possession on the planet.

"Tenzin!" she cried out, though part of her doubted it would do much good. "Tenzin, where are you?!"

As she'd dreaded, silence was her only reply. But holding the staff seemed to energize her, somehow. With a single motion she unfolded the glider, and with another she waved it in a wide arc through the air.

She wasn't an airbender, of course, but she was the soulmate of the man who'd once been the world's last, and she'd picked up on more than a few things. With the glider's gusts, combined with her weakened waterbending, the mists finally managed to part, just a little bit.

But a bit was enough. A bit was progress.

Her face set sternly against the frigid cold, she soldiered on.

[-]

Katara still wasn't sure what direction she was going, but every once in a while, she called out the name of her son, her brother, or her dear friend. It was all she really could do, beyond remain in motion.

Unfortunately, it didn't seem as if the muffled voices could make out her words any more than she could theirs. Or, if they did understand her, then the fog prevented them from successfully converging. Either way, it ultimately meant the same thing.

Right now, she was on her own.

She was acutely aware, of course, that those horrific spirits were almost certainly still out there, and that her shouts might as well be painting a target on her back. She remembered the smiling titan that Tonraq had run off to confront, and suppressed a shudder that had nothing to do with the cold.

Still, Katara was undeterred. It was hardly the first time she'd done something exceptionally foolhardy because others were in danger, and it wouldn't be the last.

Well…at least she hoped so.

In time, by pure, blind luck, she managed to find something resembling civilization. It was hard to tell, even with both arms working as hard as they could – the right with the glider, and the left with the constant push-pull of her bending – but she thought she was close to the harbor. She could sense non-frozen waters some distance away, in great quantities, and she was pretty sure there was wood beneath her feet; albeit, separated by at least two feet of snow.

But as she stretched out her instinctive sense of her element, she slowly realized the ocean wasn't the only source of liquid nearby. A great deal seemed to have spilt upon the snow in the opposite direction, responding to the faint twinges of her bending far more readily than the comparatively stubborn ice.

That was…strange, to put it mildly. Curiosity, and not the smallest amount of dread, compelled her to turn that way.

The mystery was resolved remarkably quickly. As was any chance of her dinner staying inside her stomach.

Blood soaked the freshly fallen snow as far as she could see. And though that didn't necessarily mean much, with her vision so encumbered, her elemental sense confirmed those fears with vivid clarity.

Without really thinking about it, she found her feet plodding forward, one after the other, moving as if in a daze. And with each step, more and more of the carnage came into view.

The blood was, to a drop, freshly spilt. In many cases, she only had to angle her eyes a few feet away to find the source: a veritable sea of bodies, piled haphazardly atop each other, each one cold and lifeless.

A few of the corpses seemed relatively peaceful, blemished only by a single, thin wound to the neck or chest. But they were the distinct minority.

Most were…there was no better word than broken. Gaping chunks had been torn messily from their flesh, bones and sinew exposed and mutilated innards tumbling out into the snow. Some remains, without the context of the peers they'd fallen alongside, might not've even passed as human.

Katara fell to her knees as she retched uncontrollably, the pickled fish and sea prunes she'd eaten several hours ago tumbling out in turbid, disgusting bursts. She'd seen – and smelt – dead bodies before, but even with the heavy air dulling it somewhat, the sheer stench of the offal was overwhelming.

A million questions whirred through her mind as she knelt there, coughing and vomiting so forcefully that she came close to blacking out. Who could've possibly done this?

The obvious answer was those "dark" spirits. Only once before had Katara seen a spirit acting in such a way; when Hei Bai, a forest spirit, had transformed into a being of pure fury, after the Fire Nation burned down his home. Lashing out, destroying everything in his path, abducting poor souls into his domain.

But it didn't seem to quite fit. Those spirits were acting like animals – vicious, wild, feral. Yet Katara had dealt with feral animals before. Even been forced to mercy-kill a poor arctic wolf that'd gone rabid.

This level of brutality wasn't possible of a mad, mindless beast. It required premeditation.

This butcher was human.

While her field of vision was a blur beyond the range of a few feet, a flicker of movement caught her attention out the corner of her eye. Hastily, Katara leapt back to her feet and returned to bending the fog apart, though it was hard to do the forms quite properly.

Her hands were shaking far too much.

Still, the figure wasn't far, so it was enough. The mists parted to display another humanoid figure, fully cloaked in dull browns and hunched over another group of corpses.

Katara couldn't see their face, but the filthy, slurping sounds they made were unmistakable.

"B…By the spirits…" she couldn't keep from uttering, as her stomach threatened to renew its passionate revolt.

She thought she'd only whispered the words – impossible to hear over the still-roaring winds – but the figure instantly went still. Slowly, as if swiveling on a heavily rusted axel, it turned to face her, and hissed.

Blood, and a small strip of flesh, were still dripping from an unseen mouth.

Katara had no more warning than that before a sea of flames burst from the figure's hands. Instinctively, she lifted a "wave" of snow to swallow up the attack, saving herself at the last second.

So this cannibal was a firebender, then. Well…she certainly had more than her fair share of experience facing that.

Really, compared to the effort she'd expended dueling the other firebender, this one was nothing. A great deal of raw power, but no finesse. Against the reflexes required to fight a combustionbender, all of this person's actions seemed to be in slow-motion, and even in a weakened state Katara had no trouble parrying them all.

It didn't take long for the cloaked figure to run out of steam, and the moment they did she wasted no time in pushing back with all the strength she could muster. She even managed to incorporate Tenzin's staff as a weapon, extending her range and forcing her opponent to the ground with a sustained water blast.

The figure's hood fell. And Katara's hands shot to her mouth.

That long, sallow face. That shoulder-length hair, prematurely beginning to gray and ending in a top-knot. That impressive, three-pointed beard, and those tiny golden spectacles.

It was Hong Bao. The man who was to be Avatar Korra's firebending instructor.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, slowly advancing on the middle-aged man. "Wh…Why would you…?"

She stopped speaking when she got close enough to see his eyes.

On the surface, nothing about them had changed. Still the same, dull green behind his glasses – a reflection of his mixed heritage.

But there was something else in there. Something…she couldn't quite define.

Something wrong.

He didn't give her a chance to ask any follow-up questions. As soon as she got close enough, he leapt back up again, fire literally streaming from his mouth.

Katara could see no other choice. She cupped her hands together and pushed, hard, adapting a form she'd seen Toph use many times before.

A pillar of ice emerged from the snow, slamming directly into the charging man's chest. He sank to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut, instantly unconscious.

The waterbending master breathed heavily as she watched him fall. She hadn't wanted to resort to such drastic measures; a bad bruise would be the best possible consequence of a strike like that. Less capable of controlling her strength than she might be on a calmer night, Katara simply hoped he hadn't sustained any internal injuries.

But considerations like that would have to wait. Right now, she needed to keep moving.

And to figure out what, in the spirits' unspoken names, was going on here.

[-]

Everywhere she went, she found more bodies.

Most were civilians – men, women, children. Innocents who'd just been trying to escape the chaos that descended upon their hometown.

She recognized many of the faces…assuming there was enough left to recognize. The kindly tailor, who'd devoted himself to painstaking study of Air Nomad fashion one winter, simply to repair a hole in one of Aang's robes. The ice-miners she saw every morning when she went to the market, shipping their wares off to hotter locales in the other nations.

