Chapter 7: The Mist

"You should have talked to me before you went to the Undying Bloom," Korra scolded. She was more than a little upset at Sen for walking to such a dangerous trap. He had only barely managed to escape.

"I could have told you that Ta Jide Shui was unstable," Korra continued. "I crossed paths with him before, I could have warned you."

Ta Jide Shui had been alive too long. He had, over the years, veered between hopelessly bored, violently enraged, and suicidally depressed. In any state, he was a threat to the Avatar, as he seemed to consistently blame Raava for his unfortunate predicament. Something Korra would have been able to warn Sen about, had Sen not charged forward without a thought.

"I'm sorry," Sen apologized. "I was excited to have Hanjo back, I never took time to second guess him. It's my fault."

"I can't exactly lecture you for being careless," Korra said. She had little room to judge in that regard. She had caused more than a few near-disasters by being reckless. "I'm only trying to make sure you understand your mistakes."

"Believe me, I do," Sen said. He had taken the situation at face value, and forgotten that he was capable of making mistakes. Not a scenario he was likely to repeat.

Korra tried to sigh, but found herself unable. It was still difficult for her to adapt to "life" as a spirit within Sen's consciousness. She didn't have lungs, for one, which meant no sighing.

"Just don't take my advice for granted. I can't guarantee I'll always be able to help you."

Sen nodded. He felt he understood the situation well enough, but he also wanted to move on, because he had a deeper concern on his mind.

"Can you do anything to help me with this H-s-s-k creature?"

The Hssk, the living shadow that seemed to eat memories, remained an enigma. He had tried to discuss it with all his allies, but they did not remember that anything had been chasing them. When he tried to explain it to them again, they all forgot his explanations the moment he finished talking. It seemed that even when it wasn't nearby, Hssk could devour memories directly relating to it. Except in Sen's case, for some reason. He was the only living thing aware of its existence. Korra, as an unloving creature, was his last hope.

Korra seemed to think for a moment, and she felt a brief spark of comprehension, but then any thought of the Hssk vanished from her mind. Sen could see the sudden loss of memory in her eyes, and he clutched at his head. He was alone. Even his own past life was unable to help him.

"Is something wrong, Sen?"

Sen snapped out of his meditation. He didn't feel like talking to Korra anymore. His allies looked at him expectantly.

"She didn't say anything," Sen said. Suda tilted his head. Though none of Sen's friends could remember the exact details of the Hssk, they were all vaguely aware that something was wrong with Sen, and there was nothing they could do about it. It was not a pleasant thought for them.

"I scouted out the way back to the Library while you were out," Hanjo said. Thanks to the fact that he was meditating into the Spirit World, he could cross massive spans instantly, so long as he had something to focus on. It was easy for him to jump instantly between Sen and landmarks like the Library. It would be a useful technique to keep them all from getting lost.

Sen stood up quietly and proceeded in the direction Hanjo indicated. He had a short conversation with Hanjo, but was quickly interrupted by Whistler. The airbender had something on her mind.

"We shouldn't be wasting time," Whistler cautioned. "We've had a close call already. I need to get you moving on airbending."

"Unless we can train and walk at the same time, I don't want to hear it."

"Yeah, I thought of that," Whistler said bitterly. She had planned for this, in fact. Whistler removed a rectangular package from her pack. She unwrapped a deck of Pagu-Pagu cards.

"Took these back when we were at the Air Temple," Whistler said.

"You promised me you weren't going to steal anything," Sen said angrily.

"Well then it's a good thing I stole these before I made that promise," Whistler boasted. She handed one of the cards to Sen, with the white side facing up.

"You seem like a white team kind of guy," Whistler said. She took a card for herself and put the black side face up. "I always preferred to play black. I mean, I hated this game, but I hated it a little less when I played black."

"You want to play a game you hate?"

"No," Whistler said. She flicked her fingers, and the card suddenly soared through the air, barely skimming past the edge of Sen's nose. The card curved in the air and returned to Whistler's hand. Pagu-Pagu cards were so light that it was easy to manipulate them with airbending. Whistler continued her demonstration, making the card whirl and soar through the air.

"These cards are nearly weightless," Whistler explained. "They're basically made of air, except, you know, not. They'll help bridge the gap between the material elements you're used to and immaterial air."

Sen nodded. He felt the card in his hand. As Whistler said, it had almost no pressure or weight to it. Sen turned it over in his fingers a few times.

"So, do I just make this float?"

