Chapter 4: The Bloody Mist
AN: Gore warning. Sadistic killing.
This felt fucking good to write. Staging a massacre of slavers is always awesome.
Carnage is just so fun to write about.
The girl with alabaster hair stood wary at the entrance of her mountain home. She felt them.
Just at the edge of her sensory range. People.
It's that time then, she muses. She makes her way inside at a walk, not feeling rushed. She passes by the beautiful illuminated artwork in the halls without pausing. She heads directly to her armoury.
She quickly strips, then rather than redressing, bends her light combat gear over her skin. She wants to scout them out first, after all, no good doing that in clunky armour. Besides, there's always rock armour, water armour or even ice armour.
If she gets caught, she'll just nuke everything with an ice storm.
As she sets off jogging down the mountain, she ponders whether or not she'll end up using her weapons, after all, they don't know if anyone's here, she muses.
Maybe she can convince these superstitious people the valley is haunted.
An evil grin slowly crawls its way across her face.
Passing herself off as an evil mist dwelling spirit shouldn't be too hard. She snorts and shakes her head; the evil grin remains unmoved.
It's about halfway through the valley that she finally gets a better reading of their chi auras.
They're from Fire nation. She pauses to focus on what else she might find at this distance.
It's a logging camp. A stab of anger rises through her as she realises that they're starting to rip apart her home to fuel their war machine, she bites back her anger, for now.
As she gets closer, she can feel each distinctive aura, all of them feeling like fire, doing nothing but taking all, they can, ever hungry for more. The sheer greed she feels wafting from these people is so thick she can almost smell the rotten corruption of their souls.
There's more. They've brought others with them, the weak, the desperate, the broken. Slaves. They're using slaves. Bile attempts to rise up her throat but she squashes the urge. In its place, the rage is back, burning colder than it did before.
Before it was just the principle of them stealing from her home. Now? Now the cold clarity of what these detestable people really are has set in. She's going to do more than just scare people away from spirits. They'll still shit and piss themselves in fear, but not for long.
Today they die. No prisoners. No mercy. Filthy slavers don't deserve it.
With her rage comes ruthlessness, she decides to pour it into her mist. They will fear death before the end, quick and painless isn't good enough. She'll only be able turn a portion of what they wrought back upon them; it'll never be enough for what they've done.
Icy mists begin to form around her, her breaths begin to turn visible, condensing in the freezing air along with the mist. She starts pouring her anger, her hatred, her desire to see these men slaughtered where they stand into its creation.
Her breathing quickens, becoming harsh and ragged. The mist darkens and thickens, the once transparent fog becomes impenetrable and confusing. Sounds begin to reflect in odd ways and distort.
As the mist encroaches on the camp, the men begin shouting. They raise the alarm for an enemy attack, expecting water benders, that's not what they get. All they receive is a dark, forbidding mist.
Animals can be heard clearly, yet it's disjointed and wrong, animals don't sound like that. The sky above begins to darken as clouds form, wasn't it sunny a minute ago? they hear faint raspy breathing from the distance. or is it closer?
The foreboding mist creeps forward, a dark omen of terrible things to come. The dark clouds in the sky spread out and begin to rumble with oppressive thunder, heralding the arrival of a storm.
The fog is soon among them, it's blinding and disorientating, they can't even hear each other let alone see more than a foot in front of them. The yelling of their compatriots sounds miles away to them, yet they know their allies are right there.
The few firebenders they have try to blow it back. It doesn't work. The frigid air barely moves an inch from their lacklustre attempts. They try again, hotter this time, the scorching heat clashes with the arctic, frosty air and beats it back. Not for long.
The boiling steam created surges back to the benders who only have a moment of widened eyes before their entire faces are scalded, the steam twisting and turning, aiming to shoot in their noses and mouths. It clamours to race down their throats, their sensitive skin peeling and bubbling from the barely contained heat of their own attacks.
Their strangled screams cut off as startled yelps, the boiling air burns out their lungs, the tissue sloughing off inside and bleeding inwards. They end up drowning to death in their own blood.
There are only standard humans left, trained soldiers they may be, but even against a regular bender, they wouldn't have good odds.
They don't even know their commanders are dead. All they heard were strangled gargles. They start to feel her killing intent bleed through. It begins slowly, ice crawls up their back. Cold sweat beads on their foreheads.
