Chapter Three

Meditation. Azula was not told that this Spirit Destiny would require so much meditation. She is decent at it, and had often used the practices to calm her mind when she was very worked up or caught in ideas that would not leave her. The curse of superior intelligence. It also helped her control her bending, helped her conquer lightning.

But helping her conquer the world with magic Spirit World dragons and weird black-eyed women, that is not so plausible.

"Shouldn't I be fighting or something?" Azula asks, confused.

"You will be," says the spirit.

Azula closes her eyes and focuses her hearing on the babbling of the geothermal rivers that course through the palace hidden in the cave. Slowly, she drifts away as her mind becomes numb. She holds a ball of cerulean fire between her palms, the most calming thing she can manage. It helps her focus, while releasing. It helps her live in the moment as she keeps a flame alive.

Then she is subjected to a particularly harsh dream.

She is surrounded by beasts all wearing the faces of people who betrayed her.

"Now fight!" shouts a voice, and Azula's jaw drops.

This, this cannot be happening.

Azula fights, because it is something that she knows how to do, no matter what happens. Her bending works, at least, although it did not in the Spirit World. She spins with the cerulean flame bursting from her like an exploding star in the middle of the shadows.

The masked creatures look like everyone who has hurt Azula before, but she knows, she truly knows that nothing and no one can hurt her anymore.

Her mind wanders as she gathers fire and the power of storms, as she remembers these people and how she thought her little group of friends would last until the end. How she thought that she would never fall from her pedestal, because Azula was destined for greatness.

But here she is, spitting blood after a sudden blow from a fuzzy enemy that she is unsure how to defeat. She gasps for breath and slides down to avoid the dark shadows coming at her, like the shadows are being bent.

Azula looks for another way out. This cannot be as simple as fighting hard and using her naturally gifted skills of bending. She runs forward and finds a metal door knocker. Azula grabs it and pries the wall in front of her away as if it were paper.

Yes, this place is strange, this place is very, very strange.

She is pursued by the creatures, but she pushes forward without a second thought. In front of her are more and more hazy hallways, and suddenly Azula realizes that there is no escape and she needs to stop looking for one before she loses her mind.

She is in her mind, Azula suddenly realizes, and she feels incredibly perturbed by that thought.

"Just work piece by piece," echoes the spirit's voice and Azula feels a slight shiver as she remembers how much she wanted the sleep with her even though she knew that she was an eerie ghost wearing a disguise. Maybe the disguise would be enough, for Azula to remember, just for a moment, just for a little while.

Azula walks to the first door that becomes clear to her and can see a maze ahead of her. So be it, if this is how she is going to live.

Her eyes closed, she takes in a deep rattling breath, and pushes forward to fight for whatever it is the spirits want from her.

###

The battles become very easy once Azula gets used to them. She discovers that she truly, genuinely enjoys having this power that was stolen from her when she lost her mind, her throne and her freedom. Her Spirit Mentor has taken on the much less disconcerting form of Mai, even though Azula still can feel the snarl on her lips and angry fire when she sees her. But Azula knows that the sight of an enemy, the idea of it in the back of her mind, is more of an incentive than anything else could be.

Azula has always known that the very best things are done out of spite. Using your anger, hatred and desire to prove them all wrong is the best way to become powerful beyond belief.

"I think you are ready to see why the council directed you to me," the visage of Mai says and Azula nods wordlessly.

She follows, even if she hates the idea of being led.

And the spirit speaks. "One hundred years of war does damage to more than just humans. It permanently damaged more than just your world, and the Avatar being gone has left a scar on balance that is difficult to heal. Your brother means well, but he is not what we need. There is good and bad, well, no there's not good and bad but I am not at all in the mood to explain thousands of years of complex morality to you, and the spirits who you would call...bad want a quick fix to their struggles."

"Those never work," Azula says honestly and the spirit shrugs.

"No, they don't. But you did just run directly into one of the only four where the Spirit World blends with the Mortal World, and happen to have exactly what we're looking for in this war, so you were asking to get involved."

Azula opens her mouth to protest, but she has just been led to a tomb, or what looks like a tomb, deep in the volcano. She is not afraid of the magma as she follows her guide, gradually believing more and more in what is happening to her. This seems exactly like the kind of thing spirits would do.

She is led to a warm room, sweltering, even by Azula's standards as a prodigious firebender. Azula squints as she sees that it looks to be a trove of treasure, but there is not a trace of gold or precious gems. Only three eggs, in a row.

Princess Azula has seen them before. Fossilized dragon eggs in the homes of nobles who want to show off their wealth. Her lips twitch in a wistful smile as she remembers her hope as a child that one of her grandfather's collection would hatch one day, and latch on to Azula and love her and destroy her enemies.

"They say you can hatch them," says Mai, and Azula is unnerved by how off her voice is. "If you put yourself through the right training first. Can you do that for me, Princess Azula?"

Azula walks forward, entranced by the eggs. They call to her like the Water Tribe sirens that drunken sailors would discuss as they told regaling tales of the navy. She touches one, only with the tip of her finger, and images surge through her mind like the ones Fang ruthlessly implanted.

Princess Azula is the Queen of the World. She reigns with dragons. The dragons are love, and they love her. Mother, mother...

Azula manages to pull away when she hears that word, twisting within her. Surely it must refer to Ursa somehow. Surely, no creature would call Azula a mother. She may be a monster in the figurative sense, but not in the literal.

"Do you see your destiny? The Spirit World is in horrible turmoil, for the past century. There was so much hope that Fire Lord Zuko would help us, but he was not the leader we needed. Your fire tells the story we wanted to hear. You are the one to bring back this side of the Fire Nation."

"I want nothing to do with the nation that betrayed me," Azula says coldly and the spirit in the body of Mai shrugs. But that is a lie. Azula still does have loyalty to her country, to her people. Even if she is disgraced.

And the idea of being powerful again is completely intoxicating and irresistible.

"It will take many steps. You must suffer but also relieve suffering. I will take you through the journey, and you will keep the eggs safe in your custody, until either they are ready to hatch, or you are proven unworthy," the spirit says and Azula knows that she has no choice but to accept.

She would rather reign over misery and squalor with the force of dragons, than serve Fire Lord Zuko.

"It's beautiful," Azula murmurs to herself.

"It will imprint on you, but it can't like this. You need to speak to Fire Lord Zuko, but he's useless."

"Ha. I know!"

"Shut up. You are to speak to Iroh about Ran and Shaw and the term kuzet."

"Are those brands of tea?"

"They are very important, and you will see just why once you leave this dream."

"Wait - what?"

"You thought this was real?"

AN: These are the rewrites, and now it's moving into the all new chapters I have written. Thanks for reading.