"Something tells me that's too easy," Hanjo said.

"The fruity one is right," Whistler said. She fell a few steps behind Sen as they walked. It wasn't long before Sen felt a gentle tap on the back of his head. He rolled his eyes. Whistler flicked another card at Sen's neck just to drive her point home.

"This seems like your kind of thing," Whistler explained. "Learning to read the wind, to feel the currents in the air and anticipate what's coming."

Almost all airbenders had developed their connection to the air to the point where they could sense incoming projectiles. Most people did so by shaving their heads, but they had a shortage of razors around and Sen would look weird bald anyway.

"Oh good, let's just give Sen all the weird kinds of vision he can have," Suda moaned.

"Actually this is a pretty common airbender trick," Whistler said. "We can pretty much all do it."

Suda groaned and crossed his arms. Sen soon joined his indignation as another of Whistler's Page-Pagu cards hit him in the head. Sen waited a few seconds and ducked his head on the off chance another card was coming. He felt a rush of air over his head. He turned around and started walking backwards to taunt Whistler. No sooner did he do so than the card changed direction sharply and hit him in the back of the head.

"Oh that's not even fair," Sen grunted.

"The people trying to capture you won't play fair either," Whistler said. "You won't always be able to see them coming."

Whistler launched another card. Since Sen was facing her this time, he dodged her card easily. Whistler launched another card just to test his reflexes, and then another. He sidestepped them all quite easily.

"See, now, you're good when you've got your eyes forward. I respect that."

She casually launched a few more cards to give Sen a chance to show off. He needed to feel strong for a second. Sen did start to feel more confident as he dodged one card after another. He was walking backwards now, facing towards Whistler as he walked and dodged cards at the same time. Hanjo seemed unimpressed.

"But the problem is, you're not getting the whole picture."

Whistler flicked her wrist, and suddenly all the cards which she had hurled behind Sen came spinning backwards at once. Sen had been so focused on the cards coming from the front that he'd ignored the cards Whistler had kept airborne behind him. A dozen cards all impacted his head in rapid succession, distracting him enough to make him trip and fall. Sen fell flat on his back in the dirt.

"You see how everything falls apart when you can't see everything?"

Sen climbed out of the dirt and stormed forward, putting distance between himself and Whistler. The airbender packed up her cards and counted them to make sure they were all there. To her surprise, Hanjo was hovering at her side rather than Sen's.

"There are better ways to go about this, you know."

"Don't tell me how to do my job," Whistler grunted.

"I just want to make some suggestions-"

"You think Sen would be better off if I played nice," Whistler said. "If I tried to be his friend, everything would go so much better, right?"

"Well…Yes, exactly that."

"Thought so. Get slagged."

Hanjo tried to take a second to think of a rebuttal. Whistler didn't give him the luxury. She was no longer interested in justifying her teaching methods. Rapidly unfolding her staff, Whistler propelled herself to higher ground with a surge of wind. Once she was suitably high up on a nearby cliff-face, she examined the road ahead.

"You sure we're going the right way?"

"Pretty sure," Hanjo said. Just to be sure, Hanjo focused on the library and saw the road laid out before them. It wasn't visible to the naked eye just yet, but Hanjo could see it wasn't that far. At the moment, the only thing on the horizon was a forest full of dead trees and a small valley filled with fog. Hanjo described the journey ahead. Whistler rejoined the rest of the group, spreading awkward tension. They proceeded silently until they reached the valley.

Sen slammed his foot against the ground to feel out the terrain ahead. The valley was wide but shallow, easy enough to cross.

"We should be able to just walk on through."

"I don't like it," Whistler said. "We should go around."

The vast expanse of fog in front of her filled with a disquieting dread. There was something odd at work here. The mist put a chill in the air that made Whistler's hair stand on end. Her hands were starting to shake already.

"Going around could take hours," Suda countered. "We aren't going to get lost; Sen has a lot of experience in fog."

"It's not getting lost," Whistler said. "I have a bad feeling about this place. I've got the shakes something awful."

"The shakes?"

Whistler held out her hands. They were trembling slightly. Sen examined them closely.

"Shakes. Whenever something bad is going to happen, my hands start to buzz like a hornets nest."

"And we should stop moving because your hands are vibrating? Maybe you're just cold," Suda suggested. He still didn't trust Whistler, and he especially didn't trust her shaking hands.

"Well, they started shaking when we saw your big rocky tiger fellow. I think my shakes have credentials."

