Author's Notes: Apologies for the delay on this one. Been a rough couple of months.
Last time with Aang's group: Aang finally reunited with Toph in the Spirit World, and together with Yue, Nagi, and the Mother of Faces, they managed to defeat Koh the Face Stealer and get her face back. Now, they've found themselves back in the material world - but in the Foggy Swamp, of all places.
Last time with Mai, Jet, Ty Lee, and Haru: Mai and Jet broke into Arnook's palace with the intent to assassinate him, only to come face to face with Suki, who had been investigating things on her own. After fighting, Jet revealed some new info from their contact on the Elder's Council, Pahmo: that Arnook had left Agna Qel'a on a pilgrimage to the North Pole… along with the pirate captain Sekun, who razed Jet's village all those years ago.
Also, just as another reminder: Mai's group encountered Huu, Due, and Tho way back in "The Last Kyoshi Warrior," and they were the pirates that ferried them to Agna Qel'a. Huu explained that, decades ago, the invading Water Tribes accidentally caused the swamp to force everyone out, and nothing has been the same ever since...
Book 3: Water
Chapter 13: The Dying Banyan
Even standing on the banyan's roots, gnarled and twisting into eternal knots, Aang had a high vantage point of the rest of the swamp spread out before him.
A bone-white haze settled over it, a cloud of spores that drained much of the color from the swamp's once vibrant greenery. Fungus clung to the trees, coating everything in a fine powder like poisonous snow. Where it had once been lush the swamp now looked like a dried husk, with bulbous orbs that resembled bulging egg sacs spewing more of the white haze into the air. He thought he might have been able to make a safe passage with his airbending, but not enough for the roughly three hundred people he now had to look after.
The skies weren't a better option. Now that the merge had resumed with a vengeance, it seemed as if the Spirit World itself bled over to this world. The sky had turned a sickly yellow. Clouds swirled in a tempest like perfume in a bottle. Shapes that gleamed with wicked white danced in the rare beams of sunlight that shone through the yellow, their brightness an all too vivid reminder of the uncomfortably recent Deva-Koh. Flying people out on Appa's back, even as inconvenient and tiring as that would have been, wasn't an option with light spirits that could attack at any moment.
Next to him, Toph wiggled her toes. "I don't know if it's because it's been a while since I've felt like myself, but I feel like I can sense a lot further than I usually can," she said. "Even through the tree roots. I've always sort of been able to get a rough feel for people standing in trees thanks to my time with the Freedom Fighters, but this is something else."
"This swamp is a highly spiritual place," Aang said, furrowing his brow in thought. Maybe he had to search for an answer. The swampbender Huu once found enlightenment beneath this very banyan tree - could Aang find what he needed, too? Would the swamp continue to give him visions, like it already had with Xai Bau? "Maybe that's why you can sense things further."
The Sun Warrior hung at the back of Aang's mind. It was hard to determine what his vision truly meant, but he saw Xai Bau meditating somewhere in the Spirit World with hundreds of eyes and hundreds of hands, all perfect copies of each other. Like a weaver ripping apart his work, he plucked at the threads binding the worlds together, each finger unraveling more and more. Aang had no idea how Xai Bau could wield such power, or why he would do it. He hoped Bumi or Kanna would know how to fix it, or where he could find Xai Bau to stop him from doing even more damage.
But first he had to get to Ba Sing Se. And before that, get all these people out of the swamp. Elevated as they were above the treeline, he hoped it would keep the people safe for a time. The state of the two Water Tribe siblings, Rafa and Misu, concerned him as well - earlier, he'd tried to spiritbend them but it did nothing to affect their state from being frozen in time.
"I'm gonna go out there and see if I can map out a safe route," Aang said. "Yue, you said the swamp tribes that used to live here have all left, right? Maybe I can find the paths they used to depart."
Nagi stared out over the vista stretched before them. "How do you hope to find one path - or even the remains of their villages - in a place as huge as this?"
Yue wobbled unsteadily on the tree root but Nagi helped her catch her balance. "I sense something mystical about this swamp," she said. "I think… if it wants to be found, you'll find it."
Aang nodded. "Last time I was here, this swamp showed me a vision of Toph before I even met her. I learned that time is an illusion… so maybe I'll get a vision of the people leaving?" Even as he said it, he knew it was unlikely to hope for something specific like that. Huu and Pathik's words echoed through his head: Time is an illusion, and so is death. But the greatest illusion in this world is the illusion of separation. "But at the same time, it showed me and my friends illusions to separate us from each other."
"Sounds like a stretch, but whatever," said Toph, cracking her knuckles. "I'm in. Let's go."
Aang bit his lip, unsure if that was a good idea based on the history he had with the swamp. "Huh? You're gonna come?"
She shrugged. "Yeah, why not? I don't think I'll get bothered by 'visions or illusions' or anything, unless the swamp found a way to make that work for blind people. But I'm gonna assume it won't be so accommodating, so I'll be fine."
"I'd like to join you as well," said Yue, her eyes set in determination. "My people along with the southern tribes drove the swamp tribes out of their homelands. I need to see the result of that for myself."
"In that case, I'll come too," said Nagi.
Yue turned to Nagi and took both of her hands. "Would it be all right if you stayed here? I'm concerned about leaving our peoples behind in an unfamiliar place. I would feel more comfortable if you were here to look after everyone."
Nagi frowned. "Is this part of a misguided attempt to keep me out of danger?"
Yue shook her head. "Of course not. After everything we've been through I know you can handle anything." She smiled. "And I know you will keep the peace here."
"Well, all right," said Nagi. She hesitated for a moment and then pulled Yue into a tight embrace. "Be safe."
Yue let out a small gasp of surprise but Aang saw her shoulders relax into the hug. "You, too." When they separated, their touch lingered before their hands dropped to their sides.
With that, Aang, Toph, and Yue departed from the banyan Tree, heading down a root that sloped toward the shadows of the swamp below. Before they passed into the hazy cloud enveloping seemingly the entire swamp, Aang rotated his hands and called up a barrier of wind to keep a flow of clean air for the three of them. They stayed on the thick root, which formed a snaking path through the trees that elevated them above the mushroom-covered ground beneath it. Each mushroom cap was at least the size of a dinner plate, thriving even without moisture, and their color reminded Aang eerily of bones.
"It truly does feel like we're still in the Spirit World," said Yue. Her voice came out low, almost timid, but felt loud in the wanton silence of the swamp. "We saw all sorts of strange things there."
"I believe it," Aang said.
