Hey guys, I'm back with a long overdue chapter. Let's not keep you waiting, so let's get into it.
I waited patently among the reeds, my fingers curled around the string of my bow, ready to draw back. In front of me stood Aang, roughly twenty yards away or so. He was wearing his usual swim attire, but had his hands up in a bending ready position. Like him, I had stripped down some for this practice exercise, wearing only a pair of trousers and my quiver on my back. I moved forward slowly and silently, so as to not draw attention to myself.
When I closed the distance another five yards, I drew my arrow back and let it fly. Aang reacted the instant my fingers released the draw sting, turning and making a slashing uppercut motion with his hand. A thin wall of water shot upward, slicing the arrow in half mid-flight, causing both halves to veer off and miss him entirely.
I didn't hesitate, drawing and firing another arrow before the two halves of the first had even hit the water behind him. This time, rather than some waterbending, he used a fancy airbending trick to not only catch the arrow, but throw it back at me. The arrowhead may have been little more than a blunted ball, but it still hit my shoulder with enough force to knock me off my feet into the water.
As I sat up, spitting out river water, the sound of Aang's laughter reached my ears. I looked, and realized that he was both pointing and laughing in my direction.
"Airbending beats archery, Morgan!" he called. He was so caught up in his laughter that he had no time to react as a tentacle of water formed out of the river around him. It snatched the boy up, devolving his laugh into a surprised yelp, before throwing him down river, skipping him over the water like he was a throwing stone.
"Still losing focus," Katara said with a sigh, shaking her head. At sight of her, I felt my mouth go dry. She was wearing her usual swimming attire, which consisted of white bindings around her chest, waist and hips. I'd always found Katara to be attractive, but seeing her in revealing attire such as this was enough to put me in awe. Our recent relationship developments didn't help matters in the slightest.
"At least he's getting practice in case we run into the Yuyan again," I pointed out as I came out of the reeds, bow in hand.
"Are you guys almost done? We got a lot of ground to cover if we want to make to Omashu today," Sokka said as he floated nearby on a large leaf. Like the rest of us, he was stripped down to the basics.
"Oh, like you're ready to go right now, naked guy?" Katara asked, whipping around to face her brother.
"I can be ready in five minutes, tops. Seriously, anytime," he answered without so much as changing his posture. Katara and I shared a look before I made a rolling motion with my wrist. With a yelp, Sokka's leaf was flipped, dumping him into the water.
"I don't think I can close the distance anymore with my arrows without seriously hurting Aang," I said, ignoring the string of water logged curses that came from Sokka's direction. Before he could do anything in retaliation, the sound of music and singing came drifting through the trees. A small group of people dressed in bright colors and playing instruments came strolling down the path.
"Hey, River People!" the leader of the group said, stopping and pointing at us.
"We're not river people," Katara said as Sokka came up out of the water, his anger at me forgotten.
"You're not? Well then what kind of people are you?" the guy asked.
"Just...people," Aang replied as he came sloshing back to us.
"Aren't we all, brother?" the guy said in a happy-go-lucky fashion. I groaned. This guy and his little band were hippies, or a variation of them anyway. I'd seen people like this come around the park back home. They thought that if they showed love and positive vibes, they could become in tune with nature. They usually got mauled by a bear.
"Who are you?" Sokka asked pointedly.
"I'm Chong, and this is my wife Lily. We're nomads, happy to go wherever the wind takes us!" he replied before strumming his lute like he was a rock star. I coughed a few times while glaring at the newcomer. He was going to get annoying fast, I could tell. A hand appearing on my shoulder took my focus off of the hippies and back to Katara.
"We'd better do a check up on you," she said in a worried tone before taking me by the wrist and leading me away from the others. She'd been like this ever since I'd reunited with the group and learned of my encounter with pneumonia. Every time I coughed, she'd start checking me over to make sure I was recovering like I was suppose to. Not that I minded all that much. It usually meant I got to spend some time with her away from the others without having to come up with an excuse why.
