Chapter 14: The Nightmare World
Femke's POV
When I woke up I was still in the same cell. My head was burning for some odd reason and P'li wasn't lying right next to me anymore. Instead she was chained down to the wall a few feet from where I was.
"P'li? What's going on?" I asked as I moved my hand to grab her shoulder, but something prevented me from doing so. When I looked at my arm I saw why; I was also chained down and for some odd reason I wasn't able to metal bend the chains off when I tried.
"I don't know, but I have a bad feeling about this."
P'li stated when she looked at the old rags she wore around her body with a sad look before she looked at my forehead, her eyes widening in shock when she did so.
"Femke. Your forehead."
She said, stammering as she looked at my forehead which immediately made me grab it in alarm, feeling something had to be terrible wrong if P'li reacted like that.
"What's wrong with my forehead?"
I asked as I looked at her with a shocked look as I still held my face in my hands with a terrified look on my face.
"The Mark of a Combustion Bender."
P'li said with a shocked look on her face, which made that I grabbed in my pocket for a mirror, almost dropping it in shock when I saw I indeed somehow had a Combustion Bender tattoo on my forehead.
"But how? I didn't have it when I passed out."
I said as I looked at P'li, who looked back at me just as incredulous as I was right now. Unable to understand what was happening.
"That's because I took you here."
A voice called, making both P'li and me look up at the door, gasping when we saw Mogui stand in the doorway. Not as a ghost but as a human and behind him was the real life version of an older man, looking at us with a dark smile.
"What did you do to us?" I barked at the man as I got up and walked to him as far as my chains let me. It made Mogui get a whip and crack it before my feet, making me back away in fear.
"I brought you to this world; the Nightmare World. Here your spirit will be trapped forever" Mogui said as I looked at P'li with a shocked gasp.
"How did we even get here?" Femke asked.
"The cell works as a gateway; a small gap between two worlds I worked on with my father." Mogui said as he looked at the other man, presumably his father, with a smirk on his face.
"There is no way out." He continued. "Enjoy your stay." With that the two men closed and locked the door, leaving us behind.
Zaheer's POV
"P'li was just going to show Femke something. What is keeping those two so long?" I questioned after waiting for fifteen minutes for the girls to return.
"Just doing some recalling, don't worry." Ghazan said laid back as he sat on a couch as Ming Hua sat on a nearby chair.
"Zaheer is right, those two shouldn't take this long, we better check it out." Ming Hua said as she got up and followed me to the door as did Xai Bau and Tziza, the girls and Ghazan stayed.
"What if they're just doing some recalling?" Ilena asked.
"Then we can give them some time but I want to be sure." I replied as I walked to the door P'li had used before to get to the cell block and walked past the cells, trying to remember which one was P'li's since I didn't hear a sound.
'Something's wrong, We would hear them if there wasn't anything wrong.' I thought as I found a door that had a blood stain next to the door, which I knew the cause of; me.
"Guard this cell with your life." I heard Mogui's voice call in my head before his talking became a choked noise from having his throat slit, instantly killing him. All for P'li. She was safe.
'Maybe someday soon, she might be able to find her own parents again.' I thought as I took the doorknob in my hand to open the cell but I gasped when I fell the door was locked.
"This is Zaheer! Open up." I called as I knocked on the door now.
Silence.
"Please open the door." I said as I shrugged at Xai Bau, who looked at me and shrugged as well, not understanding why no one was replying either. A bad feeling was creeping over me now since I wasn't hearing them call for help either.
'Did they lock themselves in? No, we would have heard them call for help. Something else happened and I have a bad feeling about it.' I thought as I looked at Xai Bau. "Something happened." I said as I tried to bash in the door.
"I'll go get Ilena. She can metalbend the door open." Xai Bau said as he ran back.
"I never saw him run so..." Tziza started, but I didn't pay attention. All I was thinking about now was freeing P'l and freeing femke. I couldn't lose them. There was no way I was losing them.
"What's wrong with you? You're normally never stressing out over these kind of situations." Tziza said as she looked at me pacing up and down in front of the cell, feeling something might be wrong and since we had seen Mogui's spirit before, he might be behind this.
"Femke is in danger." I snapped at her.
"P'li too. Or did you stop caring after you broke up?" Tziza asked me as she placed a hand on my shoulder and gave me a firm look.
"What? No!" I said as I felt a blush creep up on me. Tziza just sighed.
"Now is not the time for your love life. It's time to help your friends and allies. You can come to grips with the fact you love Femke as more than a friend later." Tziza told me sternly as Ilena shoved us to the side and with one simple movement of her arm she ripped the door out of the doorpost, revealing Femke and P'li lying motionlessly on the ground.