Toph walked ahead of them with her hands behind her head. "Bet everything we did was more exciting than what you did out here."
Aang smirked. "Oh yeah? Is that a challenge?"
"We met a giant panda and the Painted Lady and they guided us to meet a phoenix spirit."
"Oh, Hei Bai," said Aang. "Glad to hear he's doing well. We found another airbender. She's with Zuko and Sokka now."
"Oh, that's wonderful!" Yue interjected.
"Where's Azula?" Toph asked.
"Off with Katara somewhere."
"Oh."
Yue looked back and forth between them. "Um, is there a story behind that…?"
"Well, we met this big snake man who turned out to be Seiryu, the big bad moon spirit," Toph continued.
"Big deal. We met the winter spirit - Sedna, his ex-wife. Who had Sokka's mom with her."
"I beat up Wan Shi Tong and invented metalbending."
Aang shrugged in between his movements to circulate the air. "That one's old news. Sangmu showed us soundbending."
"Pfft, metalbending beats soundbending any day."
"Well, I would certainly say none of it was exciting at the time," said Yue, recalling the memories with her fingers curled up under her chin. "More like terrifying. But either way, I am glad we all made it through our struggles. And that Sokka and Katara have joined you."
"Well, I dunno about Katara," said Aang. "But Sokka… Yeah, he's doing well. I'm glad to have him with us. He's learned a lot."
Yue smiled. "Well, that makes me feel like I've made the right choice. I've always admired Sokka. He has a good heart."
Aang fell back into step with Yue, letting Toph walk ahead a little bit while he tugged at his collar. He remembered the way she held hands with Nagi and embraced her and felt a blush rising to his cheeks. "Uh… Did you and Sokka, um, ever have, like, a thing?"
She looked at him with an eyebrow raised, perplexed. "A thing?"
"You know, like… feelings."
She turned her eyes back to the overgrowth around them, eyes lingering on the dried out hollow of a tree covered with a white fungal growth that looked like webbing. "Do you ask because we had 'a thing' together in your world?"
Aang nodded. Even though Suki came back into his life, Aang had the sneaking suspicion that Sokka had never gotten over Yue. And then he lost Suki, too, and never recovered from that. It was like he had become this swamp, an empty husk of what he once was.
"Our fathers arranged for us to be married, once," Yue said. "And to be honest, I never truly disliked the idea. From the moment I met him, part of me loved Sokka. But it was never my choice to marry him, and I worried that if I continued down that path my life would have been decided for me by another from there on out. I always wondered 'what if?' What would my life have been like if I had been free to choose to marry whoever I wished? It's entirely possible that my choices would still have led me to Sokka, but…"
"It's impossible to know," Aang finished for her. "Maybe there are worlds out there where you were free to choose to be with him. Where it ended happily for you two."
"Perhaps," she said. "Though I'm afraid this isn't the world for that. Maybe our destinies are different in each world."
"Is Nagi part of your destiny here?" he asked, thinking of the way they departed from each other, their fingers intertwined.
She joined her hands together in her sleeves. "You are more perceptive than I would have expected," she admitted, blushing. "But I'm not sure. If it is my choices that led me here, that have allowed me to open up the possibility for something exciting, new, and different… then yes, I'd like to think she is, in some way."
Aang continued circling his hands, his eyes drawn to the spots in the trees where he could see yellow sky poking through. "And do you still love Sokka?"
Yue laughed. "You ask a lot of personal questions, Avatar Aang. Did you often ask me things in a roundabout way for advice in matters of love in your world?"
Aang blushed in embarrassment and his stomach twisted. He would have liked to have known her better, but their time together in his world was painfully short. "Sorry. And, well… you always seem like you just know these kinds of things."
"I see," she said. "Well, I believe I may always love him in some form. But that love has changed, and I've become open to the possibility of… new love." She bunched up her shoulders and blushed. "Even if, right now, it is still only a possibility. But I have faith this choice will lead me to a path with more happiness than I could have expected otherwise."
Aang gave her a bashful smile and thought of the plum blossom pendant carved from salt crystal still in his pocket. Yue had given him a lot to think about. "So it's about being open to new things. Unexpected things. Thank you, Yue."
Yue smiled back but before she could say anything else, Toph stumbled ahead of them and almost fell off of the massive root.
"Okay," she said, once Aang grabbed her by the back of the shirt and helped her regain her balance. "This tree root is getting a little too high off the ground for me to see with my feet. I'm not crazy about this swamp, let me tell you. My old forest was a lot easier to navigate."
The mention of her old forest brought to mind Jet and the others fighting their way to the North Pole, and Aang wondered how he might tell them that he'd found Toph already. Were they okay? The last time he saw Mai she hadn't been in a good place. Then again, he wasn't, either, but her presence helped him to not feel so alone. He worried for them both, even though he and Jet hadn't departed on the best terms. Was their mission to defeat Arnook further along than Aang's journey to defeat Hakoda?
"Hey, Toph," Aang said, letting his feet drag as he slowed his pace. Toph didn't know that Jet went to the north at all. "I have something to tell you. Yue, this concerns you, too."
Jet expected that Mai would have wanted to take some time to wait and come up with a plan for chasing down Arnook's retinue to the northern spirit portal, but she surprised him by taking action to move out that very same night. He also expected a lecture about the need to prepare, but as soon as he and Mai fled from the palace and her battle with the warrior woman in face makeup they gathered the others and made their way to a buffalo-yak stable. According to Mai, she was a Kyoshi Warrior named Suki. They had to reach Arnook before Suki did, before his warriors could stop them.
Ty Lee had argued that they should have helped Pahmo - he had essentially betrayed his people by helping them get into the palace. But he was a Water Tribe elder and former pirate, so both Mai and Jet responded with cold indifference. Every second they delayed allowed Suki to raise an alarm and ran the risk of Arnook finding out about their pursuit of him. With any luck, Suki would find and question Pahmo first, giving them some time.
Under the cover of night, near the edge of the city they managed to sneak into the buffalo-yak stables and steal a pair. Ideally, they would have taken toboggans for a journey out into the northern wastes but none of them knew how to hook the buffalo-yaks up to them, and at this hour there was no one to ask. With Jet and Ty Lee atop one while Mai and Haru took the other, they made their way out through the northeastern end of Agna Qel'a with much less difficulty than it took to get into the city.
Almost as soon as they left the city limits, the world changed all at once.