When we were a short distance away, she sat me down on a fallen log and began to bend some water around my midsection. My body let out an involuntary shutter as the coolness of the liquid settled in, but otherwise it felt pretty good.
"You haven't started coughing anything up, have you?" she asked as the water began to glow.
"No."
"Good. Your breathing seems fine. Lungs seem to be recovering nicely," she said.
"You're telling me you don't do this just to get a second alone with me?" I asked, cocking an eyebrow at her playfully. Katara looked back over her shoulder toward the others. Sokka had snatched Momo from his head and was using the lemur to cover himself while he headed toward shore and his clothes. Satisfied that no one was watching, she turned back and gave me a quick kiss.
"That's part of it," she admitted, "but still, don't overdo it. We can't afford anyone getting seriously ill."
"I'll be fine, mom, don't worry," I replied, earning a smack on the arm from her. We all got dressed, and soon the wandering nomads were playing with everyone's hair. Well, almost everyone's hair. For Aang, they made a crown woven out of flowers while they had braided Appa and Katara's long locks. When the shorter, fat member of the group, Moku, I think, tried to go after me, I nearly took his fingers off with my hunting knife.
Both Sokka and I were in agreement that these nomads were mainly harmless, but infuriatingly simple and annoying. While I was content to mainly keep my distance get things packed up and ready for that day's length of travel, Sokka was more focused on putting distance between us and the nomads.
"You need to focus less on where you're going, and more on how you get there," Chong said, causing me to roll my eyes.
"O. MA. SHU," came Sokka's reply. If he was anything, the Water Tribe warrior was practical. Omashu, aside from being the place where Aang would learn earthbending, was a fortress. Outside of the capital, Ba Sing Se, Omashu was the last great Earth Kingdom stronghold. That meant food, shelter, and safety from the Fire Nation. Focusing more on the journey like Chong suggested just meant a higher chance of eating fire balls.
"Sokka's right. We need to find King Bumi, so Aang can learn earthbending," Katara said.
"Sounds like you're headed to Omashu," Chong said. I don't think Sokka and I could have timed our facepalms more perfectly if we had tried.
"There's an old story about a secret pass through the mountains," Chong continued.
"Is this real or a legend?" Katara asked.
"Oh, it's a real legend!" came the reply, which garnered another facepalm from me.
I won't bore you with the step by step details of what happened next. Long story short, none of us had anticipated that the Fire Nation forces in the area had been heavily reinforced since last fall. So when we tried to fly over the mountains like originally planned, we found ourselves under heavy anti air attack. It was so bad even Sokka opted to go back to the nomads and inquire about this secret pass.
Here's where the couple of details Chong left out/forgot came into play. The first was that this 'secret pass' wasn't all that secret. This was evident by the fact that as we approached the passage entrance, the Fire Nation garrison was swarming in around us. Second was the reason that no one really used this 'secret pass' was because it was a maze of tunnels running all under the mountain.
Actually, Chong didn't mention that last part until we literally had no other choice but to flee into the darkness of the tunnel entrance in order to escape the Fire Nation. Instead of chasing us, the enemy just collapsed the entrance behind us. They'd let the mountain do their dirty work, rather than risk their own lives.
That's how I found myself wandering a cave system with a few friends and a band of idiots, wondering how I had allowed my short life to lead to this. Sokka at least had the brilliant idea to try and map out the tunnels as we went, lessening our chances of getting lost. But, this only went on for about two hours or so as we reached dead end after dead end.
"Sokka, this is the tenth dead end you've lead us to," Katara said, voicing my own observation. He looked at his map closer and then tilted it a few times in confusion.
"This doesn't make sense, we've already come through this way," he said.
"We don't need a map. We just need love. The little guy knows it," Chong said, pointing at me. I blinked at him.
"I'm taller than you are. Also, leave me out of it," I replied.