Her breath hitched when she realized one slain woman was none other than Nobuko, Kya's first girlfriend. The one relationship she'd ever tried to hide, back when she was still worried what her mother might think of her "preferences."

Even in death, she was beautiful.

Among the varied dead of the Southern Water Tribe, however, there were also a number of corpses clad in robes of white or red. More than Katara could possibly begin to count. If the number of casualties on each side could be used as a metric for who'd won this strange, drawn-out battle, then one thing was perfectly clear.

Both sides had lost.

It would've been easy, of course, to lay all the blame at the feet of this new "Red Lotus" menace. Aggressors, who'd arrived at their shores to slaughter all who stood in their way. If their waterbender was telling the truth, and they'd managed to bring the Everstorm to the southern capital, then there was no question they bore the brunt of the blame.

Yet what she'd just seen complicated things. While she didn't know Hong Bao all that well, he'd always struck her as a decent man, if overly bookish and introverted. A scholar who'd joined the White Lotus to pursue fundamental truths, irrespective of the bounds between nations.

And now he was running around, ripping people apart with his bare hands and clumsily devouring their flesh.

It sounded like a bad joke. So completely absurd that even she wasn't sure she believed what she'd seen.

But Katara wasn't laughing. Wasn't sure, right now, if she ever would again.

If there was one consolation, it was that the fog was starting to clear away. It still choked the landscape, like an enormous billowing blanket, but with each passing hour it grew a little thinner, and the winds a little less harsh.

Clutching onto Tenzin's staff like a lifeline, she followed the trail of bodies up a slope, where the thinning mists seemed to have masked a tall hill. These people – and Katara had to bite her lip to keep from weeping when she recognized two of her waterbending students, who'd been only ten – must've died climbing up it, trying to gain a vantage point over the shrouded terrain.

Steeling herself, the old master resolved to complete their task.

It was a difficult climb, and she slipped and fell more than once. The slope wasn't particularly steep, but she'd been walking, running, or fighting all night, and by now her bones and muscles were screaming with protest.

Still, she pressed on. It was all she could think to do anymore.

One foot forward. Then another. Then the first. And the second again.

She knew that if she stopped and thought – really thought – about what was going on tonight, then there was no way she'd be able to continue. So she took a page from her husband, an expert in meditation if ever there was one, and shut out everything else.

Before she knew it, she stood at the hilltop.

Planting the staff into the ground and leaning against it, in order to conserve what remained of her strength, Katara peered about the horizon as best she could.

Fog still clung to the ground everywhere she could see, but fortunately it didn't extend quite this high any longer, making this an ideal survey spot. Looking out like this, with a handful of other peaks surfacing amidst a sea of clouds, she was reminded of the Southern Air Temple.

A comparison that, a darker thought needled her…was starting to sound more and more appropriate.

She shook her head. No…it was still too early to think that. The carnage she'd seen so far was horrific, but they still might have a chance to…

That brief moment of hopeful optimism fizzled to nothing as she turned, and realized she could see the capital city from here.

The spirits appeared to have moved on, but only because there didn't seem to be anything left for them to do. What mere hours ago had been the eighth largest city in the world…

Now stood in ruins.

Towering buildings and ice-blue spires had been torn from their foundations, left to topple over the smaller dwellings like collapsing toy blocks. Roofs, walls, and pieces of street had been ripped away, leaving behind jagged scars that looked very much like tooth marks.

Homes, schools, restaurants, theaters – all of it looked the same, now. Indistinguishable piles of shattered, broken rubble.

And worst of all was the sound…or lack thereof. Total silence hung over the home of the Southern Water Tribe. Not even a single scream or cry for help.

This was worse – so much worse – than what the Fire Nation had done to them, all those years ago.

At least they had left survivors.

Katara couldn't take it anymore. Tears she'd held in all night began to spill out at once, and her wrinkled old throat began to let loose some very undignified wails.

She didn't care. Right now, she wasn't Master Katara, one of the world's greatest experts in the secret arts of water.

Right now, she was Katara…the little girl who'd never, ever be able to forget her mother's face, charred to the bone.

She didn't know how long she sat there on that clifftop, collapsed to her knees, her son's glider the only thing holding up her weight as she screeched to the heavens. It could've been minutes. It could've been years.

But she knew exactly why she stopped.

"M…Master Katara…?" said a tiny, breathless, trembling voice.

[-]

She didn't know where she got the strength. She was barely paying attention to what she was doing anymore.

But within seconds of hearing those words, in one fluid motion, Katara had formed another "ice-sled," slid down the hillside, and pulled the young girl close to her chest.

"Korra…" she whispered, letting the shivering child bury herself gratefully in her heavy furs. "Spirits, I'm so glad you're safe…"

The girl looked like she wanted to say something, but all that came out were sniffs and shallow breaths.

It was no wonder, really. The young Avatar looked like she was seconds away from collapsing, with heavy bags under her eyes and ice crystals lingering in her hair. Her clothes had been torn in several places, and were accompanied by a number of scrapes and bruises – the worst of which, a bad gash on her knee, was still bleeding.

As Katara removed her gloves and attempted to heal the wound with her own, unsteady hands, she asked in a quiet voice, "How did you get here, Korra? Where have you been?"

Korra bit her tiny, quivering lips, unable to look her master in the eye. "I…I'm sorry…" she mumbled. "I know momma said I was supposed to stay in 'cuz of the storm. But then I got woken up by this…it sounded like howling…"

The elder waterbender remembered. She'd heard the same thing right before turning in. "A pack of polar bear-dogs, most likely," she said. "So you went out to find them."

"I knew it was wrong, but…I, I didn't think anybody would notice if I was gone just a little while," the little girl tried to explain, her sniffling growing louder and less dignified. "There was one…it sounded so lonely. So scared. I walked for a long time, but I couldn't find it."

A fit of shivers hit her, and she held onto Katara's parka even more tightly.

"Then…I found it in the snow. A puppy. It looked like it was just sleeping," continued Korra, face cast downward. "I tried to get its attention. I even gave it some seal jerky! But it…it wasn't moving…"

The Avatar stopped speaking there, but Katara could fill in the blanks well enough. It wasn't hard to make the connection between Korra's story, and the slain pup they'd found while flying on Druk – right before everything had gone south.

But a chill ran up her spine as she realized what else that implied. The pup's body had lured them right to that mysterious robed figure; the one who'd, at least tacitly, claimed credit for killing it.

Had that been the point all along? For the poor creature to serve as bait?

And if so…had the Avatar been their intended quarry?

Suddenly frantic, Katara demanded, more harshly than she'd been intending, "What happened next, Korra?"

Unfortunately, that seemed to be the limit of what the girl was willing to share. With damp eyes and a clenched lip, she just slowly moved her head from side to side.

"Korra, please," said Katara, trying to soften her voice despite the harsh pounding of her heart. "I need you to try and remember. What happened after you found that pup?"

The girl clutched at her shoulders, rocking back and forth. "C…Can't say…" she stuttered, as much from her own anxiety as from the cold. "They'll…find me again…"

"Who will?" asked Katara. "Korra, who are 'they'?"

Korra didn't speak for almost a full minute. Then, with her forehead pressed into the old woman's chest, and a tone of utter anguish in her voice, she squeaked out, "…lotus…"

The waterbending master blinked, several times over. Then, she whispered back, "The Red Lotus? Did they attack you?"

