Hey guys, I'm back with a new chapter. Let's get on with it, shall we?
The ride south was easy, at first. I found a village not far from where I came ashore, and was able to barter some pelts I had in exchange for an ostrich horse. Not long after that, I acquired a rice hat from a drunk sleeping propped up against a fence in a rooster pig stall. The guy was so drunk he didn't even notice me taking it off his head. I dropped a copper piece in his lap and went on my way.
My bow was rather pitifully held together by my attempted repairs, and as such was in no condition for me to even consider using it. That left my revolver, which didn't have that many rounds left anyway. The best thing I could hope for now was finding my friends as quickly as possible, without getting into trouble.
Of course, things never seem go the way they should around me.
I was a few days down the coast when the coughing started. It began as an annoying scratch in the back of my throat that I couldn't get rid of in the morning, and by the time sunset was approaching it had progressed into fits that left me exhausted and breathless. Still, I kept riding. After all, the longer I lingered, the less likely I was going to be able to catch up to my friends in Omashu.
Coming up on a rise, I looked down and spied the lights of a village in the valley below me in the purple light of the evening. A decent nights rest and something warm to eat was all I needed, and then I could press on, leaving this annoying cough behind me. As I started down the ridge toward the village, another fit came over me.
My lungs screamed in agony as I coughed uncontrollably. Sweat formed on my brow and I felt myself grow weaker with each passing cough. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I lost my grip on the reins, and I fell from the saddle into the dust of the road. Time passed, and I just lay there, silently begging for the coughing to stop long enough for me to catch my breath, or for me to just blackout.
The soft glow of a lantern fell over me, although I couldn't see the source of the light or who was carrying it. By now, the coughing had slowed to the point where I could get some air in. My hands were shaking violently, and I was simply too weak to even try and raise my head, much less stand up.
"Father, stop, there's someone there in the road!" a young woman's voice came.
"Be careful, Aya, he looks sick," a man's voice replied. A set of hands appeared on my shoulder and rolled me onto my back. I gasped, my eyes bugging out as I was no longer able to breathe. The young woman who appeared in my vision looked surprised, and then concerned before she started trying to help me sit up.
"Aya!"
"He's can't breathe, father," she replied calmly, although I couldn't help but notice an annoyed tone. I had just gotten a breath of air in, when another coughing fit started. This time I was too weak to fight it, and I passed out.
Where was I? Some beach? It wasn't any beach I could remember visiting. The sand was white, the water pristine and blue. Cliffs of black rock rose up on all sides, indicating that this was a secluded beach. Lush, tropical vegetation lined both the edge of the beach and the cliff tops high above. This wasn't anywhere I'd seen in the Earth Kingdom, and it sure as hell wasn't Montana.
"You coming?" came Katara's voice. Turning, I found myself looking at a sight I almost couldn't believe. She was standing in the edge of the surf, her hair down with a hand on her hip, wearing a set of white wrappings that she usually had for undergarments and swimwear. There was something different about her though, and it took a moment of looking for me to realize what it was.
Instead of her mother's necklace, it was my cord with my grandfather's medallions hanging around her neck.
"Come on, we gotta go now if we want to catch the tide," she said.
I jerked awake and tried to sit up, only for my midsection to scream in protest and for a set of hands to stop me in my place. Another coughing fit racked me as I fell back onto the small bed I'd been laying on.
"Easy there, you're not in any condition to move," a young woman's voice said. As I struggled to regain my breath, I realized it was the young woman from earlier that had spoken. She had soft features, pale skin, and long dark hair pulled back into a single pony tail which stretched down to the small of her back. Her dress was a simple, sun faded green.
"I…need…get too," I tried.
"Rest now, don't talk," she said. I lost my fight to stay awake and slipped into the dark again.
"Move, Charlie! You're blocking the TV!" I yelled. I was a kid again. Little, innocent, and incredibly pissed off. My older brother had come to a complete stop in front of the television and angled himself so that his frame almost completely blocked the screen. A grin of glee was plastered across his face. He knew exactly what he had done, and the torment it was causing me was no small source of amusement for him.
"Too much TV will rot your brain, squirt," he said smugly. My face screwed up in rage, and I fell back on the one final resort every younger sibling goes to.
"Mom! Dad!"
"Buachaill, sui!" came my father's voice from the other room. Instantly the grin was gone, and my brother landed on the couch next to me. Dad very rarely broke into Irish, but when he did, it was a sign that a line had been crossed. We both sat there, looking at our knees as he came into the living room. His face was unreadable, but his brown eyes were intense and filled with anger.