Jet's first thought was that the sky lit up with yellow and green fire, a conflagration of dancing lights. A fierce, sudden wind whipped up a sheet of snow that swept up and showered both buffalo-yaks, but the creatures held their footing as they pounded across the snowfields, their quarry bobbing far ahead in a trail of tiny lantern lights. Then the snow turned to rain, gentle at first, but then it intensified to a downpour that left the ground slick and slushy.
"The auroras are beautiful," said Ty Lee with a gasp of awe. "They say those are spirit lights dancing across the sky. I've always wanted to see them."
Jet didn't reply. The inexplicable rise of the temperature and rainfall slowed their advance. Though Arnook's retinue seemed composed of less than a dozen people, Jet knew that they likely had waterbenders who wouldn't be slowed down by these conditions, even though their buffalo-yaks pulled the extra weight of Arnook's covered carriage. With the snowfield's rolling hills, Jet could see their quarry every time he reached a crest, like Jet was riding a wave to come to crash down upon his enemies. They'd had a head start, but with each passing moment Jet and the others gained ground. Arnook was close. The pirate captain Sekun was close.
When he lifted his eyes to the spirit lights dancing above, Jet saw his village covered in flames. He was a child choking on smoke and covered in ash and blood, a child who witnessed the horrors of pirates reveling in the destruction. He saw the captain, the man in his wide-brimmed hat and a longsword in his grip, his waterbender crew halting all attempts to put out the flames with leery grins on their faces.
A glowing white light shone like a beacon at the top of a towering rock formation to the east. It stole his attention, its vibrancy thrumming like the spirit lights high above as if it had come down from the sky to offer a dance to Jet. He narrowed his eyes as the light took shape, a bipedal creature hunched over with much too long spindly arms and a monstrously huge mouth. Its jaws hung open and its eyes held a dull blue glow. An array of lights arranged in the shape of wings sprouted from its back, but it held its perch and only stared at Jet.
He tore his eyes away to glance behind him at Ty Lee. "Ty Lee, do you see that?"
"See what?" she asked, and when he turned back to the strange light being it was gone.
Ahead, Mai signaled and both buffalo-yaks came to a stop. The image of the inhuman creature vanished from Jet's mind when questions for Mai took its place. "Why are we stopping? They're gonna get away!"
"No they won't," she said, her hood up to protect her from the rain. "They stopped, too."
The buffalo-yaks pulling Arnook's carriage had halted in front of an ice formation shaped by a flash freeze and then partially melted. The heavy rain cast a pall over the lanterns hanging from his carriage, distorting the light and making it seem fuzzy. Captain Sekun dismounted from his buffalo-yak and surveyed the landscape ahead of them, but thanks to his lower elevation he didn't see the four teenagers watching him. Even so, Jet and the others ducked behind a rocky outcropping.
"The ice melted so fast," said Haru, answering the unspoken question. "It's so warm. There was a river frozen under the ice and now it's blocking their way."
Haru spoke true. Ahead of Arnook's retinue, Jet spotted the ice and water flowing downriver. Its width and flow speed was enough to make even waterbenders hesitate, especially while lugging a carriage.
"How did this happen so fast?" Ty Lee asked. Her giant parka still made her resemble a snowball with legs. She gripped her mittens between her teeth and tugged them off, shielding her eyes from the rain. "It was so cold earlier. And now if it wasn't raining I'd totally take my parka off."
"Why are we hesitating? This is a perfect opportunity to ambush them," Jet said. He didn't care about the weather. "They've got the numbers advantage but we'll have surprise on our side!"
"No," said Mai, her tone curt. "We need a plan. We're not running into this with suicidal overconfidence."
Jet grit his teeth. "We're not gonna get an opportunity like this again. I've faced worse odds."
"Wait, that's Ghashiun!" Haru exclaimed before Mai could retort. "What's he doing with Arnook?"
"Who's that?" Ty Lee asked.
Jet followed his gaze, squinting through the rain, and his eyebrows rose when he recognized the sandbender after he lowered his hood, already soaked through. "That's Ghashiun? That's the earthbender you met in the city?"
Haru nodded. "It's hard to say for sure all the way here, but I'm pretty sure…"
"He was with Katara," Jet said, cutting him off. The rage in his gut had already boiled over when he saw the pirate captain, but now he tempered it like folded steel. "Under Ba Sing Se. That guy helped her torture me." But next to Sekun, Ghashiun was irrelevant.
Haru looked wounded. "What…?"
Jet tensed when he felt a hand on his shoulder but managed to control his reaction when he saw Ty lee at his side with wide, fearful eyes. "Jet, whatever you're thinking, I know you're in pain. But please don't do anything rash. Your aura is scaring me."
"My aura is scaring you?" He almost laughed, but the incredulity in his voice betrayed him. "The man who took everything from me is right over there and you're worried about my aura."
Mai cut through the tension in the situation before anyone could say anything else. "They're making camp for the night. We will too. It'll give us time to come up with a plan. I'll double back and cover our tracks in case anyone from the city comes close to finding us."
Haru started to unpack their tent from the buffalo-yak's saddle, and while he and Ty Lee sullenly tried to make camp in the heavy rain, Jet's eyes wandered back toward Arnook's retinue. Far beyond them, he saw the light shape together into the same being with a wide, jagged mouth again, a mane of white fur pressed to its bony frame by the rain.
It continued to stare right at Jet, as if beckoning him to follow his fate.
At one point in their trek through the swamp, a tornado swept through the trees ahead of them and ripped up a cloud of mushroom spores so thick that they had to completely divert their route around it. Shortly after that, light spirits that resembled giant, fuzzy moths with wings that beat with otherworldly music rained down on them, iridescent butterfly wings gleaming with all the colors in the rainbow. They lashed out at Aang, Toph, and Yue with piercing probosci as long as Aang's arm, but Aang used his spiritbending the same way as he did on Koh and turned them back to normal, harmless spirit moths.
"How can something be so pretty and so frightening at the same time?" Yue asked, after the threat had abated. "And it's strange… light spirits behave in a similar way to dark spirits. I'm not sure what I expected, but they are both just unbalanced and lash out."
"They're two sides of the same coin," said Aang. "Equal and opposite, but they want the same thing."
"To turn us into one of them, right?" Toph asked with a grunt. "Yeah, yeah."
Aang sighed. Toph had become more sullen since Aang told them about Jet and the others journeying to the north, especially since part of their intent was to rescue her. Yue, on the other hand, took the news with a thoughtful frown, as if she had expected it. Aang hoped she had plenty of time to think about where she'd stand in a battle with her father. "Something like that," he said finally.
