Chapter 2: Keeper of the Stone

93 AG, South Pole

The Southern Water Tribe's unblemished falling snow was tainted by soot, falling on top of a young Sokka's nose. The boy blinked up at the sky with his big blue eyes, recognition dawning on him, spurring within him worries that no nine-year-old should be expected to face. He instantly shot a look to his igloo and the neighboring igloos where women flocked with babies at their hips and young children at their heels.

"What's happening?" Katara cried, gawking at the shores, which were quickly being approached by large, metallic ships that reeked of ash. The ships didn't even have to reach the shore for danger to strike; a fireball surged through the air, aiming for the land.

"Get down!" Sokka pulled his sister down with him behind one of the snow forts they'd made, his arms wrapped around her, concealing her from the flares of heat that radiated from the fireball that sizzled into the snow a few feet away.

"Sokka, Katara, your mother's looking for you!" Bato yelled, grabbing hold of a spear as he charged forward with a war cry.

"KATARA! SOKKA!" Indeed, Kya was shrieking her children's names, having lost track of them in the chaotic tussle that had followed, but she was held back from charging the snowy fields by the tribeswomen, who insisted on the children's return any minute. Unfortunately, that proved to be a difficult task for the children, for in a matter of minutes, the snow was trampled by the stampede of roaring Fire Nation soldiers.

The land seemed to rattle and shake from the force of a greater number of invaders than usual, and although the men of the tribe felt their stomachs drop, under the guidance of Chief Hakoda, they charged forward, blood roaring with rage through their veins as they strove to protect all that they had. More fireballs were launched in their direction, and with the lack of capable waterbenders, dodging them became a burdensome task for the tribal warriors, but they were sons of Tui and La, gifted with the abundance of their tundra, and the harsh conditions did not fail to deter even the mightiest of Fire Nation soldiers from putting in full efforts.

It was not to say that the tribesmen's advantage of fighting on home ground proved completely efficient in paralyzing the Fire Nation soldiers, for there were many in number, accounting for ten soldiers up against each tribesman. And even though the tribesmen proved their might, even though their passion for their home possessed their bodies and lashed out against the soldiers with more capability than was exercised by any oppressed group in resisting the Fire Nation army, the more important soldiers seeped out into the protected territories, i.e., the igloos and homes that housed the tribesmen's fearful families, who were currently uttering prayers and holding their children close.

"They're going after our folks!" a tribesman cried, and some of the men abandoned their presence on the battlefield, charging back to grab hold of several of the soldiers headed towards the igloos. Sliced throats hit the snow, coloring it with dribbling blood and the dust of fallen Fire helmets. Katara and Sokka, who were still cowering behind their fort and watching the horrific scenes unfold, jerked as a Fire Nation soldier met his death right beside them, his lifeless eyes staring at them. Katara screamed and shuddered in her brother's grasp, and he held onto her more tightly, inching them both away from the guard yet managing to stay behind their fort. The coast eventually became clear for the time being with much of the fighting shifting back in the direction of the shores, several Fire Nation soldiers being thrown into the merciless Southern waters.

"You have to go inside!" Sokka told his sister, "Or they'll get you!"

"Come with me—!"

"But Dad's out there!" Sokka whipped out his boomerang.

"He'll be okay! Let's go, Sokka—!"

A blood-curdling cry burst behind them, and a callous, burgundy-sleeved arm reached for them with flaming fingers, but Sokka tugged his sister aside in time and whacked his boomerang against the Fire soldier's head, knocking the man's head back for a brief moment. In that time, Sokka pushed Katara out into the cleared space, yelling, "Go, Katara, GO!" before jamming the sharp end of his boomerang against the soldier's face again, this time hurting the soldier's eyes in the process.

The soldier cried out in pain and fell backward, his hands covering his eyes as Sokka ran from the fort with his shocked sister.

"I'm going to find Mom!" Katara eventually breathed, splitting away from him and heading toward the igloos. She was just in time, for a soldier, having made up his mind to use Sokka to escape from an enraged tribeswarrior's wrath, reached for the boy. Sokka grabbed a snowball and threw it on the soldier's face, temporarily distracting him before the tribesman who was chasing him thrust a spear into the very soldier's back.

"GO, SOKKA!" A slice of the soldier's chest sent a shudder through the young boy, "GO, TAKE COVER!"

"You heard your mother! Get out of here!"