"There's only one explanation; the tunnels are changing," Sokka said, ignoring us. I was about to state how ridiculous that was, but stopped myself. We were in a world where people could move several ton boulders with a thrust of their fist. The tunnels changing wasn't just a possibility, it was pretty much the only likely answer.
Of course, this immediately sent Chong into a panic.
"The tunnels, they're a changing! I knew we shouldn't have come down here!" he said frantically.
"Right, if only we'd listened to you," Sokka replied sarcastically. It was getting to the point that I was starting to wonder how this guy was able to function on a basic level. At that point, I heard something come from the darkness around us. A low snarl.
"Someone shut him up! Listen!" I snapped. Chong stopped his panic, and everyone listened. Then, following the noise, from out of the shadows came a swarm of wolf bats. Wolfbats, for the record, aren't nearly as terrifying as I originally envisioned them. I was expecting some massive wolf bat hybrid monster that would eat your face off. Turns out, they're basically just bats with tiny wolf faces on them. Still, a little unsettling, but no where near the monster levels I'd been hyping myself up for.
Unfortunately, not everyone in the group shared this mentality. I don't remember who it was exactly, but in the chaos of the bats someone dropped a torch. The flames of this action reared up and spooked Appa, sending the flying bison into a frenzy. Now a two ton bison is scary enough when riled up out in the open. Here, in the cramped spaces of the cave, it was an instant recipe for disaster.
The rampaging bison slammed into the walls, which in turn lead to a cave in. I acted on instinct, tackling the closest person to me in order to get them out of the way. That person just so happened to be Katara. As the dust cleared, two things became apparent. One, it was just Katara, Appa, and myself, with a mountain of rock now between us and the others. Two, there was a single torch to last us until we managed to find our way out.
"You alright?" I asked, coughing a little on the settling dust.
"Yeah, you?" Katara asked in response. I gave her a simple nod. Picking up the torch, I began to look over the cave in, studying it in the gloom. I may not have been an expert on caves, but I knew a hopeless cause when I saw one. Appa began to use his forward paw in order to dig at the rock pile. At least he wasn't freaking out anymore.
"Well, unless Aang developed earthbending sometime in the past ten minutes, I don't think we're getting out this way," I said.
"So what, we just keep walking and hope for the best?" Katara asked.
"Pretty much all we can do, unless someone wants to try and bash his way out of here again," I answered, directing the last part at Appa. The sky bison simply turned his head and blew his nostrils at me.
"Morgan," Katara chastised. I put my hands up in surrender and didn't press the issue. We started walking, and things stayed that way for a while. The only way to tell the passage of time was the torch's length getting shorter and shorter.
"This isn't what I had in mind when I said I wanted to spend some more time alone with you," I said. She snorted, but smiled.
"This isn't what I had in mind either," she agreed. I took her hand in mine and gave it a quick squeeze. She returned the gesture, and we continued on in silence. After a while, we came across another stone wall. This time, you could tell it had been carved by hand, and there was a breeze.
"That must be the way out," Katara said hopefully. We both shoved on the door, but it refused to budge even an inch. This thing was designed with an earthbender in mind, no way were we going to move it by ourselves. A snort came from behind us, and I turned to find Appa had squared his stance and was scraping a forward paw along the floor. Grabbing Katara by the hand, I pulled her out of the way just as the bison charged.
The door flew open, and the bison let out a roar of satisfaction. Waving away the dust, we stepped through the doorway after him. It wasn't the light at the end of the tunnel like we had been hoping, but a massive room with statues carved out of the stone. Katara's face fell in the dim torchlight.
"This isn't an exit," she said.
"Looks more like a memorial or a temple or something," I added.
"Or a tomb," she finished softly. We walked into the room with caution, slowly looking it over. There wasn't any fancy decoration, just stone carvings and dust. The place was old, probably thousands of years if I had to guess.
"This must be the tomb of the lovers from the legend," Katara said as she raised the torch and looked over the carvings.
"It's the story of how Omashu was founded," I said, running a hand over the images.
"You know it?" I nodded.