The overgrowth lessened until they came to a wide, open clearing with water so still it might have been a mirror, too big to be a puddle but too small to be a lake. At its edge, Aang saw the biggest cat-gator he had ever seen, bloated and laying on its side and long enough to take up most of the clearing. Mushrooms grew out of its corpse, its stomach hollowed out and toothy maw home to a jungle of verdant plant life. Its eyes were glossed over and milky, staring at them past the dust motes that floated in the air like dandelions.
"Everything here is so stagnant and quiet, like it has been frozen in time," said Yue, staring into the water. "Does this mean the whole swamp has been corrupted by light, like Koh was?"
"I don't think so," Aang said, unable to tear his eyes from the cat-gator. "I wouldn't say it's frozen - look closer, it's been overcome with growth and decay. Somehow, this swamp has fallen to Vaatu's darkness."
When he said the dark spirit's name, his head throbbed.
He saw the Great Banyan again. In his vision, the tree was covered in vivid greens, its canopy home to birds and lizards and all sorts of creatures - a time long before the Water Tribe invasion, before the chaos of decay that claimed it in Aang's time. His viewpoint launched from the blue skies around it and dove down toward the tree's massive trunk and he flinched when he didn't stop and passed right through it, descending deeper and deeper as he slid toward its roots.
He emerged again at the base of the Great Banyan and saw another blue sky. He slid back into the tree, into its roots, and then surfaced in the swamp again. Down and up he went, each nearly identical scene passing in quick succession, and it took him a moment to realize that each sky belonged to a different world, a different swamp.
The greatest illusion of this world is the illusion of separation.
The Great Banyan Tree connected each and every world, a spine that bound them all together - the support and greatest constant of them all. But as he descended, as he followed the trunk ever downward into the ground and along the roots, he sensed a blight in the tree, a sickness staining its wood. It intensified the deeper he went, inky veins pulsing and spreading and grabbing hold of the ancient banyan.
Aang fell into the depths of its darkness.
"Everyone, please stay calm! The Avatar is doing everything he can to free us of this place!"
Nagi's pleas fell on deaf ears. In the Spirit World, the uncertainty of the situation kept the people of Ba Sing Se and the Water Tribes from constantly going at each other's throats. But without the spirit toads reining them in, and the fact that they had made it back to the material world, the people seemed more and more eager to get back to any semblance of normality, even if that meant fighting against each other.
But with the unearthly yellow sky the way it was, Nagi knew normality was still far from their reach.
Jin, the girl who had been volunteered as the liaison to the spirit toads back at the Spirit World camp, let out a heavy sigh. "Now that there's no worry about spirit toads reacting to fighting and turning dark, it seems like any unity we had has gone away. There were some on the other side, like Rafa and Misu, who weren't so hotheaded…"
A Water Tribe man with a bushy brown beard, barely tamed by beaded braids, swung his two clubs through the air. Ever since Aang left, he had been the least content to wait for the Avatar to come back and guide them out of the swamp. With every passing minute he managed to urge more and more people to his way of thinking. "We'll cut a swathe through this swamp just like our fathers and grandfathers did!"
"Didn't you hear your very own princess?" Nagi asked, the only one brave enough to directly oppose him. "Yue said the air down near the trees is poisonous! If you do that you'll doom all of your own people."
"Why should I listen to anything the traitor northern princess would say?" the man retorted. He edged closer into Nagi's personal space as a show of intimidation. "She's not my princess!"
"Yue has the bigger picture in mind, unlike you," said Nagi, crossing her arms. "And I will have to ask you to step away from me before I'm forced to take action." That was a bit of her Dai Li mannerism sneaking in, but she couldn't help it.
The warrior clenched his fist and grit his teeth, but before he said anything else, an Earth Kingdom man stood at Nagi's defense. "Yeah, back off from her, you big brute!" More refugees jeered from behind him in support, emboldened by the man's shout.
"No, stand down," Nagi said, but she went unheard. More of the warrior's compatriots shook their weapons threateningly at the Earth Kingdom refugees, and Nagi knew this wouldn't end well. Despite her people outnumbering theirs, these men and women weren't soldiers. "Why won't anyone listen?"
"They're in a panic," said Jin, hands clasped over her chest. "Some of the warriors listened to Rafa, but…" Her eyes fell toward the direction where the healers gathered along the roots. Both Rafa and Misu were still with them, impervious to any attempts to heal their strange malady.
Nagi clenched her fists at her sides. If only she could wake Rafa and Misu. Healing did nothing to break the hold of light's corruption upon them, and the Avatar's spiritbending had been just as useless. They weren't spirits. They were living people, with physical bodies. It was in the very name of the ability, and since spirits were made of energy she supposed it was foolish to think spiritbending would work.
Even more foolish, Nagi had thought she could spiritbend Koh and bring balance back to him. Waterbenders were the experts at bending chi. Only they could bring balance back to spirits. But she was so certain it would work… something had happened when she managed to use the ability on Koh. She felt something beneath her feet, something warm, and it had produced a bright green glow. But nothing had happened to Koh at all.
Misu had told her that water was the element of change, of adaptability, and that mindset - that malleability - allowed them to direct the flow of a spirit's chi and bring balance back to them.
But earth was the element of substance. Physicality and resilience. What use was something as intangible as spirit energy to an earthbender?
The Mother of Faces said that Rafa and Misu had been changed on a physical level, didn't she?
She felt a jolt of something shooting from her feet up her spine. The arguing refugees and warriors sounded so far away, but she ignored them and carefully maneuvered her way over the banyan tree's roots toward the cluster of healers.
Rafa and Misu lay side by side, their eyes staring sightlessly into the sky. Both had been scarred by the white of Koh's corruption, their foreheads, noses, and lips hardened like porcelain. If it weren't for the slow, unsteady rise and fall of their chests, Nagi would have thought they'd be dead; she wondered if the insides of their bodies had hardened as well.
"What is it, Nagi?" Jin asked, trailing after her.
"I was going at it all wrong," said Nagi, kneeling down at Rafa's side. "I knew I did something against Koh - some kind of earth-spiritbending, I suppose - but it's not meant to be used against him. He doesn't have a physical body, but earth is the physical element."
Jin frowned and blinked slowly. "So… that makes earthbending different?"
"From water, yes, and especially air and fire," said Nagi. "Even the earth chakra shows that. It's located at the base of the spine - the closest to the earth of all the chakras - and deals with physical health and vigor. So while water-spiritbending can bring balance to spirits… I think earth-spiritbending can bring balance to people."