The feeling of incoming danger of wrongness rises, with it so does their fear. Keira relishes it, feeds on it, turning it into more hatred.
The vicious empathic feedback loop bears down on them. In response the mist turns from feelings of danger to the feeling of death itself, they panic.
They begin shouting for each other, they begin to move around in search of each other. She redirects the sound in wrong directions, some head towards the forest, the rest find their way to the corpses. None move towards escape.
Those that stumble upon bodies begin to retch and shudder at what they find. Their leaders, the ones they turn to when things go wrong, their powerful firebenders brothers are dead.
Their hands are frozen, clawing at half-melted faces and throats, blood and frothy saliva pool from their wide-open mouths, open wide in a macabre rictus of agony. It's a promise of what will happen if they trespass any longer.
A few men find each other with the corpses before the fog closes back in, the gaps filling up. It's getting colder. Their bones are frozen, their blood is ice in their veins. The ones that find each other group together; the ones that don't let their fear route them.
The runners move it the wrong directions, finding the mist debilitating and dizzying. The dark feelings from the mist press down harder, death stalks them, always marching one step behind. Sometimes they even hear an extra set of steps following them. No one's there.
Keira guides them into the forest with the other lost men.
The ones left at the camp eventually group up, missing more than half of what's left. It shakes them to their core. A few of them piss themselves, one even shits his pants.
The feeling of despair remains but doesn't worsen. They settle in with torches to wait out the fog. Taking comfort of the presence of their brothers-in-arms.
The stragglers lost in the forest eventually come to their senses. She lets them. It's already too late, they're trapped in the dark mist.
She toys with her prey, creaking branches and skittering animals set them on edge even further.
Barely audible whispering in a foreign tongue makes its way to them.
"You're going to die here."
They don't understand the language. They don't need to.
After a while she tires of the games, the first to die is eviscerated by blades of ice, the tearing of his flesh is made audible to the others, even above his dying scream. The cracking of his bones and falling corpse are the last they hear of him.
His blood vaporises and begins to add itself to the mist, the red stain is small, it hunts the next victim.
The next sees a hint of red before getting disembowelled by an invisible chilled razor, his death is slow. His screams and whimpering pleas for help and mercy haunt the mist as he goes unanswered, it takes minutes for the horrific sound to stop as he slowly succumbs to his fate. His blood joins the first.
Her new prey has drawn its sword and pushed its back to a tree. Keira's glad she can't smell the piss.
This one only gets a moment before a red blur fills his vision; death quickly follows. His corpse is nailed to the tree by icy spears, his head hangs forwards limply. He doesn't even scream, all that's heard is a couple of loud thumps then nothing.
Keira's crimson ink spreads across her darkening canvas, there's enough blood from the three bodies now that she can fill their vision with is, if she so chooses.
She starts to speed up the hunt, the fourth and fifth are together after all.
A red omen makes its way into their vision and slowly surrounds them, they quickly go back to back. They take what courage they can from their comrades' presence. All is still and silent in the forest. Even their breathing is muted. Suddenly, tree roots ripple out, the one facing them yells a warning and dives away.
The other isn't so lucky. The roots slap his out legs from under him, he lands heavily, wheezing, before they slam down on his torso, drawing blood and pinning him for later. The first turns and finds him again in their little clearing before vines whip their way down from a nearby tree.
The green threads find purchase around his neck. The ground is heaved away from him as he's pulled up by his trachea. His wet, choking gurgles alert his wingman to his fate.
The downed soldier finds a hanged man staring at him with bulging, bloodshot eyes and purpling, swollen face.
He barely manages a wet, bloody cough and a few pained moans as he watches his friend die in agony, his lungs pierced by his broken ribs. It's achingly slow, watching the fight leave him, the light of life leaving his eyes, the clawing hands falling limp and twitching before going still for good.
It's his turn, he realises as the static roots suddenly begin constricting, slowly crushing him. He tries to scream, all that leaves his mouth is choked gasps and spurts of blood-filled spittle. The rest of his ribcage gives way before his organs get mulched into chunky red paste.
The sixth shits himself after hearing the wet, grisly sounds of snapping bones and choking men. His sword arm shakes as he swings around madly. Keira's crimson ocean races into his sight, he lets out a startled scream as it swarms around him, inky red tendrils spear through the dark grey clouds, they slowly spread their message in red waves. He knows it. He's next.