Katara was held back from running to her mother by a rugged Fire Nation man— Yon Rha, the commander of the Southern Raiders— whose presence had resulted in the other tribeswomen either fleeing or being commanded to flee likely by the chieftess herself. Though the man wore a helmet, his glare seeped straight into the young girl's soul, causing her to jump at the boom in his tone.

"Mom," Katara whimpered, "I'm scared…"

Holding back the lurch in her heart, Kya put on a brave face, stating with resolute sharpness, "Go find your dad, sweetie. I'll handle this."

Katara darted outside, staying on the lookout for her father or brother, tears brimming in the corners of her eyes as she ran as fast as her legs could carry her. "DAD! SOKKA!"

Several tribeswomen called after her; she could hear the persistent tribefolk charge after her in attempts to bring her back to the safety of the igloos. But Katara proved to be too fast and nimble, escaping their grasp as she charged into the battlefield. Her vision blurred from her tears, and her voice grew sore from yelling, but eventually, she spotted her father sending a harsh kick against a Fire soldier's chest, knocking him into the ravenous South Sea.

"Dad! Dad, please! I think Mom's in trouble—AAH!" A fireball headed straight for her but ended up missing her as the familiar hold of her brother pulled her back. She fell on top of him in the snow, and in time for another stream of flame to swing at them, Hakoda's arm shielded the two of them, his other arm plunging a spear straight through the Fire aggressor's abdomen.

"What are you two doing here?!" he kicked the soldier aside, "Go stay with your mother—!"

"Dad, Mom's in trouble!" Katara cried. "There's a man in our house!"

"KYA!"

The revolting combination of ash and snow clouded the children's vision as Sokka heaved his sister in his arms, carrying her shaking form as he sprinted across the snow, their father at their heels.

North Pole

"Yue! Yue, where are you, dearest?"

Chieftess Ahnah's calls reverberated throughout the North's palace, anxiety bubbling in her heart. At present, she was scouring the storage chambers given how notoriously mischievous her daughter could be. The worried mother kept her eyes open to any and all things white, having mistaken the feathers of a sweeper for her daughter's wild hair before spotting the attached whalebone pole that gave away its identity as cleaning equipment.

It was then that a servant woman quickly approached her, informing her of the princess's whereabouts; the child was apparently in the snow garden, likely playing with the penguin-sparrows as she always did.

"How many times do I have to tell that child to not go alone?" Ahnah rubbed her paining forehead, "I leave for one small meeting and she… I told you to keep an eye on her!"

"She snuck out of her room, Your Highness," came the servant's weak defense.

Ahnah sighed before rushing to the garden of focus. Sure enough, her daughter was there, sitting by the banks of a small pond where several penguin-sparrows were lined up, picking at the tiny nuts that the little princess had offered them.

"Yue, I told you it's not safe to be here by yourself, dear," Ahnah stepped closer, taking note of how the pond in front of the princess was freezing and unfreezing. Yue's arm was outstretched, and the rise and fall of her palm dictated the state of the water.

Ahnah halted in her tracks. "Yue?"

The girl didn't turn around, seemingly focused her on her waterbending move. Her hand continued to calmly move up and down, sometimes making a twist-like motion that resulted in the formation of a tiny whirlpool in the water.

"Yue, I told you not to bend, either!" Ahnah stepped closer to her daughter, whose face was covered by the sweeping silk sheets of her loose white hair, "Are you even listening to me?"

Yue then turned in the direction of her mother, but the little girl was nowhere in the reality of the physical world as evidenced by the fierce glow of her eyes. The gusts of Arctic winds swiveled near the princess, sending Ahnah's shriek of shock reverberating through the palace.

South Pole

"We're not leaving until we find the waterbender," Yon Rha barked. The motive fueling this expedition of capturing the South's waterbenders was obvious; it was the possibility of capturing the Avatar. The new Avatar, for there was no way to tell (and there was very little incentive to believe) that he would still be alive. Although Fire Lord Sozin had never believed the Avatar was killed, and while several groups including many members of the royal Fire family held onto this theory, there were also groups who firmly entertained the possibility that the Air Nomad was likely long incinerated in the fires that wiped out the Air temples, and given the nature of the Avatar cycle, the baton went to the Water Tribe next, specifically the Southern branch because the North was essentially the "Ba Sing Se" of the poles— much larger, protected, seemingly impossible for the Fire Nation's meager cruisers to reach compared to the open shores of the defenseless South.