She placed her palms against the roots of the banyan tree and screwed her eyes shut. She summoned all the energy within herself that she could and focused on Rafa's body. All the excess energy within her funneled out through her hands and deep into the earth through her connection to it; even separated from the soil she felt the force moving through the banyan tree. A soft green light glowed from under Nagi's hands and Rafa's whole body. Purifying energy washed over him and both Nagi and Jin let out gasps when trails of white light lifted away from his face and dissipated in the air. Even the healers had gathered around them again, eyes wide with awe.
The green light curled in tendrils like undergrowth coming to life beneath Rafa before that light, too, dispersed into the air.
As soon as the light vanished, Rafa drew in a deep breath.
Jet didn't sleep.
While Mai doubled back to cover their trail, he went ahead to survey Arnook's camp. Jet had a higher perch and a shallow cave that gave him shelter from the rain, so he stood there and watched. Unmoving. The pirate captain's laughter replayed in his head over and over again. His village continued to burn. He saw his family, crying and coughing and urging him to escape. Jet had been the only one who hadn't been wounded by the initial attack. He remembered running, more desperate than he'd ever been in his life, leaving them all behind in ash and smoke. It felt like days before he found the next town, also ravaged by the Water Tribes. It was there he'd found Longshot, Smellerbee, and Bandit. They met for the first time among devastation and sought to wreak the same on their foes thereafter.
He missed them. They'd been with him since the beginning, and together they'd vowed to see this through to the end. But now it was only Jet, and he would succeed in making his friends proud. His family would be avenged.
"Here you are."
Jet gripped both of his hook swords in his hands and spun to face the source of the voice, but it was only Ty Lee. He scowled and lowered his weapons. "What is it?"
"You've been gone a long time," she said, eyes wide. "I was worried."
"I'm fine," he said. "Go back to camp."
Ty Lee frowned and joined him under his shelter. "I don't want to leave you here alone. Something doesn't seem right about all this." Her voice had never sounded so shaken and unsure, and she looked as if she'd been weighed down by the rain. "The weather, the spirit lights, Arnook leaving the city so suddenly… and why are Ghashiun and that pirate captain with him? Didn't Arnook ban all pirates from the city?"
"I guess he picks favorites," Jet said. "Doesn't matter to me."
"Jet," she said, voice firm. "What're you going to do when you come face to face with that pirate?"
"What do you think I'm gonna do, Ty Lee? Give him a slap on the wrist and send him home?"
She shuffled her feet. "Don't do anything you'd regret. If you kill him, you'd be no better than him."
His face got hot with anger and he turned to her. "How dare you say that? That monster destroyed my entire village and laughed about it. I'm sure he did the same to so many others. And Arnook? He did so much damage to the world from waging this war. They've both ruined families. Ruined lives. Nothing I could do would ever compare - the world will be so much better without them in it."
She winced as if he struck her and wrung her fingers. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Maybe you're right… but they say that vengeance changes people. It eats you up on the inside until there's nothing left."
"You don't understand," he said, teeth grit. "I already have next to nothing left. The Water Tribes took it all from me. All I've got is my Freedom Fighters, and I have to do this for them. To keep them safe. I'm doing the dirty work so they don't have to."
Was his motivation that selfless? He didn't know. Probably not. But if that was the type of leader he truly was, then so be it.
For a long while, Ty Lee didn't answer. But she looked past him and pointed at Arnook's camp, gasping in shock.
White shapes fluttered among the campsite, ripping parts of the carriage away in their claws. They were huge, winged beasts - blindingly bright, with bulging arms and legs along with faces that resembled a moose-lion with too many teeth. Jet saw warriors fighting back against the creatures, even Ghashiun forming defenses with his earthbending. But one figure sprinted away from the camp - a figure with a wide-brimmed hat and something tucked under his arm.
"What are those things?" Ty Lee asked, eyes wide with fear. "Spirits?"
"Captain Sekun is running for it," Jet said, eyes narrowed. Unwilling to waste a minute more, he emerged from his shelter and dashed down the slope toward the pirate, sliding down the slick ice melt. Ty Lee didn't follow.
Jet ran as hard as he did the day his village burned. High above him, he thought he saw the same being from earlier, with its jagged smile and mane of fur, but it disappeared in the rain and he pushed it from his mind to focus on Sekun. Over the years since the massacre of his village, Jet had clung to any little detail he could find about the crew of the Silver Moon, intent on tracking them down like an eelhound after scraps. He'd never been able to track the captain down, never found his next port of call. But now, Sekun ran along the newly melted riverbank, but toward what Jet didn't know. Whatever it was, he wouldn't reach it.
Sekun stopped to catch his breath, keeled over with fatigue, but he turned around in time to notice Jet coming at him with both hook swords. Sekun dropped the cylindrical container he held under his arm - a scroll case - and parried Jet's blow just in time. It hung from his back in a sling, protecting its contents from the rain.
The captain grunted and pushed Jet back while his iguana-parrot screeched above them. "Who're you, kid? You're not one of Arnook's men."
"You mean you don't remember me?" Jet snarled. "I was just a kid from some no-name, backwater village to you, huh? Not worth remembering, was I?"
Sekun's eyes narrowed and he took a careful, almost elegant stance with his jian longsword. "Can't say I remember you, boy. But this isn't the first time someone sought me for revenge. It's a pretty common scenario in my line of business." And to Jet's rage and astonishment, he smirked.
Jet howled into attack, swinging his swords with reckless abandon. Despite his opponent's age, Sekun fought with unexpected grace and poise, an expert of the blade who kept his distance with parries and stabs. But Jet stayed mobile, ducking and rolling under the pirate's counterattacks. After the initial blows, the ringing of his arms against the clashing of their weapons, he felt his focus sharpening, his intent honed to a fine point. Sekun noticed the change.
"You're not a bad sword arm," said Sekun, as naturally as a tutor to his disciple. "And you've already gotten further than most would-be avengers in your shoes. Most don't manage to get me alone, without the crew… but then again, they scarcely come alone themselves."
Jet's eyes and nostrils flared. "I don't need anyone else to take you down." He hooked the ends of both his swords together so one of his hilts swung free with strikes that seemed wild and erratic to anyone but Jet. The hilts of both his weapons had been sharpened to a deadly edge, striking the ice at their feet with every dodge Sekun managed to make.
Sekun backed away and nearly lost his footing on the icy edge of the river. "Neat trick. No crew of your own, then?"
"Shut up!" Sekun wasn't supposed to talk through this except to beg for his life. He wasn't supposed to be conversational. That meant he didn't see Jet as a threat. "Don't look down on me!"