But Korra just slowly shook her head.

Katara wanted, needed, to ask more. But in her seventy-three years, she'd learned many times that life often didn't provide its answers in words.

Sometimes, it simply put them into action.

The waterbender had only a few seconds to react, but all the other close calls throughout the night had her reflexes primed and her adrenaline pumping. As such, she was able to lift Korra and leap aside just as a jagged spire of rock burst forth from the snow, right where her head had just been.

Unfortunately, that was far from the end of her travails. More spikes followed, each longer and sharper than the last, and it took every ounce Katara's aged muscles could muster to stay a hair's breadth ahead of them.

Korra was screaming now, all her dignity as the Avatar forgotten. Her master found she couldn't really blame her.

She might've been the spirit of the planet, and about the most stubborn and headstrong girl Katara had met since Toph…but she was still only five.

A five-year-old who was watching on as everything she knew was stolen away from her.

Katara couldn't see the earthbender who was attacking them, so all she could really do was continue to dodge and search for an escape route. Earth was probably the element she had the hardest time combating at the best of times, and she was far from that right now.

Reaching out with her senses, she attempted to send tremors through the snow, hoping it might unbalance her unseen foe. To her surprise, it actually seemed to work; the spikes stopped for a few seconds, and there was a faint grunting sound to her right.

Moving quickly, and with Korra clinging for dear life to her cradling arm, Katara darted around a rock formation and found what she was looking for: a tall woman in an earthbending stance, her lean face screwed up in single-minded concentration.

And still, Katara gasped. Because for the second time that night, she'd seen a face she recognized behind acts she could've never expected.

"Daiya…?" she said to the long-haired woman, taking a step back, scarcely able to believe her eyes. "Why in the world would you…?"

But Daiya offered no more words than her colleague. Instead, she let loose a guttural yell and a brutal punch, sending another array of jagged rocks at the pair of them.

Working one-handed, Katara only managed to avoid or parry all of the strikes with great difficulty, and was knocked completely off-balance as a result.

There was no denying it; that had been intended as a lethal blow. Something that was completely out of Daiya's character. She'd famously retired from the police because harming people with her bending, even criminals, was something she found unconscionable.

Which meant it wasn't just Hong Bao. Something strange – something evil – was affecting members of the White Lotus.

Images of Zuko and her brother flitted across her brain, and her thoughts chilled. Was it affecting all of them?

Korra was still screeching her head off, but now there were words among the incoherent, terrified blubbering.

"They…They've been chasing me all over!" she cried out, her eyes scrunched up tight and her fists hanging onto Katara's parka for dear life. "Then the storm came, and…and I couldn't see, but there was so much and it was all around me and I, I, I…!"

"It's gonna be okay," the old master told her charge, as much to convince herself as the Avatar. "I'll get you home safe, and you'll be with your mom and dad again."

Sokka had told her, on more than one occasion, that she had a problem with overpromising. That sometimes she tried to comfort people with assurances that everything would turn out alright, when she had absolutely no idea whether or not it was true.

Right now, she had a sinking feeling this was one of those times.

Daiya's attacks didn't let up for a single moment, forcing Katara back a few more steps with each volley. Her water-whip worked overtime diverting or slicing apart each rock that came for her, but it wasn't a pace she could keep up for long.

Eventually, inevitably, Katara lost her footing and stumbled backward, shielding Korra with her body as she took a painful fall on her back. Daiya slowly approached her prone form, panting heavily as she formed one more, enormous spike, and raised it above her head.

The last thing Katara expected to see was the woman's pinpoint eyes – that same distant, wrong look dwelling within them, as it had her colleague.

Holding her student close, the old waterbender finally admitted defeat. This was it.

This was finally the end.

And about half a second after she accepted that, something very strange happened to the stone spike.

It melted.

Daiya had been raising her final weapon directly over her own head, so when it suddenly and inexplicably turned to molten lava, there was only one place for gravity to take it. The earthbender howled in agony as the boiling rock cascaded down her body, melting her flesh and singing her bones.

Katara averted her eyes, and covered Korra's own.

She kept her eyelids shut tight for longer than was necessary – or, frankly, advisable. But after all she'd seen that night, it was almost a comfort to block it all out for a few moments.

To pretend none of this had ever happened.

When she finally opened them back up again, and let light back into her world, what she saw was an intensely handsome man. He had long, black hair and a distinctive mustache, with heavy robes the color of emerald.

And he was standing over the desiccated corpse that'd once been Daiya, his face just about literally set in stone.

"Hello, Master Katara," he said, his tones polite but wholly severe. "It's time for you to give me the girl."

[-]

Naturally, Katara's response to this was only to pull Korra closer. The young Avatar had ceased her wailing and extricated herself from the crook of Katara's arm, but though she looked up at their "savior" with shimmering eyes, the power of speech still seemed to have abandoned her.

"Tell me who you are," demanded Katara, trying to match the gravity of his voice. "And what you want with Korra."

The mustached man glared at her, but ultimately nodded once. "My name is Ghazan. An earthbender, and a lavabender," he responded, turning to face them both fully. "And I'm here on behalf of the Red Lotus."

Katara returned the glare with full force. "You monsters attacked my home. Killed my friends, and loved ones. What makes you think I'd do anything you say?" she shot back.

"All that you've seen here, and you still blame us," said Ghazan, his eyes tilting to the side to linger over the woman he'd killed. "The White Lotus is out of control. We came to put a stop to them. And right now…we're the only chance the Avatar has of leaving the South Pole safely."

The old master tightened her protective hold of the girl. "And you think I'm just going to let you take her?" she snapped.

"If you truly care about her? Yes," he answered smoothly. "The entire Order is out for her blood. Or just about. She wasn't the reason we came here, but I won't stand back and let a child die."

Katara's resolve faltered slightly, hearing the sheer conviction in his voice. "I…want to believe you. I always want to believe the best in everyone," she told him. Then, her face hardened again. "But you're not the first of your 'compatriots' I've fought tonight. Your waterbender, in particular, didn't make you sound very innocent."

"Ming-Hua can be…overzealous, sometimes. But her heart's in the right place, and so is mine," spoke Ghazan. "None of that changes the facts. You want the Avatar to live? Then leave her with me."

A brief silence passed between them, the only sound their hitched, uneven breaths in the midst of the winter winds.

But eventually, Katara shook her head.

"I'm sorry, but I can't allow that," she said. "Korra stays with me. We're going back to the city, and we're going to find her mother and father. If you want to accompany us I won't try and stop you, but…"

"Her mother and father are dead!" shouted the earthbender, cutting her off.

Katara's breath caught in her throat, as a shocked, incredulous gasp escaped her lips. But that was nothing compared to how the child she was holding reacted.

"N…N…No!" she screamed, hands balled up into tiny fists. "You…You're lying!"

"I wish I was," he replied, his voice growing low and somber. If he was faking it, then it was one heck of an act. "But I saw it happen. Even saw who did it. I didn't get a good look at their face, but one thing's for sure: they were wearing blue and white."

The elder waterbender's mouth fell open. "I…I don't know what's going on," she said, after swallowing. "But this isn't the White Lotus. Something must be changing them…controlling them…"

But she stopped speaking when she saw the look on Korra's face. A look of disbelief, bordering on hurt.

Instantly, she recognized her error. The poor girl had just learned she'd lost her parents, and from her perspective…her wise protector was more concerned with making excuses for those responsible.

