Cinder: The Life and Times of Avatar Azula
Book One: Loyalty
Summary: With the world teetering on the edge of the Eschaton, the Avatar Spirit has reincarnated into the last person imaginable: Princess Azula of the Fire Nation. With the return of Sozin's Comet fast approaching and the thread of prophecy severed, the proud child of the Fire Nation may be last hope of a world doomed by her Great-Grandfather's ambitions.
Prologue
Know, O Prince, that between the fateful coming of Sozin's Comet and the starcrossed years of the Harmonic Convergence, there was an age of strife undreamed. Hither came Azula; princess and traitor, oni and bodhi, warrior and mystic, just and terrible, destined to tread the jeweled thrones of the world under her sandaled feet! It is I, her chronicler, who alone can tell thee of her saga.
My niece's tales of glory and woe begin in the days of the last Avatar, the nomad Aang. Were she not able to command all the Elements, none would dare believe that they were two of the same soul. Aang was everything Azula was not. Gentle and joyous, with a robust abhorrence for violence and dominion. Even at the tender age of twelve, he embodied the spirit of his people, the Air Nomads, but fate would ensure his great mirth was weighed down by melancholy of equal measure.
None now live who remember the coming of Sozin's Comet and the beginning of the Age of Strife. Azula had always been reticent to share the details of her past lives, so this tale begins with the half-remembered dreams of a bygone era. Aang was born in a world on the precipice, a prodigy of Airbending, trained under the great sage Gyatso. In a desperate bid to weather the coming storm, the monks of the Southern Air Temple revealed to Aang the terrible truth of his incarnation as the Avatar Spirit at the tender age of 12. Unprepared for such a burden, the young boy fled.
Unbeknownst to the monks, it was too late anyway. It always had been too late. A massed armada, the largest hitherto seen in the world, had already been assembled and dispatched with no recall. Under the red-stained sky of the comet, the fleets of the Fire Nation launched a simultaneous assault on the four Air Temples. The main banner armies, under Sozin the Blasphemer himself, defeated the Jade Army of the Earth Kingdom at Yue Bay, killing the Earth King Guangxu and ending his dynasty.
The Avatar was thought to have perished with his people. Providence had spared him for now. Aang had been lost in a great storm near the South Pole, and survived only thanks to the miraculous powers of the Avatar Spirit preserving him in ice. It was for the best. Both he and his natural successor would have perished before the might of Sozin's armies, at the peak of their powers, fae-touched by the comet's passing. Only as their fire diminished in the long night that followed could hope be found.
The Avatar returned to the world in the 70th year following Sozin's Comet. The tales of his time continued to spread for decades, bringing hope with his waxing, and despair with his capture. All know of the time of his travels and his companions. Until now, the details of what transpired after his capture by the Fire Nation's Eastern Fleet in the 76th year have remained a state secret.
While I, your humble servant, dreamed of eglories won on the battlefields, the young Aang was a "guest" of my father, Azulon the Terrible. My father was a shrewd and temperate man, who cloaked his great wrath with equally great discipline. My niece is a fitting namesake of this man. Azulon now had the Avatar. He had to decide now what to do with him.
At first, he tried to cajole his enemy with promises of power. Marriage into his dynasty, jewels and riches, the great fanfare of the common people to herald the Avatar as hero of the Fire Nation to the beating of kettle-drums. When this proved fruitless, he tempted the Avatar in his dungeon with great sensuous delights, a seduction the monk firmly refused. When the entreaties failed, then came the fire.
What tortures and manipulations went on in the catacombs, I can scarcely imagine. My niece pales whenever she remembers the final days of her previous life. What is known is that the will of a thousand generations cannot be broken so easily. And Aang, like the Four Winds themselves, dreamed every night of escape.
Finally my father could no longer wait for this wicked tree to bear its fruit, and resolved to end the last barrier to universal empire permanently. The Avatar possesses a great power, called the Avatar State, that can be summoned at will by a fully realized Avatar, but will activate in defense of the Avatar's life otherwise. All the past incarnations of the Avatar manifest, and this great power can lay waste to armies and salt the earth beneath them. But if the Avatar dies in this state, the cycle itself dies with him. Azulon schemed to murder the Avatar in this state, and prevent the incarnation of a new hero among the Water Tribe.
Only the fate of the world hanging in the balance could have pushed Aang into contemplating this terrible sacrilege. This cunning, this deception, would be a perfect harbinger of the calamity to come. I know not by what means the Avatar accomplished this fate. But in that terrible dungeon, yearning to be free, Aang resolved to end his life on his own terms. He plotted and waited, delaying until the perfect time. In the 84th year, as my younger brother prepared to welcome his second child into the world, the Avatar grabbed the Wheel of Dharma with white-knuckled grip and reversed its course.
Aang's lifeless body would be found by his jailors in peaceful repose, an untroubled smile on his lips. The spirit, long shackled, was finally free.
There were immediate and unheeded portents of this doom. Prophets and fortune-tellers turned the prescient eye towards a vast, undiscovered country. Old spirits awoke from their slumbers enraged. Even the astrologers began to grumble that the stars were drifting out of alignment. All went unheeded, as Azulon set his fleets and armies towards the Water Tribe, to scourge and scour for the Avatar's next incarnation. All the while, she slept soundly in his very palace.
What is there to say of my niece's upbringing? Born under a bad star, she was the scheming second daughter of a scheming second son. Azula was a Firebending prodigy, honed on the whetstone of Ozai's wrath. Trained to only respect power, groomed into the perfect image of royal divine right. A perfect mask to hide her cunning…and her self-loathing.
It would not be until her sixteenth birthday that my niece would learn of her dual inheritance. And soon, the favored prodigy would be a fugitive from her own father's armies. Stoke the fires in your heart, young Prince, and listen well to my tale…
Author's Notes:
Sometimes a story doesn't just come to you, it mugs you. This story came to me a flash of insight and before I knew it, I had an outline for an AU spanning four "books", all because I remembered that the inimitable Mako, who provided the voice of Iroh in the first two books of ATLA before his passing, also did the wonderful opening narration to the classic 1982 film Conan The Barbarian.
So this story draws a very obvious influence from the whole sword & sorcery genre, but in crafting the texture of the world I've also drawn on historical military adventure novels like Sharpe's Rifles. In fleshing out the world of Avatar, I've tried to avoid the temptation to make one-note historical parallels; for example in fleshing out the religion and culture of the Fire Nation I've drawn on Hinduism, particularly the Vedic period, as well as Zoroastrianism.
In all, it's been a lot of fun to write. Most of Book One is already complete at the time of publication, and I plan on releasing chapters at a rate of about one a week until the end, at which time I'll probably take a break from this passion before tackling Book Two. Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and as always I look forward to your comments and questions!