The pirate managed to circle around, parrying Jet's blows and catching Jet's wrist with his free hand when he couldn't parry both swords. Jet kicked toward his chest, but Sekun wore armor over his parka and the blow barely pushed him back. Around them, ice cracked with the sounds of thunderclaps as the temperature rose and the ice floe down the river intensified.
"The last kid who tried to kill me ended up joining my crew," Sekun continued. His face looked ruddy with exertion but his attacks didn't slow. "Maybe one day he'll get his revenge. Or maybe he saw the folly in it."
Rather than joining blade to blade, Jet combined his two hilts together and held them in one fist while the hooks extended from both ends. He swiped at Sekun in vicious tearing motions while he caught Sekun's sword at the joined hilts. Sekun gripped one of the hook swords in his hands, but with his fist protected by the bladed hilts, Jet punched toward Sekun and caught him in the shoulder while the other hook ripped through his parka and tore away his armor.
"I'd never stoop so low," Jet said, his teeth grit. He pressed his attack, hammering at Sekun's lowered defenses with anguished bellows and forceful strikes while the rain drowned out all other noise. "You're a monster who killed my family!"
Sekun stumbled back from the blows, but he held his footing. "Such righteous fury!" he exclaimed. "And look - that light spirit is drawn to it, I'd say." He gestured with his free hand across the other side of the river, where Jet saw the same hunched, haunting being with its skeletal frame and blank eyes. It stared at them as they battled, unmoving, and light emanated from it in bright flashes. "It's here to devour. It's drawn to that righteousness, that feeling that you're the hero who wipes out the evil, dastardly villain. It feels good, doesn't it? Empowers you? Here I thought that the light spirits that attacked our camp were after Arnook, but it was because of you, wasn't it?"
Jet's scowl deepened. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Well, I have to thank you," he said, patting the scroll case hanging by his shoulder. "Because it gave me the perfect chance to get away with this scroll I brought to Arnook from the jungles deep in the Fire Nation. My men should be right at the point where this river meets the ocean. The high chief has lost his marbles so I think I'm better off finding another buyer for this."
Jet slid forward, taking advantage of Sekun's momentary distraction to hook one of his swords around the older man's ankle, pulling his foot out from under him. "Ran to save your own skin, did you? For your own gain?" The pirate fell to the ground but caught himself on his hands and knees, spinning onto his back to catch Jet's follow-up attack from the other hook sword. His wide-brimmed hat fell, waterlogged by the rain and ice. "You're just a coward out for yourself! You pirates are all the same!"
Sekun's arms shook with the effort of holding Jet back. "That's a pirate's life," he grunted. "Gotta chase the gold." The captain aimed a kick at Jet, knocking him away. "Gotta chase the freedom, the glory of taking our lives into our own hands!"
Jet pinned Sekun down by the sleeve with his other sword as the two fought for dominance in the water that pooled around their ankles, splashing and flailing. "You're just a monster! My village had nothing, no fortunes at all, and you took it all away anyway! And that depravity is in your blood, inside everyone in the Water Tribes!"
Sekun swung but Jet was faster - his hook sword caught the hilt of Sekun's jian and pulled it from the pirate's grip. Jet grabbed it in midair, and in one smooth movement, he stabbed downward.
Jet's hook swords weren't for stabbing. They were deadly weapons, but most useful to him for navigating forests and trees, for tearing away armor and weapons - and one day, he dreamt, flesh and bone.
But they couldn't stab, they couldn't end the life of his foe in one clean thrust.
Sekun let out a breathless gasp, blood sputtering from his mouth as he looked down at his chest in realization, at his own sword pinning him to the ground. His wide eyes found Jet's, and with a shuddering voice, he held Jet's hands like a vise against the hilt buried in his chest. "You don't know a thing about this world, boy," he said. "I'm not Water Tribe. It's not our blood that makes us who we are. That blood on your hands? That's… Fire Nation." He wheezed. "To think… a whelp like you. The one to finish the great Captain Sekun."
Sekun's grip weakened and Jet fell back on his knees, his hands shaking. As the last of the pirate's life left him, Jet watched the blood gather in deep crimson rivulets and swirls that washed away like ink in water, frozen in disbelief. The whole battle felt like it passed so quickly, so unlike any of the myriad ways he imagined this scenario in all the years since he'd lost his family. He almost felt as if his body had moved of its own volition, guided by the years of hatred fueling his actions.
That same force turned his head toward where the light spirit had been before, but now it was gone.
A cloaked figure descended down the slope toward the riverside, a pair of daggers drawn, and it took Jet a moment to realize Mai had found him. She took one look at the scene, at the blood staining his parka, and Jet had no words for her.
Aang continued to follow the inside of the banyan tree, his vision cloudy as he mentally descended further and further. He saw more and more worlds like windows in the tree trunk, passing by in quick flashes before he could really even register what he was seeing, and as he reached its roots he felt a force powerful enough to give him nausea. The roots had been tainted by dark veins, a sickness or blight, and he felt that the swamp wanted Aang to get to the bottom of it. It didn't use words, but he felt it pleading; a longing for solace from the force that choked it.
The roots all converged on a single point. Like diving underwater, he felt his perspective flip, and suddenly instead of descending he instead swam upward. He found himself under a familiar sky between twilight and dawn, in a barren landscape scarred by an ancient battle. He stood at the foot of a hollowed out tree, bare and twisted.
He knew it to be the Tree of Time.
This tree and the Great Banyan were each other's roots, perfect mirrors of each other. One above, one below, binding all of time and space together. And within the Tree of Time, infecting the roots of the Great Banyan, was Vaatu, in his prison.
Aang had another vision. This time, he saw great pillars of light from the two portals joining together, and with that energy came the release of the primogenitor of dark spirits. The energy from the portals converged, as if bridging together the present and his future, their future. Within the Tree of Time, Vaatu saw it too. Both of them also saw Vaatu's defeat, a titanic clash without detail or recognition.
It wasn't in Aang's lifetime. He knew that. But, if left unchecked, it could be - and that was what the swamp was trying to show him.
Aang felt himself shunted back to his body with all the force of emerging from a dive deep underwater. He took in a deep breath and both Yue and Toph gripped him by the shoulders.
"Avatar, what is it?" said Yue, her voice heavy with concern.
Aang put his hands on his knees to steady himself, and when he caught his breath he stood up straight. The spores all around them had begun encroaching back into the clearing, but Aang circled clean air around the three of them again. "I know what happened to the swamp," he said.