"No!" i called as we all gathered around them and tried to wake them up. Nothing seemed to work.
"It looks like their spirits are trapped somewhere else." Xai Bau noted after a while as he examined their eyes and pulse.
"Like a coma?" Ghazan asked, which made me look at him firmly.
"No. More like how Aiwei is trapped in the fog of lost souls." I explained.
"How do we get them back?" Ming Hua asked.
"I don't know but we have to try whatever we can to help them." I said with a determined look to Femke and P'li who were lying unconscious.
'Hang in there. We're going to get you out of there.' I thought to the girls as I looked at their faces sadly, knowing their safe return was upon us now and I was going to get Mogui for this.
P'li's POV
"Now what?" I asked Femke as she sat down in the lotus position and tried to concentrate on something.
"I'll see if i can meditate into the Spirit World and warn Zaheer we're trapped. They might be able to figure out a way to break us out of here." Femke said before she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. As she did so I looked at the raggy clothes I wore. It looked a lot like the dress I had burned with Zaheer all those years ago. After he had freed me from Mogui.
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Flashback
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Soon after Zaheer had murdered Mogui and secured my freedom, we headed out. While in a town, Zaheer took me to a shop and bought me some proper clothes and actual shoes, which shocked me at that time since it had been a while people had been nice to me.
"Part of your new life, P'li. You can dress however you want and talk to me if something is bothering you." Zaheer had smiled at me as he let me choose some clothes for myself in which i chose the red yellow and black outfit I wore until today, smiling as I stood before Zaheer in it, making Zaheer look at me with a small smile as well.
"You look amazing. I'm glad you found something you like instead of always having to wear rags." Zaheer had smiled at me as he went to pay for me, after which he disappeared for a moment and got back not much later with a bag of hot steam buns and fresh water.
"Dig in." Zaheer smiled as he handed me the bag after which he got himself one. We walked back to the camp in silence, only when we reached it again did he speak up.
When we got back, Ming Hua and Ghazan were with us, smiling as Zaheer took my hand and gently guided me around my waist to the fire. I looked up at him nervously.
"Don't be frightened, P'li, we're not going to hurt you. We want to help you." Zaheer said he sat me down next to the campfire and close to the others after which he handed the rags I had once worn. "I thought you would like to burn them yourself. It will help you realize you're through with that life. You're free now. Truly free." Zaheer said as he gently placed a hand on my shoulder which made me look at him. This really seemed the mean that I was free. That I wasn't going to be used to murder or threaten innocent people.
"How can I be sure you mean that? That you're not saying this only to crush my hope later on?" I asked suspiciously as I looked at the rags in my lap, the symbol of my slavery under Mogui.
"We don't. No one forces you to put your trust in us if you don't want to. We want to help you. Truly help you. But only if you're open to it." Zaheer said as he placed a gentle hand on mine which made me smile at him thankfully, looking at the rags once more I decided I wanted this all to end. I wanted to forget Mogui. Learn to be me. The real me that I hadn't been since age five when my parents sold me.
"Go on. Know that I will be with you." Zaheer told me with a smile on his face.
"I'm not sure I'm ready to make that step but I am ready to try and let go of the past. Let's see where this will take me." I said with a nod, before I threw the rags in the fire, smiling inwardly as I saw them burn to ashes.
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"It doesn't work! I can't go to the Spirit World." Femke growled, which snapped me out of my thoughts and I looked at her, worried. Knowing that we wouldn't be able to get help unless Femke could tell where we were at the moment.
"Great. Does that mean we're trapped?" I asked.
"Only until we found a way out." Femke said as she looked down in a pondering way. "I wish jinora had told me how she managed to spirit project." Femke muttered as she took the lotus position again.
"Except for what Mogui told us, we have no idea where we are and he might be lying. We have to make sure we are indeed in some sort of nightmare world." I told Femke sternly, falling silent as I heard the lock on the door rattle for a moment before Mogui and his father came in, each of them taking us by a chain and pulling us on our feet.
"Let's check out our newest weapons, shall we?" Mogui de Fuqin said as he looked at his son, who nodded as he pulled me along to the training ground ,which was back to the way it used to be, and put us in a line with more people. As he did so I heard Femke gasp in shock, since most of them weren't older than four or five years old.
"Let's see if you can fulfill today's demands. Make sure you get past the obstacles and to the target then hit it," Mogui called as he pointed at an obstacle course which made me pause since this had been the first thing I had been told to do as well, and that time I had failed. I knew I would be able to do it now but Femke might have trouble without her magic abilities backing her up…
Femke's POV
When Mogui showed the obstacle course I looked around the grounds, not paying too much attention to what he was saying since I wasn't planning on doing that anyway. No, I had to make up a plan to get the both of us out of here fast and do something for those poor children in the meantime as well.