Trying to rectify her mistake, she hastily added, "Of course, if it was them, then…"

"Maybe I should go with them," Korra interjected, her voice tiny but defiant.

Katara's blue eyes went wide. Hurriedly, she opened her mouth to argue, but Korra cut her off again.

"I…don't know what's true anymore. I don't know who I can trust," she said, her voice cracking on the last word. "I wanna see mommy and daddy. I want things to go back to normal. I want…I want…"

Tears poured down her cheeks, but she slapped away Katara's gloved hand when it reached to dry them.

"Where're you gonna take me?" she demanded of Ghazan in clipped tones, without looking at him.

"Anywhere you want. The Red Lotus is dedicated, above all, to freedom," explained the lavabender. "But I promise, we'll get you far away from here. Where the White Lotus can't find you."

"Korra, you can't trust him. Maybe he's telling the truth, but we can't know for sure," said Katara, looking down at her young charge imploringly.

But to her dismay, the young Avatar extricated herself from her grip, and came to stand precisely equidistant from both of them.

"I told you. I don't know who to trust now," she murmured. "But he was able to protect me. You couldn't, Master Katara."

The waterbender didn't have a good response to that. She felt liquid begin to well up in her own eyes.

Korra turned to look up at Ghazan – an awkward angle, given that he was at least three times her height.

"Can you take me to the city first, like she said?" she requested of him. "I wanna look for my parents. I wanna know for sure you're not lying."

"It'll be dangerous…but if we meet up with the rest of my friends, I think we could do it together," said Ghazan, and it was clear from his expression that he'd given the right answer. "We have nothing to hide from you, Korra. You'll see that in time."

Katara clenched her wrinkled fists, subtly beginning to work her bending through the snow. She couldn't just sit by and let this happen.

But before she could make any gestures, earth rose from beneath the snowbanks and seized around her hands and feet.

"I respect what you and Avatar Aang have done too much to hurt you. Saving the world from a power-mad tyrant who would've scorched it to the ground," Ghazan declared, without looking at her. His eyes, brown and surprisingly soft, were reserved solely for Korra. "But I can't let you interfere. I'll release those once we've gotten far enough away."

Ghazan likely intended those to be his parting words. Based on the manner in which he turned away, one muscular hand offered to a grateful Korra, it certainly seemed that way.

Yet the dramatic mood of his exit was mired somewhat as a bladed boomerang smacked him right in the temple.

"Don't you dare touch my sister," said Sokka, catching the boomerang with expert precision.

[-]

It took about three seconds before the standoff transformed into an all-out brawl.

Sokka, it seemed – as he described between sword-swings and tosses of his trusty boomerang – had been in battle from the moment they'd been separated in the storm, taking out Red Lotus goons left and right. Mercifully, whatever "affliction" was affecting the Order didn't appear to have spread to its Grandmaster, and he still had his full faculty of mind as he combated rock and stone with good-old-fashioned weaponry.

Unfortunately, his earlier battles had cut his armory down to a much more modest array, consisting of his "space sword," a boomerang, and the kunai, its chain long since broken off. And while that was plenty to challenge your garden-variety earthbender, Ghazan was…

Well, unique.

Katara had only heard stories of earthbenders manipulating the element in its liquid state, but he changed the phase of his rocks with nearly as much fluidity as she did with ice. This presented a problem for a close-range fighter like Sokka. He couldn't exactly slash Ghazan with his sword if getting close meant being burned alive.

Still, she was certain that if the two siblings were able to fight him, together, he'd be toast in no time. Regretfully, her hands and feet were both still bound in thick earth, and she'd never quite cracked the secret to bending with subtler gestures, like the late King Bumi could do with his face.

Sokka might've been able to break through her bonds with his blade, but she knew he couldn't afford the distraction. His duel with Ghazan was at a stalemate only because of his monomaniacal focus.

If his concentration wavered, even for an instant, her brother was going to get a faceful of lava for his trouble.

Distractions, however, weren't particularly far behind. Now that the fog had largely cleared, it quickly became obvious that neither Sokka nor Ghazan had come here alone. The sights and sounds of other battles drifted toward her through the cold night air, distorted by distance and by the exhausted haze that gripped her own mind – though they were growing closer by the minute.

In time, though she had to crane her neck at an awkward angle to see it, she recognized the tall combustionbender, her mask having been lost at some point in the shuffle. And the girl waterbending at her side, with liquid tendrils taking the place of missing limbs, must have been her opponent from the capital.

There was a third figure involved on their side of the fight, though their thick, dull-gray robes and near-constant movement made it tricky to get a bead on them. But it was the other side of the battle that most drew her eye.

Struggling valiantly against the trio was Zuko, sitting astride Druk and clutching at a bad wound near his stomach. He looked in bad shape, but seemed determined to keep up a steady stream of fire from his one available hand, laying down cover fire for his ally on the ground.

Katara's heart leapt as she recognized Tenzin, alive and well, zipping along within the protection of his air wheel and blasting their enemies with powerful gusts.

Despite everything, she found herself breathing the slightest sigh of relief. When she'd found his staff – now lying a few feet away, where she'd dropped it in her haste to grab onto and protect Korra – it'd taken all her fortitude not to assume the worst.

Her son was alive, and he was fighting back. After everything else she'd lost this night, she'd take her victories wherever she could get them.

That being said, the two men were outnumbered, and the night's chaos had clearly taken a toll on their stamina. Even Druk moved sluggishly, by dragon standards, with a nasty gash on his temple marking his earlier head injury.

She, like the rest of Team Avatar, had known Druk since his hatching, and as such was well-aware that dragons' heads were surprisingly vulnerable. No doubt his attacker had known this as well. They still weren't a very common race, with the descendants of Ran and Shaw numbering only a few dozen. All were under the immediate protection of the royal family.

Then again…the founder of the Red Lotus, if she remembered correctly, was a Sun Warrior. Which just made the attack on their most sacred beast feel all the more disgusting.

In any event, Druk seemed either unable or unwilling to rise more than a few dozen meters off the ground, making him a prime target for the enemy. Explosions and spikes of ice flew through the air at a steady pace, forcing Zuko to direct his companion in a series of breakneck, frantic dodges.

Tenzin did his best to help, but the gray-robed man provided a surprising amount of challenge, given that he didn't appear to be a bender. His acrobatic leaps and precise strikes reminded Katara of Ty Lee in her prime, constantly avoiding and evading, and airbending simply wasn't designed to counter someone who was also employing negative jing.

Eventually, one of the dragon's turns came a fraction of a second too late, and the combustion lady's attack managed to hit its mark. Singed, Druk collapsed into the snow, forcing Zuko to hastily dismount.

The waterbender wasted no time capitalizing on his brief disorientation, overwhelming the former Fire Lord with the surrounding snow. It was amazing, if a bit horrific, how easily she could manipulate the element without two of her core limbs.

Katara's problems would be solved immediately if she could just do that.

With Druk neutralized, the waterbender was plenty capable of challenging Zuko on her own, freeing up the combustionbender to double-team Tenzin. Her attacks made it extremely difficult for the airbender to mount an offensive, as every ounce of his energy was shifted into staying ahead of the intense explosions.

Seeing her son in peril, Katara found herself struggling even more violently against her restraints, despite being fairly certain it wouldn't work. Ghazan had known what he was doing.