Sen held up his hand, and the conversation came to a halt.

"We can spare the time to talk about it," Sen said. "I don't want to walk us into more danger."

They all sat down at the edge of the valley and discussed their options. Hanjo used his mobility to scout out the valley, and Sen consulted with Korra. The previous Avatar had crossed this way before and encountered no dangers, though she added that this did not rule out a new threat moving into the area. Despite Korra and Hanjo's reassurance that the valley was, presumably, safe, Sen still felt a little uneasy.

"I vote we go around," Sen said.

"Same," Whistler grunted.

"It's just fog," Suda said. "I say we go through. You got any objections, Ada?"

"My only problem is that my hair gets frizzy when it's humid," Ada said, idly brushing a hand through her hair. "But I think I can manage to pull through."

Sen sighed. They all turned to Hanjo. He'd have to be the deciding vote, and Sen had a feeling he knew what Hanjo was going to say.

"Looks like we're going through," Hanjo said. At his words, they proceeded into the fog-filled valley, some more reluctantly than others. The obscuring mist enveloped them completely as they proceeded, until they could see nothing but the ground beneath their feet and the fog hanging in the air.

Thanks to their mutual unease in the valley, Sen and Whistler temporarily found common ground. They walked side by side through the chilling fog.

"So, these 'shakes', you get, do they get worse if things are more dangerous?"

"Sometimes," Whistler admitted. "It's not a perfect system. Sometimes they don't even come at all. But whenever they come, something bad happens. That's a fact."

Whistler's instincts had kept her safe for a long time in the streets of the Copper Slums. The crime-ridden alleys of Republic City weren't safe for anyone, even a master airbender, so Whistler had gotten very good at recognizing the dangerous things that lurked in the alleyways. The fact that she was one of the dangerous things lurking in the alleyways had certainly helped her get familiar with them. Even though she was far from her old stomping grounds now, her instincts stayed firm. She could sense danger long before it showed its face.

Sen looked from side to side. He wished he could be so certain. All he had was a strange tingling sensation at the back of his neck.

Ada and Suda were still very confident in their safety, but Hanjo was beginning to have second thoughts. He distracted himself by bothering Sen.

"So, this anything like that island you learned firebending on?"

"No," Sen said quietly. "It's a lot colder."

The cold mist that had surrounded Hayao's island had been different, somehow. It had at least been a natural fog. Something about the fog surrounding them was deeply unnatural, and it permeated every single drop of water that hung in the air. Something was very wrong.

That statement had the exact opposite effect of making Hanjo feel any better. Hanjo's physical body wasn't even present here, but he felt a sense of immediate and familiar danger. Like he'd been lost in this fog before.

"Is it too late to change my vote?"

"We're already standing in it," Suda said. "Just tough it out for like half an hour."

Though he was still confident in their safety, the paranoia the other three were demonstrating was starting to rub off on Suda. It was unnerving to watch them jump at every shadow. They were all breathing irregularly, shifting the fog in strange patterns as their breath shifted the mist. Whistler caught sight of the moving fog and saw an opportunity to distract herself and teach Sen something.

"Hey, Avatar, watch your breath."

Sen nodded. He could see where this was going. He breathed normally for a while, focusing on the way the fog shifted as he breathed in and out. The thick mist made the movement of the air very obvious; opportunities like this were hard to come by. Hopefully he could learn something about airbending.

"Look at that. No pattern, no form, just direction. Movement, without any kind of goal or restraint. That's what air is about."

Sen tried to watch the patterns of movement in the shifting fog, but he couldn't find them. There was no form or certainty; there was nothing for him to focus on. He couldn't pay any attention to something so random.

Whistler saw things differently. It was easy for her to follow the unpredictable movements of the air. Sen was too caught up in trying to predict where it would be next, or analyze why it moved the way it did, to realize that neither of those things mattered. Air went where it went. There was no way to predict it or understand it. It simply moved, even when it was affected by outside sources, like the five people breathing here.

Whistler's hands twitched, and her concentration was temporarily lost. She focused again. She could feel five distinct patterns of motion in the air as the gathered people inhaled and exhaled. One for Sen, Suda, Ada, herself, and the last, presumably for Hanjo.

Whistler's hands twitched again.

"Hey, uh, ghost-kid," Whistler began hesitantly. "Do you breathe?"

"I don't know, do you," Hanjo said sarcastically.

