Well, I'm back (shockingly). I do apologize for the delay but suffice to say you probably wouldn't have wanted to be me for the last few months. Finals, two knee surgeries (D-1 athletics), and trying to find a job have made writing time scarce. This story is, however, drawing to a close so I can guarantee that the next update will be a lot sooner.
So thanks to those of you who are still with me. Hope you enjoy this chapter!
The Five Elements
Click. Clack. Click. Clack. Each footstep on the staircase seemed magnified by the stone walls as they spiraled downward into the sparsely lit gloom. The group's path was marred by cobwebs and cracks and the occasional drop of water splashing them from above. For Sokka, it couldn't have painted a more ominous picture.
Zuko led the way, picking his way slowly down the steps and whispering quietly to Mai. They were sharing a sort of quiet conversation the way couples always seemed to—as if brief comments were all they needed to convey what their body language did not. Sokka followed at a discrete distance, one hand on his sword. He was not about to be caught by surprise—not with Katara so close…not with the supposed end in sight.
Toph was a step ahead of him, one hand running along the far wall as she too walked solemnly onward. Her demeanor had quickly changed once they had gotten down off the ladder. The earth had made her more confident, ready to fight.
Aang and Azula brought up the rear, the avatar clearly tense but focused, his eyes sharp, roving over every nook and cranny that passed. Azula too seemed ready, gone was her casual gait and trademark flippancy. She still, in part, resembled the warrior that had hunted the avatar for so long, and while her motives were slightly ambiguous, Sokka was glad she appeared to be fighting on their side.
Up ahead, Zuko stopped, raising a hand for quiet. Sokka could see another wooden doorway like the one they had opened earlier. This one, while not burning, was foreboding nonetheless. A cold light filtered in from below the edge of the doorway, painting the landing area an eerie gray. Grime floated in the air, momentarily suspended in the beams of light before disappearing into the inky shadows.
Sokka stepped forward and drew his sword.
"Toph, is there anyone on the other side?" He asked.
The blind earthbender paused for a moment, briefly spreading her toes across the stone floor as she felt for vibrations.
"Two," she said. "On either side of the door."
Sokka nodded and readied himself. "Take down the door on my mark. 3…2…1…go!"
With a quick punch, Toph leveled the door, and before the dust even settled, Sokka and Zuko were through the opening.
Sokka took the guard on the left before the man's sword was even unsheathed, catching him under his chin with the pommel of his sword. The guard's eyes rolled up in his head and he didn't move when he hit the floor. By the time Sokka had turned around, he saw Zuko's enemy had met a similar fate, courtesy of the Fire Lord's quick fists.
The rest of the group warily filed through the opening. Azula appeared last, glancing disdainfully down at the fallen guards, giving one a swift kick before turning to Sokka.
"So what now?"
"Aang?" Sokka asked, "any ideas?"
The avatar scratched his head. The doorway they had come through opened into a long hallway, dimly lit by the strange, opalescent glow of translucent blue and green crystal structures, and the rocky walls had a dampness to them that gave the catacombs a rather musty smell. Aang could see that the hallway split into two branches after a few hundred yards, but not before passing a few closed doorways on the side.
Turning back to Sokka, the avatar frowned, "your guess is as good as mine. I figure if we keep finding more guards, then we're probably going the right way."
Sokka nodded and led the way into the gloom. Occasionally the group would stop and Toph would check for signs of life, but largely, the catacombs seemed deserted. He was about to stop and suggest they all take a break for a moment when something caught his eye.
Kneeling down, he called the Fire Lord over, "Zuko, what do you think of this?" He pointed at the ground, running his hand over a set of shallow furrows in the dirt. "It's almost as if there was something here."
Zuko nodded, examining what appeared to be three vertical scratch marks in the earthen floor.
"There's another set over here!" Aang called from the other side of the tunnel. "And up there!"
Seeing the avatar point to another mark about ten feet in front of his own, Sokka stood up, his eyes scanning the floor. Sure enough, there was another identical scratch mark ahead of the one he had found.
"I…I think I know what made these marks."
Everyone looked at him expectantly.