But that was her boy. She had to, she needed to…to do something…

A sharp intake of breath a few meters away brought the old woman back to her senses.

Of course…how could she have been so stupid? She'd been so focused on the fighting that she'd forgotten who she was watching it alongside.

There was still one thing she could do.

"Korra…please, listen to me," she said in a low voice, causing the girl to jump; she'd been equally engrossed in all the action. "I know I failed you…I know I haven't been able to protect you tonight, like I should've. But I want to. You just need to earthbend me free."

The young Avatar bit her lip. Her expression was pained and frightened, in a way that broke Katara's heart.

"Are you gonna try to stop me? From going with them?" she asked, just as quietly.

"I…" began Katara, before hesitating. She couldn't lie. Not if she wanted the girl to trust her. "I want to talk you out of it, if you'll let me. You don't know these people. But one of them made it sound like they brought the spirits here. Made them do…whatever it was they were doing."

"I dunno what's going on," Korra whimpered. "But I…I know what I saw. Spirits didn't attack me. They didn't attack me."

Her blue eyes, stricken with terror, drifted slowly to Sokka and Ghazan, whose duel was producing a series of sparks and sharp clangs a short distance away.

But that terror wasn't directed at the lavabender.

"I thought the White Lotus was here to protect me. I thought they were trying to keep me safe," she said, lips quivering. "Isn't that what you said Aang wanted?"

"It is! And they do!" exclaimed Katara. "I'm not sure what's gotten into a few of them tonight, but…"

"Fourteen!" Korra squealed, interrupting her. "Fourteen! That's how many came after me! Just in one night! I was stuck out in the storm, and I just wanted to get back home, and…and they…!"

She was clutching at her shoulders now, looking absolutely beside herself with anguish. It wasn't a look that should've ever been on a five-year-old's face.

Seeing it, all Katara wanted to do – as a teacher, as a mother, as a friend – was make that look of hurt go away. But it seemed hard to imagine, right now, that any one person ever could.

"I admit, I don't know everything that's happened," the old master made an attempt. "I do want to, though. You don't have to run away. Maybe things aren't as bad as we fear. Once we go back and pick up the pieces, maybe…"

But the girl shut her down again, with a single, burning stare.

"I saw the bodies," she said, her tones becoming lifeless and hollow. "All over. Bleeding on the snow. When I close my eyes I still see them!"

"Korra…" murmured Katara, her aged voice cracking. "You shouldn't have to go through this alone. No one should. When I lost my own mother, it was the worst thing I could ever imagine. What you've faced tonight…it's a thousand times worse. But I know what I needed back then. Please…just let me help you."

The girl looked back at her, breathing very slowly. She was very still, like a petrified little statue, her expression no longer betraying any of what she was feeling.

Finally, after several steady, labored blinks, she gave her answer.

"Maybe I don't have to run away," she whispered. "But I want to."

Lying there, watching as this poor, tiny, broken girl stood in profile against the moonlit sky, Katara couldn't help but hear echoes of the past.

"I was afraid and confused. I didn't know what to do. I never saw Gyatso again. Next thing I knew…I was waking up in your arms after you found me in the iceberg."

"You ran away."

"And then the Fire Nation attacked our temple. My people needed me, and I wasn't there to help!"

"You don't know what would have…"

"The world needed me and I wasn't there to help!"

Was this how Gyatso would've felt, if he'd had a chance to stop Aang before he fled the Southern Air Temple?

Back then, she'd assured Aang that his choice had been the correct one, in the long run; without his time in the iceberg, after all, they never would've met. There was a good chance he would've died with the rest of his people, and the war would've ended before it ever truly began.

But there was one, big difference between now and then. The iceberg had concealed no agenda, no hidden plan. It was a neutral space for the Avatar to wait out a period of incredible pain and suffering, only to emerge exactly as he'd been before.

What would these "Red Lotus" people do to her, if they took her away? Korra was so young, and so impressionable. Especially now that she'd lost everything that rooted her to her former life.

Katara never got a chance to ask, however. It seemed that, while she'd been distracted, the gray-robed combatant had managed to extricate himself from the fight with Tenzin, who was still engaging the combustionbender with all his might.

And now he was only a few feet away.

"It is an honor, Avatar Korra. My name is Zaheer," he said. His voice was surprisingly soft, though there was an intense gravity to each and every word. "Has Ghazan explained who we are?"

"You can trust him, Korra! He's the guy I owe everything to," called out Ghazan, as a stream of lava forced Sokka to leap back and switch to his boomerang. "Zaheer, take her out of here! I don't want her getting hurt!"

"Don't you dare!" yelled the non-bender, tossing his favorite weapon as he did. Ghazan effortlessly ducked under the boomerang, letting it pass harmlessly over his head, then ducked again in time for the return trip.

Sokka blinked. "Okay…you're good, I admit it," he added, as he caught the blade. "But that doesn't mean I'm letting you take Korra!"

"Yes, we're well aware the White Lotus wants the Avatar for itself. You've made that eminently clear, Grandmaster," responded Zaheer, speaking the title as if it was a vicious slur. "We, on the other hand, are here to guide her toward her own freedom. Where would you like to go, Korra?"

The little girl's mouth hung open slightly, as if marveling at the simple fact that she was being asked. In a trembling voice, she repeated her request, "I wanna go to the city. I gotta…I gotta find out for sure if…"

"Say no more. Ghazan told me what happened," said Zaheer. "I do not envy the position you are in, Korra. But I also understand that there are some things we must see in order to accept."

He offered a hand.

As he parried away Sokka's tossed kunai, Ghazan gave her a firm, reassuring nod.

Katara felt herself shout out a cry of protest.

But already, deep inside, she knew which of those Korra was going to answer.

She took the older man's calloused hand, and allowed him to guide her.

As they walked past Katara, the waterbending master panting heavily as she struggled anew against the firm earth, she saw him bend down to grasp an object in the snow. With one final, stinging pang of horror, she realized it was Tenzin's glider.

"Even without the bending arts, this should aid in mobility. And in any event…I think it's long past time it be liberated from a councilman's tyrannical hands," he declared, mostly to himself. "Now, onward, Korra. To a future where you'll never have to look back."

Katara, bound in place, couldn't turn her head to watch them depart.

But somehow, she knew her student was already gone.

[-]

Though neither of them commented on it, the duel between Sokka and Ghazan spiked in intensity the moment the Avatar was out of sight.

Part of it, certainly, was the sense of urgency. As the man Aang had most directly tasked with carrying on his legacy, Sokka had absolutely no intention of allowing Zaheer to get away, so long as he had even the slimmest chance of stopping him.

At the same time, splitting the Red Lotus' party meant Zuko and Tenzin were starting to gain the upper hand against their opponents, and it was clear Ghazan knew it. He needed to take Sokka down, hard, before his bender allies could join in and turn the tide.

There was another factor, however. Ghazan's expression changed, just slightly, once Korra could no longer see it, and it was accompanied by a flurry of harsher, more forceful techniques.

"Not holding back anymore, huh?" demanded Sokka, as he used a rolling dodge to avoid a molten sinkhole opening beneath his feet. "Done putting on the 'nice guy' act for a little girl?"

"It's not an act. That girl deserves more than to grow up your brainwashed puppet!" said the earthbender, keeping up his assault with kicks that sent three boulders flying. "But yeah, I don't want her to see this side of me yet. Not what she needs today."