"I mean are you breathing right now, with your spirit meditating thing," Whistler continued. "Does your astral form whatever have lungs."

Sen held his hand in front of Hanjo's face. The projection Hanjo made in the Spirit World was completely intangible, and as such it didn't have any kind of effect on the world around it, including moving the air when he breathed.

"No," Sen said. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, the last thing I want to do is make anyone panic, but if Hanjo isn't breathing, someone else is."

She could feel the air shifting in repeated patterns as five people breathed in and out. Four of those breaths were accounted for, but the fifth was still a mystery. If it wasn't Hanjo, it had to be someone else.

"That's ridiculous," Sen said. "If there were anyone else here, I'd be able to sense them."

Sen's seismic sense alone was enough to detect almost anything that was coming. It made him very difficult to sneak up on.

"Unless it were somebody deliberately hiding themselves from your extra senses, but not Whistler's," Hanjo theorized.

"Ah, yes, because the Energybender would know about all my tricks by now, but not hers."

Sen and Hanjo nodded firmly to each other.

"We should all run for our lives now," Sen suggested.

The brief moment of levity broke into a dead sprint as all present began a charge away from the shrouding fog. The cold mist tightened around them as they ran, and no matter how far they travelled, it seemed to always be surrounding them. Sen soon noticed that they had passed the edge of the valley entirely, and were now back to level ground. The fog wasn't just a cover. It was moving with them, chasing them. Whistler was the first to notice the suspicious movement.

"Shortstuff, jump!"

She was a little reluctant to respond to "shortstuff", but Ada rolled forward on command. A tendril of water coiled around the area where Ada's ankle had once been, then vanished back into the fog.

Whistler unfolded her staff and swung it forcefully, sending a blade of air surging past Suda's head. The roaring wind struck a spear of ice out of the air. As the icicle spear hit the ground and shattered, the ice immediately melted and then vaporized itself, dissipating into the mist around it.

"It's a waterbender," Whistler shouted. "Big guy, on your left!"

Suda dodged a spear of ice, wondering all the while how many different nicknames Whistler had for them all. Sen readied himself for a fight. Had it been some kind of fog spirit, Sen would have had no idea what to do, but common benders were much more familiar. This Fogbender was a unique specimen to be sure, but they still had to obey certain rules.

"Whistler, follow my lead."

Whistler did not take kindly to being ordered around, but she did not take kindly to being impaled by icicles either. She warned Suda about another attack incoming from the fog, then prepared to follow Sen.

Sen took a deep breath. It was hard to find any ambient heat in this bone-chilling fog, but Sen was very resourceful. Sen pulled his hands apart, stretching a wreath of flame around himself and his allies. The circular halo of fire encircled the group as they ran, and the heat provided a small buffer against the encroaching fog. Whistler picked up on the idea and began to spiral air around them, capturing the heat of the fire and surrounding the group in a cyclone of fire that boiled the fog around them into steam.

While many people would think of fog and steam as being essentially the same, Sen's long experience with fog had well acquainted him with the difference. Fog was small droplets of solid water suspended in the air, whereas steam was water transformed into a gaseous state. As Sen and Whistler's combined fire cyclone boiled the ambient fog into steam, it became more and more difficult for the fogbender to control their primary weapon. Steam was naturally more difficult for waterbenders to control.

Even so, it was only defense, not retaliation. Sen tried his best to focus on the area around them, but he could feel nothing. So far as he could tell, there was nobody there. It shouldn't be so easy to block out his senses. Sen would have to think about how it was possible later. Right now he needed to focus on staying alive. It frustrated him that all he could right now was run, but he needed to protect his friends.

The one thing the shockwaves of the ground could tell him was that the forest of dead trees that they had seen earlier was getting closer. That would be the key to securing their escape.

Dreams of escape slammed to a halt when a massive boulder of ice smashed down on them from above. Suda barely had time to drag Ada out of the way before the icy mass crashed into the ground. The ice quickly warped forms, becoming a writhing group of watery tendrils. Suda pulled out the ziplines he'd received from Chief Dormin, countering the tendrils of water with lightning-fast strikes from the metal cords. Most of the damage had already been done, though. The impact of the ice block had broken up the fire cyclone and allowed the fog to close in again. The Fogbender was attacking unimpeded from all directions now, and it was beginning to stretch Whistler's ability to predict the attacks.