"You two have been at each others throats all day. Either sit there and watch your show, or get some sticks, go outside, and beat each other to death. At this point, I don't care, just make a choice," he said, his voice unnervingly calm. I hated when he got like that. Yelling I could handle. It was the deathly calm that made my skin crawl and wish he'd just get whatever punishment he had in store out and over with already.
Charlie looked at me, and I looked at him. Neither one of us made a move for the front door. Instead we both sat there in uncomfortable silence, watching the TV behind him. It was Avatar again, The Great Divide episode in fact. After a few moments of this, Dad nodded once before heading off toward his den again.
"Start fightin' again and I'll send ya both outside. And make it good, cause I'm killing the winner," he said. I cast a glance at my brother, who was board and resting his chin on his fist as he watched the show.
"What do you think, round two in Hell?" I asked.
"Shut up, Morg."
"We cannot keep him here, Aya. If the Fire Nation comes looking-"
"Why would they? We've paid the tax, we've caused no trouble. Why would they come here, father? What do they hope to gain from us?"
"If they discover him here, they'll burn everything we own." I struggled to get my eyes open. It was the young woman and man from earlier. They were standing outside of the room I was in, arguing about me apparently.
"We do what is right, no matter the cost. That is what you and mother taught me," the young woman said sternly.
"Aya, the Fire Nation took your mother because she stood for what she thought was right," the man said, the sound of defeat in his voice.
"Then what better way to uphold her memory then by doing what she would have done," the young woman replied. She made her way over to me, took a cool, damp rag, and pressed it to my forehead. I wanted to say something, but ended up drifting off again.
The moon was blood red. I was back in the Northern Water Tribe. All around me were the dead. Fire Nation soldiers mainly. They'd all fallen in the same direction, like they were trying to get away from something. Each one of them had the same wounds; claw and bite marks. A howl pierced the night, causing me to look up and feel my blood run cold.
There stood brilliant white wolf a short distance away, it's fur bathed in the red moonlight. It looked at me, as I looked back at it. Then, it snarled at me, baring it's blood soaked fangs. It's orange eyes glowed like coals on a dying campfire as it regarded me with an inhuman hunger. Before my eyes, it's form shifted, flickering back and forth between a wolf and a human. I realized with horror that the human I was looking at was me, standing there covered in gore and holding a bloody tomahawk.
"Your choice, White Wolf. Now, suffer the consequence."
I woke up again, this time due to a beam of sunlight shining in through a window, straight into my eyes. Sitting up was a struggle. My entire ribcage hurt, and despite having been asleep for who knows how long, I was exhausted. Looking around the room I was in, I instantly knew I had no idea where I even was.
The room itself was mostly wood and paper, even complete with one of those paper sliding doors. My bed was actually a pile of blankets on the floor rather than anything suspended off the ground, which went a long way to explaining why I felt so stiff. My throat felt raw and dry, yet I couldn't find any water around me. As if to answer a prayer, the young woman opened the door and stepped into the room, a clay pitcher held in her hands.
"You're awake," she said.
"Unfortunately," I replied hoarsely, my ribcage flaring up in pain.
"You were touch and go there for a while, I was starting to worry," she said.
"What's wrong with me?"
"Pneumonia. Thankfully, you've made it through the worst part, and you should be back on your feet in a few days," she said as she poured me a cup of water and handed it to me.
"Thank you, miss," I said as I took the cup.
"Aya, my name is Aya."
"Thank you, Aya." With that, I drank deeply, savoring the cooling sensation of the water as it gave relief to my throat. As I finished, I let out a cough or two, but thankfully didn't break into a full on fit again.
"Forgive me for asking, but are you the one they call Merlin?" she asked as I handed the cup back to her. My eyebrows scrunched up in confusion. My walking staff had been lost at the Northern Air Temple, and there really wasn't anything else I had left that could have identified me by that alias.
"What makes you think that?" I asked.
"The things you had on you when we found you. A broken bow, a pack full of several strange objects, looking like you were from the Water Tribe. It all fits the description we've been hearing," she explained.
"And what have you been hearing?"
"A wandering shaman or wise man, one with the ability to call down thunder to strike down his opponents," she said. I chucked at that, which led to a small coughing fit.
"I'm hardly any of those things. Just a traveler trying to get back to his friends," I said. Aya looked a little disappointed at that.
"That's a shame. I would have liked to have met him. The stories made him sound nice," she said. I gave her an apologetic smile before laying back down. My little experiment had gotten out of hand, and I was starting to regret it. Although, it was better than people knowing my actual name. This way, if they tried to bother me, I could just shrug it off and say it wasn't me.