But Sokka surprised him by not evading the rocks. Instead, he leapt onto one of them, and used it as a literal stepping stone to close the distance between them, sword extended.

Ghazan howled in pain as a deep gash opened in his forearm. Hurriedly, he used the earth to propel himself backward, while simultaneously summoning several smaller rocks into his hands.

"Alright, we're done playing around," he told the Grandmaster, as the rocks began to swirl between his palms. "Like your sister, I do respect you, despite your…unfortunate career decisions. But I can't allow this to go on any further."

Katara's eyes widened as she realized what he was doing. The rocks were now moving at such a speed that they'd begun to melt – and taken the form of a large, four-pointed shuriken.

She almost shouted a word of warning. But by the time she opened her mouth, Ghazan had already launched the attack.

Sokka didn't have the chance to do anything but react out of instinct. He brought his sword down in a sharp arc, straight through the incoming attack.

And the lava shuriken split clean in two.

"Well, uh…okay then," said Sokka, his eyes bugged out, looking as surprised as anyone that that'd actually worked. Soon, however, his face shifted into a confident smirk. "Guess the melting point of meteorite's a little higher than you can handle! That's gonna make this a lot less one-sided. Oh, and by the way…"

Then, without further warning, the non-bender rushed forward, blade swinging rapidly but with perfect precision and control.

"When I joined the White Lotus, I took an oath. That I'd do everything in my power to keep the world in balance, the way Aang did," he continued on, pressing his offensive forward with each step. "And whatever high and mighty crap you've got in your head, you guys are a threat to that balance. So one way or another…I'm bringing you to justice!"

"Justice? You think you understand justice?" spat Ghazan, as he dodged one slash after another, searching for an opening to counterattack. With one arm injured, he was suddenly the one having trouble keeping up. "When you cling to the very institutions that pervert it every single day?"

"Look, I dunno what lies your little sewing circle's been telling about us, and I don't care. But I'm not letting you inject them into Korra!" exclaimed Sokka. "And not just because she's the Avatar. It's 'cuz she's a kid, and she deserves better than that!"

The lavabender's expression hardened.

"Well, there's something we finally do agree on," he hissed, pure loathing burning from his eyes. "She does deserve better."

Neither of them saw it coming. Neither of them noticed that the split pieces of the lava shuriken, now cooled and lying in the snowbanks behind Sokka, had begun to twitch.

Not until, in one quick, precise motion, one flew into his back, embedding its point straight through the Grandmaster's chest.

"And I'll make sure she gets it," said Ghazan, finishing his words with one last, lingering glare of contempt. "When the Red Lotus sets her free."

Sokka, meanwhile, was looking down at the wound, as if unable to quite believe it was actually there. Slowly, he collapsed to his knees, eyes wide with shock, and coughed up a mouthful of blood.

"Wow…" he murmured hoarsely, as the crimson liquid streamed down his bony cheeks. "Killed by a boomerang. That's…actually kinda funny…"

Then, the Grandmaster of the White Lotus fell forward, and was still.

Katara, for her part, was rapidly losing her conception of the world around her. She could vaguely hear a voice that was something like her own, shouting her brother's name at the top of her lungs. She thought she might've heard something similar in Zuko's aged tones, and a cry of "Uncle!" in a panicked scream that sounded very strange coming out of her son.

She wasn't proud of it. But in the face of such sounds, of such sights, slipping into unconsciousness was almost a comfort.

Her eyes closed, and all was darkness.

[-]

For the second or third time that night, Katara came to without the slightest idea of how much time had passed in the interim.

A few moments passed before she remembered why she was here; before the memories of the night came flooding back in vicious, brutal detail.

Breaths she hadn't realized she was holding in suddenly escaped in a rush, shallow and cold. Her hands fumbled, clenching and unclenching, unable to keep still. The stifling earth trapped them no longer.

Instead, they found…sheets. Soft and warm and so, so tempting. They seemed to swallow her up, inviting her to slip back into the sweet bliss of nothingness.

Just for an instant – a single, blessed, wonderful instant – she entertained the notion that this entire, horrific night had been nothing but a dream. But the thought was fleeting, and abandoned her just as quickly as it came.

There were some things that were simply too terrible to imagine. Some things so miserably, heart-wrenchingly awful, they could only be the truth.

Vaguely, she realized a voice was calling to her. A voice she knew very well. Instinctively, desperate to take hold of something, she reached out to the speaker.

Soft but powerful hands grasped hers. Hands with tattoos.

"Mother?" whispered Tenzin, sounding as if he scarcely dared believe she'd awoken. "Oh, thank the spirits…I almost thought…"

His throat clenched up, and without speaking any further, he reached forward and hugged his mother close. For the first time in his life, words had failed the wise teacher completely.

"Hold me, Tenzin," she said, anguished words tumbling from her lips unfiltered. "I know you're my son…that I should be the one protecting you…but I…I just…"

"Shhh. It's alright, mother. I'm here. I'm always going to be here," the airbender told her quietly. "I love you so much. I know I don't show it as well as Kya or Bumi, but…"

Again, his voice caught, and he fell into silence.

"I love you too, Tenzin. More than I could say in ten thousand years," was her muttered reply. "But we can't keep avoiding the elephant-mandrill in the room. What happened? Where are we?"

"The ship we arrived on. We repurposed the lower deck into a medical bay," stated Tenzin. He gestured to the White Lotus symbols on the walls, and the other beds on either side, which in her haze she'd failed to notice until now. It seemed she was the only "patient" currently awake, though. "That answers the easy question. The other…is harder to explain. I still know so little myself…"

Katara cut him off. "What about my brother?" she demanded, desperate to believe that if nothing else, then at least that was a product of her wretched imaginings.

But her son just shook his head, very slowly. She could feel the pit fall out of her stomach.

"We don't have enough room to transport his body, unfortunately. And there wasn't time for a proper burial," he said in subdued tones. "We'll come back for him, I promise. We'll come back for all of them."

The way he said those words captured her attention instantly. "How many…?" she asked, her voice hollow.

Tenzin's head hung low. "We still don't know yet. Dozens, hundreds…thousands," he answered her. "It's easier to count the number of people we have accounted for. Mother…nearly the entire tribe is dead or missing."

"No!" screamed Katara, in a voice so high and so shrill she was surprised it could still come out of her aged lips. "Please tell me, there…there has to be some hope left. Maybe most of them were simply scattered by the storm, but now that it's over…"

But Tenzin was shaking his head again.

"The Everstorm didn't dissipate. It just…moved on," he said. "After the spirits tore apart the city, they continued their rampage through the tundra. The chances of survival for anyone wandering the South Pole now are…slim."

Katara swallowed, hard, fighting to keep control of herself. "It's…It's all gone, isn't it?" she choked out. "Everything…everyone…"

"We managed to pull out five other members of the Lotus. As well as about two dozen civilians," responded her son. "But otherwise…yes. For all intents and purposes…the Southern Water Tribe is no more."

He was struggling as hard as he could to keep his composure – for both of them. But the mask was slipping, and cracks were forming everywhere.

"Tonraq. Senna. Are they…?" she was unable to help herself from asking.

Yet another shake of the head, this one briefer. "Among the missing," he murmured back. "We couldn't find their bodies, but their house was…"

Tenzin didn't finish the sentence, but he didn't have to. Katara remembered the colossal spirit that the former chief had run off to fight. Its inhuman grin would be etched into her mind's eye for the rest of her life.