"These catacombs are huge, right Zuko?" The Fire Lord nodded. "Well then Shong Ti has to have some way to move quickly through the tunnels, and what better way than some sort of lizard—like one of your Komodo Rhinos but smaller and able to travel underground? See?" He pointed at the marks, "each one of these indentations could be claw mark. Three talons to a foot…four feet….it all fits!"
The group seemed to consider Sokka's conclusions for a moment before Mai spoke, "I suppose that makes sense, but how does this help us find Katara or Shong Ti?"
"We follow the trail," Sokka said. "It has got to lead somewhere and it's more of a clue than we've had since we've been down here."
With that, he started following the path that the mysterious creatures had left. After a few minutes walking, it appeared that Sokka's hunch had been correct as lit torches began dotting the tunnel wall.
They walked forward for a seemingly indeterminate distance when the tunnel suddenly stopped, and Sokka could see that it opened into a much larger room—possibly another pathway or even one of the bigger caverns. When they reached the doorway, Azula suddenly stiffened.
"It's him."
Sokka followed her gaze. Their tunnel had, as he had expected, opened into a larger cavern, but instead of coming out on the bottom, their group had stepped out onto a balcony that overlooked an audience chamber.
The cavern was filled with troops, that at the sight of Sokka and Aang, had drawn their weapons. Unfortunately, that was not what worried him most—at the back of the chamber stood Xui Li, his eyes dancing with malevolent glee.
"I'm glad to see you made it, avatar. I was worried for a moment."
Aang's eyes didn't leave his, "you can't escape. We defeated your army at Zhao's stronghold and we'll do it again here. Just give us Katara and I'll guarantee that you'll be able to walk away from here."
"Speak for yourself, avatar," Azula growled.
Zuko silenced his sister with a glare. "Where is your master?" He called down, "where is Shong Ti?"
Xui Li's face twisted into a snarl, his eyes dancing in the flickering light. For a moment, the shadows seemed to grow behind him, flaring into an ominous figure before dying down once more.
"He awaits you, Avatar Aang. Don't be late. Your beloved waterbender's life depends on it."
He stepped backward into the shadows, briefly dissolving against the cavern's back wall. "A little something to whet your appetite."
He reached into the darkness and yanked at a figure that had clearly been standing, invisible, behind him. The person, a young woman, let out a frightened scream and crumpled to the ground in front of Xui Li. Her hands were manacled behind her back, and her dirty, dark hair fell long over her face. She lay where she fell for a moment before Xui Li's booted foot prodded her to look up.
When her shockingly blue eyes met his, Aang's world came to a crashing halt. Her once rich hair had lost its sheen and her dark skin was pale from lack of sunlight, but the eyes were unfailingly hers.
"Katara?" Aang's voice was a scratchy whisper at first. Then louder, "KATARA!"
Katara's mouth seemed to work for a moment, as if struggling to remember his name.
Suddenly, Xui Li's hand shot out and roughly shoved her back into the darkness. "Come and get her, avatar."
Just as he faded into the darkness, an unmistakable voice carried its way through the cavern, "Aaannngg!"
Upon hearing Katara's voice, something inside Aang broke. He leapt from the balcony with a scream of rage into the midst of the troops that were below. Sokka didn't see him land, but the resulting impact was like the epicenter of an explosion. Bodies flew outward as Aang raced toward where he'd seen Xui Li disappear. His attacks were unflinching in their single-mindedness. He fought anyone who stood in his way but no one else—his sole purpose was to reach Xui Li and find Katara.
By the time Aang was halfway across the cavern floor, Sokka finally called the rest of them to action. "Come on! Let's get down there!"
With a smile and a shout, Toph encased herself in a stone cocoon and took off for the floor below, Zuko and Azula hot on her heels.
"Benders." Mai grunted and rolled her eyes before she too began scaling her way down the cavern wall.
Sokka couldn't help but agree, but he too leapt over the side, pulling out his sword and digging it into the rock wall, using it to slow his descent as he skidded down the slope. He used his momentum to immediately roll under the stroke of an enemy sword, flipping around and bringing him down with a kick to the back of his knees. Another blow and the man was unconscious.