Toph pounded him on the back. "Well, spit it out!"
"The banyan tree connects all the worlds to each other," he said. "And there's a dark spirit, a powerful one, sealed deep inside its roots all the way in the Spirit World. He's trying to get out, but it's not time for him to do that yet."
Yue put a hand on the hilt of her sword, perhaps in reflex. "What do you mean? So he is going to get out?"
"One day, far from now," Aang said, nodding. "He's just trying to do things ahead of schedule by infecting the banyan tree, which throws all the worlds out of balance and weakens his prison. Which means… things only got so bad with the merging because he interfered. He saw that I was in the wrong world and he took advantage of it. Maybe, eventually, everything would have gotten like this if I stayed in the wrong world too long, but he's the one who made it so unstable. The swamp showed me all this because it needs help to hold him in his prison. And now Xai Bau came along and made things even worse. He might not have even known about Vaatu."
"But all of this started happening to the swamp long before you came to this world," said Yue, her eyes drawn to the cat-gator carcass. "And there are stories that the swamp itself came to life and banished all of its occupants, closing itself off to outsiders. Why would it do that if it needed help?"
Aang turned around and started heading back to the trunk of the banyan tree, his thoughts rushing by too fast for him to grasp them and voice them. "Time is an illusion," he quoted. "Maybe for Vaatu all that just happened. Or maybe he foresaw me coming. I don't know. Maybe the swamp did that at first to keep the waterbender invaders from damaging the tree that connects all the worlds together. That invasion could have been what started it all, too, and the swamp kicked everyone out to protect the tribes who lived here from Vaatu. It's impossible to say for sure what caused this - Vaatu, the invaders, or the swamp itself."
Toph let out a doubtful scoff. "You mean the swamp can't just tell you?"
"I'm trying to listen," he admitted. "But it doesn't exactly communicate with words, you know. It sort of has its own way of talking." He grinned. "But do you know what this means? My past lives aren't entirely at fault for everything that happened up 'til now because they sent me here!"
"That certainly is something to celebrate," Yue said, following him at a hurried pace. "Or, at least, I believe so. So what do we do now? Is there a way you can stabilize everything?"
Aang deflated when his joy left him as quickly as it came. He spent some time contemplating his reply, his eyes fixed through the holes in the canopy above to the banyan ahead. "I don't know if it's possible to stabilize the breakdown between this world, the Spirit World, and all the others at this point without me going back home," he said. "But I can try. At the very least, I hope I can do something to help."
They arrived back at the tree's massive trunk to a scene fraught with tension. Refugees and warriors faced each other as if ready to pounce. Appa raised his hackles as he stood between them, alongside Nagi, Jin, and two older people Aang didn't recognize.
"I won't let you lead our people to their doom!" exclaimed the man at Nagi's side. He had a slim frame and a beard as grey as his hair. As Aang neared, he recognized the man as the one they called Rafa - cured of Koh's light. "The Avatar got us all out of the Spirit World, didn't he? I'm sure he can do something to help again!"
"We just need to be patient," said the woman next to him, Misu. She, too, looked as if she had made a full recovery. She held her hands out in an effort to placate both crowds. "We all do. It's understandable to feel panic right now, but…"
"We don't want to listen to invaders from the Water Tribes!"
Nagi stood protectively in front of Rafa, Misu, and Jin. "Our best shot of getting out of here involves working together," she said. "Afterward, we'll worry about all the things we put aside to survive."
"Nagi!" Yue exclaimed, rushing the rest of the way to stand at her side. "And Rafa and Misu! How did this happen?"
Aang leapt up high and came down in the center of the crowd. "Nagi's right. Right now, we need to focus on leaving the swamp. Everything else will come after."
"You'll never guess what happened, Yue!" said Nagi, grasping Yue's hands with a wide grin. "I managed to spiritbend! I really did it!"
Yue's eyes widened in astonishment. "That's wonderful!"
"I realized that spiritbending with water worked great against spirits… but with earth, we need to work with something more physical," Nagi explained. "Spiritbending isn't just limited to waterbending after all!"
"I'm just as surprised," said Misu, sharing a glance with Yue and giving a perplexed shrug. "I'm just glad my lesson worked."
"That's all well and good," said a waterbender with a surly scowl. "But we're no closer to getting out of here."
Aang curled his finger under his chin, staring up at the tree's dying boughs. "That's amazing, Nagi. But now I wonder… what if every bending style can do it? Do you think we can do the same to bring balance to places?"
Toph shook her head and shrugged. "Don't ask me. I don't think any of this spiritual stuff is really my style."
"Is it possible to cleanse the whole swamp?" asked Yue. She folded her hands together as if in prayer. "I think… I think it is possible for certain spiritually significant places to be negatively affected by unbalanced energies. When I was young, the Spirit Oasis back home had a very different feel to it than it does now - it used to be so warm and serene. So… it stands to reason that the process can be reversed, right?"
"A spiritual cleansing," Aang said, his voice trailing off. Dimly, he remembered how the monks often had him sweep the temple hallways as part of his chores, explaining that the broom brushed away negative energy that clung to places. He'd always thought that it was just an excuse to keep the temple clean. Incense and wind chimes were also used in lots of different ceremonies and festivals throughout the year, and Gyatso told him that it was a ritual meant to make a clean slate. "Was that air-spiritbending all along?"
Appa let out a low grumble and nudged Aang, as if encouraging him forward.
Aang pressed a hand against Appa's head and smiled. "I'm going to try it," he said. He took several deep breaths, steadying himself, and stepped forward while repeating the same calm, circular motion he used to make a bubble of clean air when they had descended into the swamp. It felt like a dance, and though he quailed at first under the feeling of so many people watching him - relying on him - he pushed the thoughts aside and tried to recall the way he felt when he first used spiritbending on Koh.
Koh was a being consumed by light, and Aang needed to dredge up the energy within himself to balance that out. But now, this swamp had been tainted by darkness, so he had to match it with its opposite energy. It felt natural to reminisce about the monks, about the ways they cleaned the temple and sanctums. He heard those old wind chimes in his ears, the wind whistling between the holes in the wood, and he envisioned the breeze pushing away Vaatu's pall. The wind sang with a gentle ringing, like those soft, distant chimes, and before his eyes it seemed as if the air glittered with tiny stars.
"Is it working?" Nagi asked. "Is it enough?"