'There has to be some way out of here.' I thought as I looked around, trying to concentrate on my magic abilities, but nothing happened.
"Your turn." I heard a voice snap. I looked up from my thoughts and my eyes met those of Mogui.
"No." I said clearly as I kept my eyes locked in his.
"Neither will I. I refuse to get turned in your personal weapon again." P'li said firmly as she got in front of the children, who all looked up at us with shocked eyes, unable to believe we dared to refuse a direct order from Mogui.
"When I'm through with you, you will kiss the ground I'm standing on just like these children." Mogui snapped, at which he cracked the whip on the ground before the feet of the smallest child, a little girl that cringed at the sound of the whip and immediately went to run the obstacle course. She fell halfway through and was barely able to get up again.
"Get up, you're not done yet." Mogui screamed at the child, which made me gasp in shock and horror. The child winced in pain but was unable to get up.
"You're hurting her!" I called as I pulled at my chains in an effort to try and get to the child but I was unable to.
'I can do something. My tattoo isn't covered. I can still bend.' I thought as I took a breath and concentrated my blast on a spot near Mogui. The blast hit a few feet from target, but Mogui instantly turned around and faced me, all the children gasped and looked at me as I fell my body glow. I smiled at P'li and broke the chains with my metalbending, which suddenly worked. As fast as I could I bended P'li free and together we bended At Mogui, who managed to dodge us and tried to strike us, but we were faster and once unchained we were a strong team, but because we only had our eyes pinned on Mogui, we forgot Mogui de Fuqin was still there as well and just as we thought we were winning we got bashed on the head which caused us to pass out…..
When I regained my consciousness I looked at the face of the little girl I had saved from Mogui. She was looking at me with widened eyes as P'li rubbed some water over my arm where I saw an amount of bruises when I sat up.
"What happened?" I asked groaning as I sat up, a immense pain spreading through me as I did so. "Mogui and his father is what happened. They punished us for trying to escape." P'li said.
"Did he do this to you all the time?" I asked as I groaned a little. My whole body hurt. Mogui did a number on me. That wasn't going to stop me from trying to get away again. We just had to watch out for his father the next time.
"I got used to it in time. I'm almost immune to it." P'li smiled, but I could see the hurt underneath. The little girl jumped when I looked at her with a small smile and got into the back of the room we were in together with the other children and looked at us, scared.
"Don't be afraid. We won't bite." I told the child with a small smile on my face as I moved a little towards them, which made all the children look at us with widened eyes.
"why did you fight Mogui? You got hurt." The little girl asked as she watched P'li clean my wounds with the little supplies we had.
"Because that's what felt like the right thing to do. Mogui is dangerous and shouldn't treat you like this." I said calmly, not wanting to scare the innocent girl.
"How would you know?" The little girl asked me as she took a step towards me with a curious look in her eyes.
"Because I know of a world where people treat benders like you as equals. Not as tools. Where people like you and me can be really happy." I told her, causing the eyes of the little girl to widen. As did the eyes of the other children.
"Where?" One of the other children asked as they took a step closer to me as well.
"In the Avatar world; the time and place we came from, benders like you are accepted and treated as people. Not everyone is like Mogui." I said with a smile to P'li, who smiled in return. "P'li taught me to use Combustion bending. Because we are the best of friends." I replied.
"No way. Why would you want to learn Combustion Bending?" The child that stood closest to me said as she stomped her foot on the ground, unable to believe what I had just said.
"I know it might sound odd, But it's true Femke wanted to learn to combustion bend. Because she was interested in learning the technique of her best friend." P'li said as she came to sit down next to me, which made me smile.
"This power isn't interesting. It's terrible." One of the older children replied as she looked at me with a sad face which made me shudder. These poor children had no idea how fulfilling being a combustion bender could be.
P'li's POV
"This power isn't interesting, it's terrible." One of the older children replied as she looked at Femke with a sad face which made her shudder. They sounded a lot like how I was when I was their age. Lost and stripped off any hope.
'I have to do something. They can't lose all hope. They will be lost forever.' I thought as I gently reached for one of the smaller children and put her in my lap.
"All of you. We're born with a gift. A gift that we should be proud of." I started as I gently rocked the small girl in my arms.
"I was like you. When Zaheer, a friend, found me, I felt like this ability was a curse. He showed me it wasn't. It is a gift we should be proud of. Not scared. We're human just as much as everyone else. Mogui is a Monster for making you think otherwise." I said firmly as I balled my fist.