Looking up, he could see that Aang had managed to dispose of over half of the enemy soldiers, and the rest were quickly being mopped up by a tag-team of Azula and Toph.
Sokka shook his head—if that wasn't a strange sight he didn't know what was. Azula's overly aggressive firebending kept the enemies off guard as Toph's more surgical strikes felled one after another with a frightening precision.
Just as Mai's knife found the exposed flesh of the last soldier's neck, Sokka heard Zuko shout from the back of the cavern, "Come on! Aang went this way!"
They all hustled over to find him standing at the mouth of a small tunnel that led off from the main chamber. Aang's presence was unmistakable: the walls of the tunnel had been blown outward by the force of his airbending-aided flight, and the lack of scorch marks along the floor showed that he had met little resistance.
Sokka was hot on Zuko's heels as they pounded through the opening, trusting that Aang had taken care of any soldiers they might have met.
They rounded the corner only to run smack into an unmoving figure.
Oooooff. The air left Sokka's lungs in an instant. Without looking up, he drew his sword, ready to fight, only to be stopped by Zuko's firm grip. In front of them was the avatar, motionless as he stood at the opening of another large cavern.
"It appears we're all here now."
The voice was silky smooth and dangerous and it sent shivers down Sokka's spine. Picking himself up off the ground, he moved to stand by Aang. The voice, as he had expected, belonged to Shong Ti.
The dark, pony-tailed man stood behind a large pool of water that rose slightly from the ground to about waist level. Bordered by two translucent green crystal formations, his face was bathed in an eerie light. The glow, reflected from the surface of the pool, dappled his face, never stopping in one place, but leaving his features in stark relief with the well-lit chamber.
Sokka's attention, however, was drawn to the largest crystal formation to Shong Ti's right. Tied to its top with wrists crossed and hands manacled high above her head was Katara. Gaunt and malnourished, it was all Sokka could do to keep himself from running to his sister. Her face was pale and downcast and she watched the group with anxious eyes. The drab, formless brown robe she wore was cut and torn across the front and Sokka thought he saw a few poorly healed cuts on her abdomen. He was about to call out to her when Shong Ti cut him off.
"Just as a precaution, Xui Li?"
The raven-like figure seemed to materialize out of the shadows from behind Katara, smoothly drawing a dagger from his wrist and placing it against the young girl's neck. The blade drew a thin line of blood but Katara barely flinched, hardly registering her captor's presence.
"Let her go!" Aang's voice was steely, his eyes never leaving Katara's bent figure.
"Ahh, but then you'd miss the show. And that would certainly be a disappointment after everything we've been through, wouldn't it?" Shong Ti smirked, showing his teeth. "But since you've been so kind to supply us with everything we need, I'm sure this will go smoothly. First," he reached down and picked up an oblong, translucent orange object, "we have the scale of the famous elephant koi."
Shong Ti reached down, dipping the scale slightly into the crystal pool, allowing it to fill halfway before gently setting it in water, allowing it to float benignly on the pool's placid surface.
Reaching inside his tunic he pulled an ancient scroll, unfurling it before him.
Leaning down, Sokka heard Aang whisper in Zuko's ear, "the history of Fire Lord Liang-shek." Zuko frowned for a moment, but whatever comment he was going to make was drowned out by Shong Ti.
"And now for the elements: Water."
From the items arrayed in front of him, he selected a small blue vial. Uncorking it carefully, he poured the water from the Northern Water Tribe's Spirit Oasis into the small bowl created by the elephant koi scale. Upon contact, the combined mixture began to sparkle, as if it were being purified by the new element.
"Earth."
Shong Ti paused for a moment, examining the small jar set before him with a slight smile on his face. "This was the only element my agents were able to procure for me—even the Fire Lord wasn't able to stop them. Sand from the Si Wong desert, specifically, from the area where Wan Shi Tong's library was rumored to be. The spirit's constant presence infused it with certain…properties…that are vital to our success."