"I don't know," Aang replied. "There's so much of the swamp and there's just one of me. But maybe…" If the swamp really did poison itself - whether to oust Vaatu or the invaders - he wondered if he could convince it to help him. He just hoped the Avatar State wouldn't be necessary for that. He could use his proximity to the Spirit World to induce it, but that was almost like cheating. He still didn't have true control.
Please, he thought. Help me. I know you're just one giant, living organism, just like Huu told me way back then. You need to help me help you.
Something responded. It didn't use words, or even visions, but he felt a surge of something deep within the earth. For a moment he feared Vaatu's interference, but then the wind picked up and he realized he had awakened something that had been dormant for a long, long time.
Like the very first time Aang had come to this swamp, a tornado spontaneously formed, swirling with the Great Banyan at its eye. The crowd of refugees and warriors crowded closer to the trunk in alarm as the raging winds obscured their vision of the swamp beyond. Within the roaring tornado, Aang saw his own cleansing winds, his white wind, spreading as if amplified by the swamp's tornado. He looked directly upward at the sky past the tree's interwoven branches and saw the mushroom spores, the poisoned air, getting sucked into the vortex.
While the tornado did its work, Aang jumped on Appa's back and stared at the crowd. Every single pair of eyes watched him, transfixed, as the winds died down and revealed the world at large to them once again. Now, the trees filling the swamp below them had been cleared of the white haze. While it would take a long time for the swamp to regain its vivid greens and lush flora and fauna, he knew now that it would be able to recover. It just needed time.
"People of Ba Sing Se," Aang said. "People of the Water Tribes. I know that during your time together in the Spirit World you were able to work together - or at least put your animosity aside - toward your mutual survival. But the wounds inflicted on the Earth Kingdom won't heal so easily."
The burly warrior with two clubs from earlier raised his fist. "The wounds inflicted on the Earth Kingdom? What about us? I lost all my brothers to earthbenders!"
Aang turned his gaze on the man, stone-faced. "None of these people here now are soldiers. They're refugees. They lost their homes to your invasions even before they fled to Ba Sing Se, only for you and your people to attack them again. You are the ones who need to make reparations," he said. He gestured to Misu. "But luckily, your people are capable of something unique among all the four nations: your bending can be used to heal. Someone told me once that the world would be a much better place if every waterbender used their powers to heal instead of hurt. You're capable of it. I've seen it, and I know the good that waterbending can do."
Sufficiently cowed, at least for now, the man stood down. Aang looked down and saw Nagi and Yue's joined hands, and he knew what he said resonated with them. He just hoped it would be enough, at least for now.
"Alright," said Toph, stomping her foot. "I don't know about everyone else, but I'm ready to stick my feet on solid ground again. The swamp's safe to travel through now, right? We can go ahead and find those old geezers again?"
"I think so," Aang said, giving her a soft smile. Even after everything that had happened, Toph had endured. And she would keep them all moving, focused on the task ahead and their tangible goals.
"But the Spirit World still seems like it's being forced into this one," said Nagi, staring up at the sky. Now it had been darkened by a streak of pink and lavender, which mixed with the yellow in a way that made it look almost like a summer sunset. "Did you stop Xai Bau and that dark spirit?"
"All I did was slow down the merge and reinforce Vaatu's prison," Aang said. "Things are just stabilized. Or, at least, that's what I think. Things won't be going back to normal quite yet… not until this war is over."
"We're still so far away from Ba Sing Se," said Yue, frowning with worry. "How are we going to bring all these people back to the safety of the city?"
"With Appa and a small group, we could make it to Ba Sing Se in a matter of days," said Aang. "But there's no way we can just leave all these people behind."
"Maybe we don't have to," said Nagi, her voice low. She chewed her lip as if debating something internally, but then she steadied herself and nodded to Aang and Yue. "The Si Wong Desert is right outside the swamp. And as you both may or may not know, my people have been accepting refugees from all over the Earth Kingdom. It's a well-kept secret, but… it's a lot closer. We can bring these refugees to Si Wong City."
Yue beamed. "Oh, yes! I remember you telling us about that back when we first met, beneath Ba Sing Se!" She glanced toward the cluster of her people and her smile faltered, only to be replaced with a resolute stare. "But it should stay a secret from my people, for the safety of everyone there. Once we leave the swamp, they can go their own way."
Nagi sighed with relief, pushed back her conical hat, and threw her arms around Yue's shoulders. "Thank you, Yue."
Aang gripped his staff and looked out over the swamp - already, the people started shuffling carefully down the banyan's roots. They still had a long way to go before they could reach the desert, but now they had a plan. "I have to admit, I don't really have great memories of that desert… but if it's safe, and it's on the way to Ba Sing Se, then we have to go."
With the storm clouds blotting out the sky, Jet had no idea what hour it was, or how long they chased Arnook's men through the night. The high chief's retinue had fled from the light spirit attack. It was only after Jet and Mai had rejoined Haru and Ty Lee that he learned what had transpired while he battled Captain Sekun. Mai had been collected enough after finding Jet to think of taking the scroll case Sekun had tried to flee with, but with the heavy rain and lack of time they didn't get the chance to inspect its contents.
Instead of following him, Ty Lee had gone to go find Mai. But a swarm of the same spirits had stopped her and Haru, and Jet had the private thought that it was all by design, as if the spirits had been trying to delay them.
Ty Lee had no words for Jet when she saw the blood that stained his parka. She simply held her hands over her mouth and looked as if she'd be sick, shaking as she rode behind Haru on his buffalo-yak. Haru, for his part, tried to offer Jet some words of support, but Jet didn't hear them. He didn't have time to think and process what had happened at the riverside.
He couldn't read Mai. He couldn't tell if she understood or if she was disappointed in him. But she of all people should have known what he felt, what he had gone through. She had no right to judge him or expect anything else from him.
He had achieved his revenge. After all these years, he'd found the man through a stroke of luck. He'd faced his greatest enemy and he won.
All this time, his vitriol had been aimed at the Water Tribes. The captain had a crew with waterbenders in it, so it was a reasonable assumption for him to make - or so Jet told himself. But Captain Sekun was a Fire Nation man.
He stared down at the blood staining the cuffs of his parka, and then at the horizon as they rode past. Far away, a beacon of light shone, and he realized it was the same light spirit that watched his battle with Sekun. Jet wondered if it had guided him there.
It stared at Jet with its blank eyes and wicked smile, and with slow, heavy beats of its massive wings, it flew away, its hunger sated.
Author's Note: It's a good week for Distorted Reality, huh? New chapter, Rocket Axxonu's adaptation of "The Chase," and Episode 1 of the comic dub all came out! Let me know what you think!