"And…And…" she said, summoning the very last of her courage. She still hadn't asked the most important question of all. "Korra…?"

"Last we saw, she was being kidnapped by those…thugs," replied the airbender, seeming to struggle to find the right word. "But they can't have gotten far. We're going to Whale Tail Island to regroup and refuel, and then we'll track those terrorists down if it's the last thing I…"

"That's not going to be necessary," interrupted Zuko, as he limped into the room.

If Tenzin looked haggard – and he certainly did, with heavy bags under his eyes and a number of tears in his Air Nomad robes – then the former Fire Lord seemed just about ready to keel over and die. His stomach wound had been dressed and rudimentarily healed, but was clearly still quite nasty, and would likely leave him with yet another scar. Both arms were grasping onto planks in the walls, and Katara doubted he'd be able to stand upright without them.

"What do you mean, Zuko?" asked Tenzin, honestly confused. "They have the Avatar! We can't just…"

"They don't. I just returned from the capital…or what's left of it," said the firebender, graciously accepting a proffered chair. "We…found her body."

A beat of silence passed. Katara and Tenzin looked at each other, certain they'd misheard.

Then, in a very small voice, she whispered, "…What?"

"On the outskirts of the city. She'd…been stabbed through the heart," he continued on, his tones becoming cold and clinical. It was a defensive technique she'd come to know well. "I don't know how she got there, or who did it, but her face was untouched. The truth is undeniable."

"She…wanted to go back," she found herself explaining, voice working on autopilot. "To see for certain if the Red Lotus was telling the truth about her parents. One of them – Zaheer, I think he was called – offered to take her."

"And likely abandoned her once things got too rough," Zuko growled disdainfully. "Katara…there's one other thing I didn't mention. Her body…"

He sighed mournfully, and said, "It was surrounded by four of my own initiates."

The waterbender couldn't help but recoil slightly.

"She said the White Lotus had come after her all night," she declared. "And Daiya…Hong Bao. I saw their faces. I saw what they'd been doing. I don't understand why, but something's…changed them somehow…"

"You don't have to tell me, Katara," interjected the former Fire Lord. "I've known Jee since…well, since the days I was hunting you guys. I brought him into the Lotus myself. He's one of my dearest friends. And today…he attacked me. Completely out of nowhere. I had no choice but to knock him out cold in the snow. I…don't even know if he's alive right now."

"Why weren't you affected?" asked Tenzin. "You and Unc…and Grandmaster Sokka?"

None of them missed his verbal stumbling, but none of them commented on it, either. Still, Katara felt the still-raw wound burst back to life, and she found herself biting her lip so hard it drew a bit of blood.

"I'm not sure. We don't have the first clue what's causing this, much less the precise mechanics," said Zuko. "But let's get one thing straight, before we go any further. As far as the world will be concerned…the Red Lotus killed Avatar Korra."

Katara sat bolt upright, her eyes bulging. For just a moment, her grief fell to the wayside, replaced with utter indignation.

"What?" she gasped out. "You want us to…to lie? About this?!"

"To be fair…it may well not be a lie. In fact, I'd bet all the gold in the Fire Nation that it isn't," the firebender attempted to justify himself. "Think about it, Katara. A group of terrorists launches an attack on their sworn enemy…and that's when a bunch of them suddenly choose to go berserk? It can't be a coincidence. Korra's killer might've only been a tool. The real mastermind is still out there somewhere, I'm sure of it."

"I don't disagree with your wider point," Tenzin cut in. "But why can't we just tell the world that?"

"There are far too many unknowns right now, Tenzin. And whoever was behind this…this massacre…" said Zuko, tugging at his beard plaintively. "We can't risk tipping them off that we're onto them. So I'll investigate this on my own…and quietly. And in the meantime…"

"In the meantime, the world will be taught a fiction," Katara snapped.

"A simplified version of the truth. Given that we don't know the whole one yet," Zuko responded insistently. "Besides, what do you want the headlines to read tomorrow? 'White Lotus Murders Their Avatar'? No one would care about the rest of the details. That would be the end of our Order – precisely when the world needs us the most."

The former Fire Lord gripped his face and groaned in frustration. Katara couldn't help but notice his hand was positioned directly over his scar.

"Right now, the world is dangerously close to falling into chaos," he went on, metaphorical fire in his voice. "No Avatar has ever died this young before, in recorded history. While we search for Korra's reincarnation in the Earth Kingdom, the Order is the one institution that can preserve peace and harmony. If we lose the faith of the people, we lose that too. And for what?"

"For justice. For truth. For honor," said Katara slowly, now looking at her old friend as if she'd never quite seen him before. "Things I used to think you understood."

"I understand that there're more important things in this world than one man's principles," murmured the former Fire Lord. "I'm not risking every man, woman, and child on the planet for the sake of some lofty ideals. And that's what's at stake if we drag the name of the White Lotus through the mud without reason."

He sighed wearily, pitching forward in his chair so that he could bury his face fully between his hands.

"And besides…" he added in a muffled voice. "This wasn't even my idea, anyway. I'm just following the dictates of our new Grandmaster."

Tenzin's brow rose. "I'm sorry…" he said. "Who is that, exactly?"

"That would be me," Master Konsai called out as he descended the steps into the lower deck. He'd already changed into robes that matched Sokka's almost exactly – except in terms of width, of course.

The bald man cleared his throat as he gently but firmly pushed his way past the firebender.

"Zuko's already given you my reasoning, so I won't reiterate," he continued, his stubby arms crossed in front of his chest. "But the decision is final. The Avatar died in tonight's chaos…despite the tireless efforts of the White Lotus to save her. End of story."

Katara gaped at her fellow waterbender. "That's an even worse stretching of the truth that Zuko's version!" she exclaimed. "You can't expect us to just go along with this!"

"I can, and I do," Konsai answered impatiently. "How long will it take to find the next Avatar, much less train and protect them? Do you have any idea just how many babies are born in the Earth Kingdom every day? The world's balance can't survive without the Order, and the Order can't survive if everyone thinks of us as some…child-killing psychopaths!"

Several moments passed as Katara locked eyes with two men she thought she knew so well.

Then, her lips barely moving, she said very quietly, "With all due respect to you, Zuko, and to my late brother…suddenly I'm very glad I never took up the tile myself."

And with that, she climbed back under her covers, draping them fully over her head and blocking out the world. A world that'd done its absolute best that night to steal away everything she held dear.

The trio of men seemed to take that as their cue to depart, and let her get some rest.

Dreamless sleep captured her within seconds.

[-]

When Katara next awoke, she was alone.

Even the other patient beds had been abandoned, and the lights that illuminated the lower deck chamber had all been snuffed out. It was actually rather eerie.

Ignoring the shooting pain in her legs, hips, and really just about everywhere in her body, the waterbending master eventually managed to pull herself out of bed. Much as it hurt to move, it felt a thousand times worse to stay still.

At least when she was walking, she could concentrate on the base physicality of the act. One foot in front of the other, then the next. Repeating, like the steady beat of a drum.

Anything that distracted her from her present thoughts was a comfort.

A series of wooden steps brought Katara unexpectedly into the open air. Like the lower deck, the upper one was abandoned, the only sounds the soft splash of calm waves against the hull. Everyone had retired to their own rooms, she supposed.