It happens fast. A shard of rock spears him from beneath, bursting through his chest and raking him up. A painful yell escapes his throat as he's impaled on a jagged spire of hate, it twists into a slow death rattle, it was the last breath he took.
The seventh is only allowed a moment to process the scream before the red harbinger finds him. It's his screams that call to his friends now. Four chilling tentacles of bloody water wrap around his arms then legs, before they pull taught.
His body is wrenched up, spread eagled, before his crushed limbs start to stretch. Another set of bloody tendrils begin to encase his torso, constricting and withing, weakening his joints while keeping his body aloft. His screams are the loudest yet.
Eventually something gives way, first an arm. Then a leg. The other two soon follow like messy fireworks spreading their displays with crimson trails.
It's only pitiful wheezing and moaning that's heard now. A final line of red slowly makes its way round his limp neck. A sharp pull up and with a snap of bone, his head is pulled free. The writhing mass of blood that slurps from his body joins the rest.
They can smell it now. The blood is thick enough that the metallic stench pierces the veil of their dimmed senses.
The next three have found each other. It will not save them. The scarlet omen heralds the arrival of their deaths.
A bloody storm of angry, icy blades rushes towards them. One makes it with minor injuries. Another loses a leg. The unlucky one is diced into giblets.
The fate of the cripple is decided next with the felling of a tree, a scarlet sawblade scythes through the base, before a pillar of rock crashes into the tough trunk. The legless one doesn't even get to see his death coming. The only sound is a meaty thud.
The last tries to run. She lets him for a time. Directing him with blood, she leads him to his last ally in the deadly forest.
They let out sighs of relief as they see each other. Hope doesn't last.
A transparent wall of crimson falls around the runner, it froths angrily, spitting at his cowardice. He shrinks away from it. There is no escape.
The last one watches on horrified as his prison of ice fill with water. The runner bangs against the walls, pleading for help. It snaps him out of it. He launches himself forward at the wall, sword in hand.
He trips on a raised block of dirt and faceplants just shy of his target. Tendrils of blood lash out, holding him captive.
He's forced to watch the runner drown.
It takes minutes of excruciatingly slow death before he realises it's his turn now. His will be the slowest.
It's only fair, with him being saved for last, after all.
After hours of listening to the horrors of the forest, he wonders what it'll be for his turn. What epitaph will the spirit leave with him?
He doesn't realise it's already happening with his body so numb from the cold. His cocoon of ice clears of blood. He can only watch dumbfounded as it crawls up him. He begins to shake, and cry as true misery sets in.
He's being frozen alive.
A few minutes is all it takes before his heart stops as his blood becomes ice in his veins. He's left as a statue, a sentry for the runner's frozen cage of water.
There's no one left in the forest. Just silence and dead people.
She let the ones back at camp hear everything. Every snapped bone, every scream, every rip of skin, every tore muscle, every choked cry, every fearful moan. They listened to it all. And waited for the murky fog to claim them too.
It didn't.
Not tonight.
They saw her. Only a flash of frozen white hair. Of Icy blue eyes. Of chalky pale skin. It was only a moment. Where the mist was thinnest.
She was watching.
They are the warning. They are the messengers for the spirit of the bloody mist that lurks within the valley of slaughter. They will tell all of the grim massacre that awaits should they tread upon the haunted ground.
They can feel the warning in the air.
Run.
Run away and don't come back.
Her cold eyes promised only gruesome slaughter for those that do.
AN: So, that' how Keira handles violence.
I've only written this far over the past few days. It's pretty much freestyle writing off the top of my head for fun. This was mainly just a plot bunny with SCIENCE! bullshit that evolved legs and ran away from me to make its own story out of it.
That being said I can see this story going one of two ways.
She works with Aang, deals with zuko and iroh, gets other side of fire nation, peaceful reformation after assassination route. Potential azula romance. Minimal violence because she's sick with what she's done. Friendship solves everything route.
OR
She starts a hit and run guerrilla war against the Fire Nation, looks deeper into the abyss and becomes a villain. Everyone hates the way she fights, she's basically a terrorist. Dying alone route.
I might end up writing both and posting one of them as a separate AU.