"Easy for you to say. You at least had parents who loved and cared about you once." One of the children huffed. "Yes, I grew up with my parents until I was five but they never loved me. I was just a burden to them." I replied, remembering how happy they had looked when they left me to Mogui, glad to be rid of their little burden at last.
"I know it isn't going to be easy. But we have to try and fight Mogui. With all our power combined we can escape this place and go back to a world where we can be free." I said as I got up and looked at them with a smile on my face.
"For what? Only to get our hopes crushed by someone else?" The oldest girl said, before she took the children to a far corner of the room, far away from us.
"You did your best, Li. They won't trust us just yet. They just can't." Femke assured me with a smile on her face as she got into the Lotus position and meditated. Maybe I should try that.
'I've seen Zaheer meditate countless times. It might give me some peace of mind.' I thought as I got into the Lotus position as well and took a deep breath, concentrating on my breathing. I suddenly felt something glow in my chest. The same power was also next to me.
'Our Voortrix. They're connected. But if I can feel both of our powers, then maybe... ' I thought as I tried to reach further, trying to see if there were any more Voortrix powers around me but as I tried there was some sort of strange wall of power blocking me.
"Femke…, did you feel that? There's some strange sort of wall blocking our connection," I said as I opened my eyes.
"What do you mean?" Femke asked as she opened her eyes as well and looked at me, shocked.
"I concentrated on my powers and felt yours next to me. I figured I could try and reach Zaheer this way and tell him we're in danger but I felt this strange barrier around us. It blocked us from contacting the others." I said as I looked at Femke sternly.
"Wait, you felt a block?" Femke asked me.
"Didn't you?" I asked her.
"No. I didn't concentrate on my own powers but now that I know that can cause me to find out the problem." Femke said as she closed her eyes and focused on her own powers the same way I had done. A moment later she opened her eyes again and looked at me with a smile on her face.
"A barrier. A gap between the dream and the real world. That is where we are. We have to find a way to make a split in the barrier big enough for all of us to get out." Femke said as she got up and started pacing.
"What do you mean, all of us?" One of the children asked as he looked at me, shocked.
"We're not leaving you all behind. When we manage to find a way out of here you're all coming with us." Femke said with a determined look on her face.
"What if we don't want to? We have nowhere left to go anyway." One of the girls said firmly as she got before the others.
"You know, I thought everything would be better than staying in this forsaken place." Femke said as she looked at me, which made me nod in return.
"All I wanted was to go when Mogui first took me. We thought you would want to go if given the chance." I said as I looked at the children.
"We don't have anyone to turn back to like you do. We're all alone." One of the smaller children said as it came a step closer.
"You have. In our world would be a place where you'd be loved." I tried.
"Like anyone cares for people like us." The oldest girl snapped as she gave me a firm look and for one moment I saw myself reflected in her eyes as I told Zaheer the same all those years ago.
"There are. My friends back in the real world care." I said, which made the girl huff in reply. "My best friend is Zaheer. An airbender who loves to quote some ancient Guru whenever he can."
"Then there is Ming Hua; a waterbender with a short temper but really nice once you get to know her." I smiled as femke nodded to me smiling as a sign i should keep going.
"And there's Ghazan. Our lavabender who is really laid back and loves to joke around but he really has a heart for our mission" I concluded with a smile on Femke, who nodded with a smile on her face, this time to confirm my words.
"And of course Femke here. My best friend."
"They found me at age fourteen suffering under Mogui. They freed me and gave me a place to call home." I said as I looked at the door. "They told me I was special in my own way and that I should try and be the best me I can be." I said as I stroked the small girl over her hair.
"That sounds so nice." The young girl now smiled as she looked at me with beaming eyes.
"Femke joined the group later and helped us see our mission was destined to fail." I said.
"That's all gone now. You're in here and since we're supposed to be dead there is no way out." The oldest girl snapped as she looked to the side.
"It's not over yet." I said as I got up with the girl in my hand and walked to her.
"I know it is going to be difficult, but we can escape." I smiled.
"But for now, we better get some sleep. Tomorrow will be another day." I said as I looked at the children with a smile on my face, trying to be a bit of a mother to the children, making sure they all lied down and had something to cover them up before I lied down and looked at the roof.
"I know you can hear me. I know you're there. Please, whatever Deities that listen. If you truly exist, give us the strength to escape. Don't forget us." I prayed softly.
"You know what I have been through. You know how much hurt and suffering it caused me and now causes these poor children. Please help us." I whispered into the night before I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
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And with that I end the chapter. I hope you liked it.
Please review!