Her eyes blinked through a sudden burst of light. The sun, it seemed, was just beginning to rise over the horizon. The chaos had brought them straight through the night, and into a new dawn.

It was sickly, wretchedly beautiful.

She thought she had more composure than that, but the sight of the first drops of sunrise – so calm, so serene, as if this was a day just like any other – robbed her of whatever reserves remained. Katara collapsed against the railing, crying hot, wet tears into the frigid waters below.

It wasn't fair. The world had ended, so why was it pretending as if things would continue on?

All of them had left her now. Her mother. Her father. Her husband. Her brother.

She'd failed them all. When they needed her most, each and every time, she'd stood by, and she'd watched.

But most of all, she'd failed…

"A woman as beautiful as you should not shed tears," said a quiet voice.

Blinking, the old master turned her head slightly, and was only mildly surprised to see her husband, standing tall and in his prime.

Her lack of surprise, of course, could be explained by the fact that she knew none of this was real. Either she was still in bed, dreaming, or sheer exhaustion was causing her to hallucinate while awake.

Either way, she wasn't going to look a gift ostrich-horse in the mouth. If her subconscious was going to play this trick on her, she figured she might as well make the most of it.

"I suppose I won't bother asking how you've been lately," she answered her husband, smiling faintly.

Aang, for his part, was now mirroring her stance, arms perched over the ship's railing and eyes turned toward the slowly rising sun.

"If I can pay you the same favor," he murmured, returning the smile. But it was thin, and solemn. "You must know this isn't your fault, sweetie. None of it."

A brief, humorless chuckle escaped her lips at the childish pet name. "Can't say I agree," she said. Her voice came out hollow and numb. "Rebuilding the South was my life's work. And now…it's gone. A few hours of madness was all it took."

But Aang just slowly shook his head.

"When I woke from the iceberg, I learned that the world I'd grown up with was ashes and dust," he told her. "I was the very last of my society – of my people. Yet look around now. The new Air Nation may be small, but it's thriving. Like a dragon-phoenix…those ashes birthed new life."

Katara struggled to stem back a tide of emotion that threatened to send her reeling. Right now, it didn't matter whether her husband was a phantom or not.

To hear him speak of such unbearable pain…and yet still find hope in it…

There was a reason she'd loved him for nearly fifty years now.

"What can I do now, Aang?" the pained whisper tumbled from her lips. "I'm so lost without you. Without anyone…"

His smile became warmer. "You'll figure it out, in time," he said. "You're the bravest, strongest person I've ever known, Katara. Never forget that."

"But…But I…" she mumbled, but he wasn't finished speaking.

"And you haven't failed anyone," continued Aang. "You didn't fail your mother. You did all you could at that age. And years later, when those demons reared their heads again…you made the right choice, and turned away from revenge. It's all she ever would've asked for."

He turned his entire body to face her fully.

"You didn't fail Hakoda. He lived a long, rich life," declared the former Avatar. "Under his leadership, his tribe went from a few war-torn fragments to equals on the world stage. But more than that…he lived to see his children prosper. To meet his grandchildren, and hold them close. If there's one thing I can promise you, sweetie, it's this: he passed on with no regrets."

Katara tried to say something, to interject, but her husband just barreled on. Since he was a figment of her own imagination, this didn't suggest great things about her psyche.

"As for Sokka…well, it's hard, when the wound is still so raw," said Aang, his tones instantly becoming much quieter. "But you couldn't have stopped him from fighting for what's right, even if you could move. It's simply who he is. To the bitter end, Sokka died a warrior – and I'm sure he wouldn't have had it any other way."

The waterbender sighed, a long and melancholic sound. "Which leaves you," she murmured, her mouth a thin line.

"I know you tried to heal me, so many times, when my health began to fail. I know you blame yourself for the fact that it didn't work," he answered. "But there was nothing you, or anyone, could've done. It was simply my time. I'd burned out so much of my life-force to stay alive in the iceberg, and when it finally caught up with me…"

Katara looked askance, unable to keep the tears from returning. Much as she knew everything he was saying made sense – much as she'd told it all to herself, many times over – it hadn't made those long nights, putting her all into repairing her husband's weakening chi paths and failing utterly, any easier.

"Well, there's one failure even you can't explain away," she added after a little while, wishing with all her might that this really was real. If only so that she'd have someone to hold her. "Don't make me say it, Aang."

"Sweetie…" said the airbender in a low voice. "Korra is…"

"I should've been there for her!" exclaimed Katara, finally making eye contact with him. "I can't even imagine how scared she was! Maybe if I'd gotten to know her better, I could've convinced her not to go, and she'd still be…!"

She wiped her sleeve against her damp eyes. "I was her teacher, for the spirits' sake," she went on, voice cracking under the strain. "I should've known what magic words to use that would've kept her here…that would've kept her safe. Instead, she's gone. An innocent little girl, who never asked for this. Who never asked to be…to be…"

"Me," Aang finished for her.

Katara bit her lip, and muttered, "I…I didn't mean it like…"

But Aang held up a hand.

"It's fine. You know how long it took me to accept being the Avatar. And it isn't a fate I'd wish on most children," he said. "But you know who never thought about it that way? Korra. From the day she found out, she treated it as a precious gift. Being my reincarnation gave her joy beyond measure. You shouldn't forget that."

The apparition took a couple steps closer to her. If it was possible for them to touch, they very nearly would be.

"The Avatar will return. Maybe not for some time…but eventually, they will grace the world again. And they'll need you when they do," added Aang, his tones becoming warm and gentle. "And they're not the only one, either. The people of the Five Nations. Our children. Family and friends…many of whom you may not've even met yet. The world will go on beyond this night, my love – and it still needs you. Katara of the Southern Water Tribe. The person whose hope for a better world ended the Hundred Year War…and the person I will love until the end of time."

The airbender leaned forward, and placed his lips on hers. Perhaps it was only wishful thinking, her imagination running wild with her deepest longings…

But she almost thought she could feel it, one last time.

"You need to live on, for them. And…for me," whispered the man she loved, as the sun rose behind him. He seemed to lose color and substance in the awakening daylight.

"Until next we meet, sweetie," were his parting words, delivered with the kindest smile she'd ever seen. "Somewhere across the sea."

She wasn't sure when, but at some point along the way, her tears had turned to happy ones.

[-]

Some distance away, a much smaller ship was navigating the icy waters, heading in the complete opposite direction.

As the sun rose higher and higher into the sky, the door to its lower deck opened and Ghazan emerged, holding a heavy blanket.

Ming-Hua gave him a look, and the lavabender shrugged his shoulders.

"What? She looks cold," he said, directing his eyes at the small figure sleeping soundlessly between them. "See, she's shivering."

"She's lived in the South Pole all her life. I doubt the cause of her fidgeting is the weather," Zaheer declared coolly. "But do as you wish, I suppose."

Ghazan frowned, but reached down and wrapped the girl in the fur nonetheless. Almost immediately, she settled down, her breathing steadying to a normal rhythm. Seeing it stoked a feeling in his heart he couldn't quite describe.

He would never learn that the timing was entirely coincidental. What none of them could see – for her eyelids remained resolutely closed – was that the glow beneath them, shining bright for the past several minutes, had just faded away.

It was the last time that particular glow would exist in the world for many, many years.

[-]

Unaware of each other, master and student sailed on through the frigid southern waters.

Elsewhere, the storm raged on.