Without further comment, he gently poured the contents into the scale. For a moment nothing happened and Sokka dared hope that Shong Ti had somehow miscalculated, but then the water began to swirl, and instead of settling to the bottom of the bowl as normal sand would have, the mixture seemed to stir itself, slowly becoming a homogeneous brown flecked with gold.
Shong Ti picked up a bundle of cut flowers from the stone edge of the pool, and Sokka immediately knew they had to be the flowers Aang had traveled to the Eastern Air Temple to find. They were a bit dry and had certainly lost the brilliance they had had in life, but they held an undeniable attraction. It was almost as if he wanted to reach out and touch them.
"Fire."
Carefully Shong Ti reached over to the cavern wall behind him and removed a torch. Placing the silver-lipped tigerseye in the middle of the swirling mixture he carefully touched the edge of the flame to their stems.
Almost immediately the flowers began to shrivel as the fire drove whatever life they had left from them. Sokka watched in morbid fascination as Shong Ti crouched down next to the flame, watching it carefully. He allowed for some of the flame to be quenched by the water and sand mixture, and watched as small bits of charred plant began to sift their way to the bottom. After a moment, with a satisfied smile on his face, he stood up and inhaled.
As the flowers burned they infused the surrounding air with an odor unlike any Sokka had experienced before. The smell was light at first, wafting past his nose as if it were a soft summer breeze, but as he inhaled it became stronger, almost overpowering.
At once Sokka found himself back in his family's small hut in the Southern Water Tribe. A pot of stewed sea prunes simmered in the middle of the floor and Katara, whole and healed, was smiling in front of him, beckoning him inside.
Just as he reached out to join her, the scene shifted and he was suddenly in the Fire Nation capital, fighting through the sulfurous smell of the burning buildings and charred bodies on the Day of Black Sun. The smoke was too thick and only Aang ran alongside him. Just as he felt fear forming in his belly and his lips beginning to form words, the scene shifted once more.
This time he was in the Earth Kingdom. It was sunset and he was on a cliff, overlooking the sea. The clamor from a nearby town was slowly subsiding as dusk settled in. A small movement at his side caused him to look down, and there he found Toph. Her clothes looked cleaner than he had seen them in months and she had foregone her traditional bun in favor of letting her hair down. She was wearing the silver and green studded headband he had gotten her in Gaoling, and as the light reflected off her ivory skin, there was only one word Sokka would've used to describe her: beautiful. His heart pounded in his chest, and Sokka suddenly found the words on his lips that had been lying dormant in his heart. But, just as he was about to speak, Shong Ti's voice cut through the haze.
"Air."
It took Sokka a moment to come back to complete consciousness. The visions had seemed so real, and as his hand reached to grasp a Toph that suddenly wasn't there, he struggled to come to grips with what had just happened. The visions were gone, but the feelings—they were still there. He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs from between his ears when Azula's harsh whisper broke his revere,
"Burning the flowers can cause hallucinations. Focus your mind."
Sokka nodded curtly, screwing up his face in a grand effort to take a firmer hold on reality. He took Azula's advice, focusing once more on Shong Ti.
Shong Ti, however, did not seem to notice the effects of the flowers, but instead had taken to softly blowing the smoke that rose from the charred plant remains across the surface of the mixture in the pool.
As the smoke spread across the surface, Sokka watched as it seemed to slowly settle on the swirling mixture instead of dissipating. It hovered, mere centimeters above the surface like fog over a lake on an early morning. The smoke swirled in time with the liquid in the scale in a hypnotic fashion and a hush seemed to settle over all who were present. The silence extended until Shong Ti spoke again.
"And now, for the fifth element. Avatar Aang, if you'll please approach the pool."
"Me…why?" Aang asked warily.
"Who better to help open a doorway into the Spirit World than the avatar, the bridge between our world and the Spirits? Now come."
Slowly, Aang began to stir. Each step came gradually, as if he were struggling to pull his feet out of thick, viscous mud. As he approached the podium, Shong Ti pulled a long bladed knife from his tunic and began shining the blade against his sleeve.
"Look out!" Sokka shouted, already beginning to move toward Katara. But before he had gotten more than a step, Zuko's hand shot out, grabbing the collar of his tunic and pulling him roughly backwards.