Whistler tried to focus her attention where it was needed most. With the air so full of fog, the Fogbender could attack from literally any angle; above, below, or from all sides at once. Ada's reflexes were quick enough to keep her fairly safe, and Sen's firebending allowed him to burn back the fog. Suda was the only one who needed his attacks called out for him. He was not quick enough to defend himself from every angle at once, so Whistler helped him by calling out attacks as they came.

As he struck out with lashes of metal, Suda felt an odd sense of familiarity. He hadn't fought with metal zip-lines since his days as a bandit. The fighting style brought back uncomfortable memories of robbing and hurting innocent people. Bogged down in unpleasant memories of the past, Suda began to slow down, and Whistler found it harder and harder to keep him at pace with the Fogbender's attacks. As she focused harder and harder on him, she neglected to care for herself.

The airborne water coalesced into a tendril that lashed out at Whistler's torso. The cold water sent a shock down her spine as it tried to wrap tight around her stomach and drag her away. Sen launched a boulder at the tendril, severing it and freeing Whistler, but the damage had been done. The brief distraction had prevented Whistler from warning anyone about the next attack.

Not wasting any more time on pointless targets, the fog closed in on its only real prey. Claws of ice and water closed around several of the Avatar's limbs, completely cutting off his ability to move and his ability to bend. Sen briefly struggled against the restraint, but he soon realized he could not break free on his own. He was quickly being pulled away from his allies, and they were nearly blind in the fog, unable to give chase.

Though Sen was restrained, his feet were still on the ground, and he could still feel his way through the vibrations of the soil. There was an unnatural chill in the ground.

Ice, Sen thought to himself. It was ice, layered through the soil to block Sen's seismic sense. That was how the Fogbender could hide their presence from Sen's seismic sense, and from Gun. The badgermole had no idea a battle was happening above ground. Sen wrenched one of his legs free of the Fogbenders watery tendrils, then slammed his heel down on the soil, hard enough to break the ice and send a shockwave through the ground.

Sure enough, Gun was just below the soil, wondering why he couldn't feel his masters presence, when he felt the cry of distress. Confusion was replaced with determination as Gun burst haphazardly through the soil. Friend and foe alike were scattered by the violent emergence, which was a little disorienting, but it accomplished Sen's primary goal. The watery bindings holding him in place were broken, and he could move again.

Clinging to Gun's fur to guide the blind behemoth forward, Sen led a renewed charge towards the dead forest. Gun's thundering entrance had disoriented the Fogbender long enough for them to make a break for the withered forest. Sen gave his allies just enough time to dive into the cover of the gnarled branches before he covered their tracks. Blasting the dried wood with massive gouts of flame, Sen quickly spread a wildfire between themselves and the Fogbender. While their enemy would no doubt be able to extinguish the burning trees over time, they had a brief window of opportunity. Sen could use his firebending to keep them safe even in the middle of an inferno, something the Fogbender couldn't match.

Sen looked out at the border of the forest. Sure enough, the fog was still hovering just at the edge of the inferno. The light of the fire provided some small amount of clarity in the obscuring fog, just enough for Sen to make out a vaguely human silhouette hiding in the mist. As Sen watched, that shadow vanished completely, and the fog began to slowly roll away.

"They sure gave up easy," Suda noted.

"Too easy," Whistler growled. "We'll see that one again."

The fog drifted slowly over the horizon, away from the burning forest. Sen didn't extinguish the flames just yet. He watched until the fog vanished completely, and then left the flames alight all the same. Better to cover their tracks entirely.

They were all a bit out of breath, and Whistler was a little bruised, but nobody was really injured. Sen pushed his hands to keep his handmade forest fire away, giving them a little time to breath before they had to move again. Sen sat down on a gnarled tree stump and rested a little bit. He watched Whistler gingerly examine the bruised spot where the water had struck her.

"Thank you," He reluctantly said. "For warning us about that."

"I'd say you owe me one," Whistler said. "But I suppose you did save me from that tentacle thing, and goodness knows that tentacles never end well. So I'll say we're square."

Sen supposed that was the closest he was going to get to a "you're welcome", so he moved on.

"I see what you mean now, about, uh, how I can still get surprised," Sen continued. "If it hadn't been for you, we would've done a lot worse out there."

"I told you all I know what I'm talking about," Whistler boasted. The others still didn't like her attitude, but she'd proven she was reliable in her own way. Whistler saw the sour looks on their faces, and did not care in the slightest. Sen nodded, declared their break over, and they went on their way, continuing their rapid retreat from the mysterious fog.