With everything going on with Aang, I didn't need people trying to corner me to do magic for them. I was many things; hunter, bender, to name a couple. But not magician, wizard, or miracle worker. It was better for everyone involved if I just moved on rather than trying to help. Of course, what was better and what actually ended up happening were two totally different things.
It was a couple of days later when I finally was able to move around on my own. I wasn't quite able to travel just yet, but I was able to move about the house without trouble. In fact, I was just finishing putting my things back together in preparation to depart when Aya's father came inside holding his hand wrapped in a bloody cloth.
"What happened?" Aya demanded when she saw his state as he sat down at the main table.
"I cut myself on the plow," he grunted in reply. He sounded like he was in plain, but also incredibly annoyed at having been inconvenienced like this. Aya sat down across from him and undid the makeshift bandage. Blood flowed freely from a rather large gash across the palm of his hand, spilling down onto the table top in no time at all.
"Get me some water," I said.
"Do you have medical training?" he asked.
"In a sense, but I need water," I answered. Aya did as I asked, and got a small pitcher of water. I bent the liquid from it's container and allowed it to envelop my hand before I placed it over his. The water glowed with a brilliant blue light, causing both of their faces to glow with amazement and awe. After a short time, the water was used up and the light faded. On his hand, the cut had become a faint scar.
"Magic," Aya breathed.
"Waterbending," I corrected. Aya's father clasped his hand into a fist a couple of times, testing it. His face lit up into a smile at the lack of pain.
"Thank you, I…" he paused for a moment before standing and heading off into a side room. I looked at Aya with a raised eyebrow. She looked just as confused as I did. He came back quickly, holding a bow in his hands.
"Here. A replacement for the one that you broke," he said, offering it to me.
"But, what about you guys?"
"I have another. Please, take it, as a sign of my thanks," he said. I took the bow and looked it over. It was a simple, curved hunting bow. Nothing too flashy or eloquent, certainly not the same quality as my old bow. But it was powerful enough to get the job done.
"Thank you," I said.
"No, thank you."
I left Aya and her father the following morning, continuing my journey south. My body still had some after effects of being sick, but I felt well enough to stay in the saddle. The journey was mostly a blur. In all honesty, I wasn't entirely sure where I was going. Omashu, sure, but how to actually get there was a little up in the air.
The landscape began to change more as I went. It became more arid and more uneven as I got closer to the mountains that the city was apart of. I was partly worried about the possibility of a lack of water, but my hope was that I could make it to the city before that became a major issue.
As the sun finally began to set in the west, I came across a large slow moving river with steep, stony banks. I slid down from the saddle and led my ostrich horse to the water's edge, allowing the large beast of burden a chance to drink while I crouched down to refill my canteen. How much further was it to Omashu anyway? A day's ride? Two? I wasn't sure.
A black and white lemur suddenly landed on my canteen, knocking it from my hand in a sudden splash of water. I jumped up in surprise, annoyed due to the fact that I was now soaking wet and that I was going to have to go after my canteen before it either floated away or sank. The lemur looked up at me from the water, chattering up a storm.
"Damnit, Momo," I said. Then realization finally caught up with me, and I did a double take. Momo? What was he doing here? Wait, if he was here, then that meant…
"Morgan?" I felt my heart soar with hope at that voice. I looked, and sure enough, there they were. Aang, sitting on Appa's head, Sokka with an arm load of camping equipment, and Katara with several water skins ready to be filled from the river. They were all only a dozen yards downstream, and somehow I had missed them almost entirely.
"You're alive!" Aang shouted as he jumped down from his perch and rushed me. Both Katara and Sokka dropped what they were doing and came as well. Being as she was the closest, Katara reached me first. The hug she enveloped me in was more of a tackle, and if I hadn't braced for it we both would have fallen into the dirt. Unfortunately, both Aang and Sokka barreled into us at the same time, and that did send us falling on our butts. Even Appa came over and laid down so that his head was resting on top of the dogpile.
"Nice to see you guys too," I groaned out from all the weight. Still, I couldn't help the massive smile that had come over my face and the warm feeling in my chest. I was finally back with my friends, on familiar ground once again.
John wiped the sweat from his brow as he approached the small cluster of tents. Wait, not tents, they were sleds of some kind. Like a boat, built for the arid landscape around them. The people manning them were all wearing desert wrappings. Not even their eyes were exposed to the elements as they wore a set of goggles to block out dust and sand. They were all clustered around a low circular structure made of sandstone, a well.
This was John's primary focus. He had been walking for so long under this unforgiving sun that his throat was raw. His lips were chapped, and his mouth was dry. Water. He needed water, or else he would die under this sun. That was something he simply refused to do.