But what the Fire Nation didn't know about was the correspondence the South secretly received from the North, stating that the North had not yet detected a possible Avatar candidate, which meant that the current Avatar cycle had passed onto the Earth Kingdom, that it was still stuck with a miraculously-alive Air Nomad, or that the Avatar Cycle had ceased to exist altogether and they all had no idea of it. And yet, revealing this correspondence to the Fire Nation in attempts to thwart them from attacking the Water Tribe would be counterproductive, for it would pose greater threats for the Water Tribe in general. The Fire Nation was relaxed by the fact that there was little communication between the North and the South, but if it learned there was secret communication, it would believe the North and South were conspiring against their rule and would incinerate the tribes next.

And that was a cost no one could afford, not even the powerful North and especially not the remains left of the South.

"If I tell you," Kya began, "do you promise to leave the rest of the village alone?"

"Hm," came his nod.

"It's me." Gulping, "Take me as your prisoner."

"I'm afraid I'm not taking prisoners today," the man leered, and his fist clenched, flame bursting into being at his knuckles. Kya closed her eyes, her life flashing before her— the faces of her family, of the South— but before she could expect the worst, the harm did not come. She opened her eyes to see the Southern Raiders' commander, his back turned to her as he was staring at something. Moving aside, she saw what caught his attention: emanating from the shrine in the next igloo chamber was a faint glow tinged with a baby-bluish tint.

Kya gasped, her eyes wide, hands instinctively folding in prayer. The moonstone.

"The Avatar…" the commander gawked for a moment more before extinguishing the flame at his fist and abandoning his present task. He raced into the shrine room, perplexed to see that the glow was coming from what was essentially a rock left on a pedestal. The glow was also coming from an ornate tapestry hung on the wall opposite to the entrance; the weaving contained an image of a beautiful young woman in white silks, adorned with white hair that stormed behind her like a cloak beneath the Arctic gusts. The woman's eyes were lit aglow with the same fierce light.

Kya was shocked out of her wits; the glow of the moonstone was occasional, but the glow emanating from the tapestry was a first-time occurrence. She bowed low to the ground, her demeanor contrasted by that of the equally shocked but recklessly determined Fire commander, who stomped up to the tapestry but kept his eye on the glowing stone. He was stopped short of reaching the stone, however, for the glow was increasing in luminosity by the second, now seeming to fill the entire igloo with light. The light became so blinding at that point that Yon Rha had no choice but to take several steps back, for accompanying the light was also a kind of extreme heat that he, being a firebender, had himself not encountered.

"She's the next Avatar!" Yon Rha bellowed, blinded by the light to the extent to which he had to cover his closed eyes with his arm, his other arm fiddling to grab Kya, "You're hiding her, aren't you?!"

"She's not the Avatar, she's our goddess—!"

"LIAR!"

"She's not here! She's not in the South! She's a goddess—!"

And that was when several pairs of footsteps darted inside the igloo. Though collective gasps halted the footsteps for a moment, one of the visitors— the chieftain of the South— grabbed hold of a shocked Yon Rha from behind, the chief's arms wrapping around the commander's throat, nearly wringing the commander's neck off of his head as he dragged him away from Kya. By then, several other tribesmen had also charged into the building to aid the chieftain, all of them ganging up on the commander. In the meantime, Katara and Sokka raced over to their mother, immediately enveloped in her arms and greeted with grateful kisses.

Yon Rha, even in his blinded state with one hand pressed over his burning eyes, attempted to fire flames in the direction of his attacker, and the tribesmen found it difficult to approach him without being turned to ash. Sokka, however, sought a solution; breaking away from his mother's grasp, he ran and grabbed the glowing moonstone and hurled it at Yon Rha. The stone struck him squarely on the forehead, drawing out a fierce yell from him, and as he fell, the moonstone landed on top of his chest, pinning him in place. Yon Rha struggled and wriggled to get the moonstone off of him, perplexed at how impossible it was to remove a small moonstone; the thing weighed five ounces at best, not five tons.

But it was just the right distraction. The tribesmen circled the man and managed to quickly tie his hands and feet together, managing to prevent him from bending. For the umpteenth time, Hakoda reached for the moonstone in an attempt to lift it, finding yet again that he failed. He turned to his small son, whose hands were wrapped back around his mother, and the man smiled at him in pride.

Yon Rha seldom fought back as the tribesmen worked at restraining him; he was still wrestling with the realization that he had gone blind from the heated glow that was now dimming. And all the while, the baby blue eyes of the woman in the tapestry stared back at his writhing form.