"I don't remember all the details. Only reason I remember it is cause of how similar it was to a story back home," I said.
"There was a lovers legend in Montana?"
"Of course there are. But, it wasn't in Montana. It was a far away city called Warsaw," I said with a shrug.
"Warsaw? I've never heard of that," she said.
"I'm not surprised. According to legend, Warsaw was founded on the site of where a fisherman named Wars fell in love with a mermaid named Sawa," I explained.
"A mermaid?" Katara asked with a chuckle.
"Yeah, you know, upper body of a human, lower body of a fish."
"I know what a mermaid is, Morgan. I'm just surprised you'd listen to a story like that," she said. I shrugged again before brushing some dust away.
"I listened to all kinds of stories when I was growing up. My grandpa use to tell me stories of our tribe all the time," I said.
"You still hardly ever talk about your past," she noted, her voice a little softer now. I reached up and grasped the metals on my necklace. Beside them was the wolf head medallion that Kate had given to me at the North Pole. My heart clenched as I thought about those that I had lost.
"It's not...it's not easy, thinking about home," I admitted.
"Are you ever going to tell me what happened?" Katara asked. I sighed.
"One day. For now, let's just focus on getting out of here," I replied, letting go of the metals. We looked around the room some more, but other than finding a single other exit, there didn't seem to be any clue as to how to get out. All the while, the torch was getting shorter and shorter, meaning we were running out of time before being plunged into total darkness.
Handing the torch off to Katara, I knelt down and began to dig through my pack. After some rummaging around, I came up with a couple of red sticks, causing me to frown before I began to dig some more. I could have sworn I had more than that in there.
"Hey, those are the things you used at the Northern Air Temple," Katara said when she noticed what was in my hand.
"Flares. My only two left apparently," I said, giving up on my pack and standing back to my full height.
"That's not too bad right? I mean they're a source of light we can use when the torch goes out."
"Not really. They only last about fifteen minutes a piece," I said.
"So we're back to square one," she said with a defeated sigh.
"Well, square one plus a half hour," I said, earning a glare from her. We fell into another long silence, with Katara using the torch to look over the carvings of the legend while I just stared at the flares in my hand. There had to be a way to keep the dark at bay with what we had. I was missing something, I could feel it, nagging at me. But what? What was I forgetting?
"Hey, Morgan?"
"Yeah?"
"I have an idea," she said.
"I hope so, cause I'm fresh out," I said.
"The legend says we'll be trapped in here forever unless we trust in love, right?" I shrugged.
"I guess, I wasn't paying attention to Chong."
"Well, it says here, 'love is brightest in the dark' and it shows the lovers kissing," she said, pointing to a carving. I walked over and studied the carving a little closer.
"You think an act of love will do something?" I asked.
"I don't know, maybe?" she said, a little embarrassed. That didn't escape my notice.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, it's just...it's a stupid idea, forget I said anything," she replied, turning away a little quickly. I looked between her and the carving, a confused frown forming on my face. In her hand, the torch flame got a little smaller, and the light got a little dimmer.
"Hey, what's got you so how and bothered? It's not like we've never kissed before," I said.
"Yeah, I know, it's just..." she trailed off and sighed, "it says 'love'. And Morgan, please, please don't take this the wrong way. I like you and care about you, a lot, but, I'm not sure if it's love yet, you know?"
"You're worried it won't be enough," I said, looking at the carving and not at her.
"Kind of? I feel...I feel like it's trying to pressure me into something I'm not ready to admit yet, if that makes any sense," she said.
"How long we been together? About a month now?" I asked. I couldn't remember exactly, as hectic as our lives were.
"That sounds about right."
"I don't know how things work in the Water Tribe, but back home, that's a little quick to be throwing 'I love you' around in a relationship," I said.
"Really?"
"I don't know," I admitted, "I'm a bow hunter, not a love guru. When it comes to stuff in this department, I'm usually flying by the seat of my pants."