"Please, water," he begged in a raspy voice as he approached the well. The men standing around the well looked at him like vultures ready to descend upon their next meal. He could tell in their stances, their folded arms, the way their gazes never strayed away from him. One of them walked away from the others, closing the distance between the two of them.
"Water costs coin," he said, holding up his hand and rubbing his fingers together.
"Mister, please," John begged again.
"Show me some gold, and you can have all you can drink," the man said. John felt exasperated. He didn't have anything on him besides some pocket change that he had been going to use to buy something cool to drink in the museum's saloon later.
"I don't have any gold," he said.
"Silver?" the man asked. John dug into his pockets and handed over the change he had. The man took the few coins and looked them over. Then he shook his head, and to John's dismay, he dropped them into the sand between their feet.
"Not even worth a mouthful. Keep walking stranger, you have no business here," he said.
"If I keep going I'll die of thrust," John argued.
"Then make sure to do it close by. I don't want to have to go all the way out into the desert just to pluck your body clean," came the reply as the man turned away. At that moment, John realized that none of the men around the well cared if he lived or died out here. Judging by the way some of them had their hands on knife hilts, they were more than prepared to do what it took to keep him from getting to it.
If he kept walking, he'd be dead by the time the sun reached it's peak in the sky. If he rushed the well, he'd be stabbed more times than Ceaser. That meant he had only one option left if he wanted out of this alive.
"Wait. I have one metal left," he said. The man stopped and looked back toward him curiously.
"Copper?" he asked, almost laughing with how pathetic he found this.
"Lead," came the steely reply. John forced himself not to think as he drew one of his revolvers, leveled it at the man, and fired. Blood exploded out of the back of the man's neck, and he fell backwards into the sand, stone dead. For a moment, it was silent as everyone looked on in stunned silence. Only the fading report of the gunshot could be heard.
Then, all hell broke loose.
The men let out yells of anger over their slain friend, many of them drawing knives and charging John. As for John, a sort of focused rage had fallen over him. In a flash, his second gun was in his hand, and both revolvers were thundering and belching fire. All those years of practice were now paying off with lethal results.
One of the men caught a bullet in the knee and fell to the ground, hard. He swung his fist upward, sending a pillar of sand at John. In his adrenalin fueled state, John easily dodged the attack and promptly shot the man in the forehead. He didn't have time to process what had just happened, only that if he wanted to live, he need to keep shooting.
Another man came in close, intending to stab him in the heart with a dagger. John sidestepped the attack and clubbed the man over the head with one of his guns before he turned and shot the one following him twice in the chest at point blank range. The second attacker was so close that the front of his tunic caught fire from the muzzle blasts.
John didn't have time to process this either as the now lifeless body fell onto him. He simply shoved the man aside and focused on the few remaining men standing between him and life giving water. They paused in their attack and realized that all of their comrades were either dead in the sand, or were bleeding out and soon to follow the first group into the afterlife.
Wisely, they chose to turn and run, rather than face down this demon that had just walked out of the desert and slain so many of them so easily. They mounted one of the sand boats, pointed it in the opposite direction of John, and promptly vanished into a cloud of dust. The young man watched them go with narrow eyes as he broke open his guns and began to reload them. He'd let them go. For now, he needed to sate his thirst.
With this done, John began to look back amongst the bodies. Now that the heat of the moment was gone, his stomach churned at the sight of what he had done, and at how easily he had done it. He silently beat those feelings back down as best as he could. They were going to let him die of thirst, he reminded himself, justifying that he had done what he had done in order to survive.
Looking down at his feet, John realized that one of them was still alive. The man he clubbed over the head to be exact. Grabbing him by the front of his shirt, John picked him and shook him back into consciousness.
"Your friends, where they goin'?" he asked.
"Misty Palms Oasis, if I had to guess," came the fearful reply.
"That anywhere near civilization?"
"It's the main trading hub between the sandbender tribes and the rest of the country, sits right on the edge of the desert," he answered. John figured a sandbender was probably what the guy that threw magic sand at him was. A trading hub was a good place to start, be it if he wanted to find someone or just wanted to go somewhere.
"You're gonna take me there, or you're gonna be another ghost that wanders this desert, you understand," he said, leveling his revolver in the man's face.
"Alright, alright, I'll take you, just don't kill me," the man pleaded.
"That part's not off the table yet," John answered with a cold voice.
And cut. New developments for Morgan, and a little more is revealed about John. What do you guys think? Let me know! Drop a review, send a PM, let me know what you guys liked or didn't like, and I'll see you all next time.