Shong Ti hadn't moved from his earlier position, but his eyes were certainly on Aang, who had tensed at the sight of the blade.
"I'm not coming any closer until you let Katara go," Aang said.
Shong Ti regarded him with a cold stare, "do you really think I'd let my best bargaining chip go so easily? No avatar, you can rest assured that as long as you cooperate, she will remain safe. However, if you refuse, I cannot guarantee her continued well-being. Now come closer. This will all be over soon."
Aang gulped but nodded, and Sokka felt his protest die on his lips. If anyone could get them through this it would be the avatar.
When Aang had reached Shong Ti's side, the pony-tailed man ordered him to roll up the sleeve on his left arm and extend it over the swirling mixture in the scale. Very slowly Sokka watched as he took the knife and drew it over Aang's forearm. To his credit, Aang didn't even wince as his blood trickled down his arm and began to drip into the bowl.
After a few seconds, Shong Ti pushed Aang's arm down, allowing the avatar to wrap part of his sleeve over the wound. But instead of worrying about the avatar, Shong Ti continued gazing into the scale, watching as the blood seemed to work as a coagulant, combining the low smoky haze with the mixture below. This time, instead of continuing to stir itself, the new mixture began to bubble as if over a fire, and the insides shifted to a darker, molten silver.
Aang slowly began walking toward the group once again, seemingly uncertain about what to do next as Shong Ti ignored him.
Suddenly, Shong Ti's voice broke the silence, low and monotone, slowly rising in volume as it echoed across the cavern.
"Water, earth, air, and fire,
The elements of life that the Spirits desire.
Under the cover of summer's solstice and of the great city's middle ring,
Rises, from the ashes, the most cunning of beings.
Come forth now, may your vengeance be swift,
Accept our humble offering, our faces, uplift.
For whatever one sees, wherever one goes,
May they fear the wrath of Koh."
The last syllable left Shong Ti's lips with a sense of horrid finality, and as the quicksilver-like mixture in the scale began to writhe and bubble, Sokka felt goosebumps run down his spine. Shong Ti kept his head bowed and arms outstretched—prostrate in front of what he assumed would be his new master.
The only noise in the room was a gradual crescendo as the mixture hissed and popped over the crystal pool. Slowly though, it began to grow, seeping over the edges of the scale and layering itself on the surface of the pool's. It grew until it covered about half the basin's width before it began to move upward. The fluid built upon itself, droplets leaping up and scrabbling to find a purchase on some unseen form. Some of the silver liquid seemed to run outward along what appeared to be branches or legs, but most of it continued reaching toward the ceiling of the chamber.
Sokka watched in horror as the scene unfolded in front of him. He knew what he was watching should be impossible, and yet here it was, happening in front of him.
The form grew until it was over five times as tall as Sokka and three times as wide. It looked, for all intents and purposes, like a giant centipede encased in silver. The head, however, seemed to end in a rather flat, formless stump ringed by eight grasping pinchers as if someone had chopped off the creature's head.
Aang was deadly silent, his eyes not straying from the growing figure in front of him. After another minute, the quicksilver finally stopped building upon itself, opting instead to simply flow hypnotically over the form it had created.
For a moment, no one breathed, and Sokka dared to hope that the incantation and the ingredients hadn't worked. Then a lower limb twitched, then another, and another, until all of them seemed to quiver and spasm in anticipation. Suddenly, in one quick movement, the figure shook itself, sending its quicksilver shell flying in all directions.
The form within was as Sokka had expected, a mottled brown and black centipede-like figure that towered over them. It twitched again and Sokka was horrified to see a human face appear on the flat surface he had assumed was its head. Quickly, and Sokka thought he probably would have missed it if he'd blinked, the face cycled through a succession of other forms—painted carnival masks, monkeys, beautiful women. The creature had them all.
And suddenly Sokka understood why they called him the Face Stealer. Koh had returned.
Hope you caught some of the parallelism and some of the rationale for the seemingly unexplainable things that happened earlier in the story. Please review, it makes my day!