"So we both have no idea what we're doing. That's great," she said, sounding a little bitter at that. I stepped forward and took her hand.
"My dad always said that it happens when it happens. We'll get there at our own pace, no one else's," I reassured.
"So, you don't mind if I'm not entirely sure that I love you?" she asked.
"Same boat as you, sweetheart. Not entirely sure of anything," I said, stepping back and making a wide, sweeping gesture over myself. Then I stepped forward and took her hand again.
"But, I'm a hunter. I'm patient enough to wait for the right moment." Katara gave me a warm smile before closing the distance between us and kissing me. At that moment, the torch finally burned out, and plunged us into darkness.
For a total of about ten seconds.
The room was suddenly bathed in a soft, pale green light. Breaking the kiss in confusion, we both looked up and realized where the light was coming from. Hundreds of luminescent crystals lined the ceiling, leading off in a path down the lone tunnel we had found as the exit.
"Glowing crystals?" I asked, arching my eyebrow.
"Of course! That's how the lovers found each other. They just put out their lights and followed the crystals," Katara said, putting two and two together.
"A string to get through the maze," I mused.
"Huh?"
"Nothing. Looks like that's the way out," I said, pointing after the crystals.
"So what are we waiting for? Let's go," Katara said, dropping the burnt out torch and heading off after the path of light. Appa grumbled and began to follow, along with me as well.
Upon reaching the outside, the sky bison reared up on his hind paws and let out a loud bellow before flopping straight on his back and rolling around. He was a creature of the sky, finally free again. Both Katara and I just looked on in amusement.
"Well, assuming Sokka hasn't lost his mind and killed everyone yet, I suppose we better figure out a way to find them," I said. At that moment, the mountainside shook and two sections of rock exploded outward on either side of the tunnel entrance. A pair of badgermoles appeared, standing proud in the sunlight. Sokka and Aang rode on one, while the nomads rode the other.
"Never mind, problem solved," I said as the two dismounted and hurried over to us.
"How did you two get out?" Aang asked.
"Glowing crystals in the ceiling that only show up when the lights are out," I answered.
"Really? We let giant mole monsters lead our way out," Sokka said before they turned and waved at the badgermoles as they retreated back into the tunnels and closed up the holes behind them. Katara's bright smile turned to a frown as she noticed her bother's face. There was a rather large red mark in the middle of his forehead.
"What's wrong with you?" she asked. Before he could answer, Chong slunk up behind him.
"Nobody react to what I'm about to say, but I think this kid might be the Avatar," he said. Sokka stared at him for a full thirty seconds before slamming his palm into his forehead. As a result, the red mark grew larger, and Chong just stared on in wonder.
Thankfully, we parted ways from the nomads and made our way up the mountainside. Everyone was generally in a good mood, although I think it was mostly just being happy to be back out in the open air again. I'd never seen Omashu in person, but I remembered it from the show and had heard it described, so I was looking forward to it. Plus it would be nice to relax and not have to worry about things for a while.
"The journey was long, and annoying. But now we get to see what the journey is really about, the destination!" Sokka said, taking the lead. He crested the hill first and made a wide gesture before him.
"The Earth Kingdom city of O...oh no," he said. We came up behind him, and instantly realized what was wrong. Omashu was carved from a mountain top, giving it a pointed cone like structure. Around it was a massive canyon that should have served as a natural barrier. Instead, several metal bridges were extended across the gap, and a massive banner was draped over the main gate.
It was the red and black symbol of the Fire Nation.
And cut. That's all for this time. I had some trouble with this chapter, mainly cause I had a slight case of writer's block and computer trouble. But I finally got it out. Also, for those of you making the comparison, John Marlow is not a representation of John Marsden from the Red Dead series. He's based off of a real life friend of mine who goes by the alias of 'Slim Jim' in his reenactment carrier. John and Arthur will appear in my Red Dead story when the time comes.
But for now, you know what to do. Drop a review, leave a PM, let me know what you all liked or didn't like, and I'll see you all next time.