"An excursion to the Spirit World," Amon said. He had been fiddling with his mask, as if nervously. The first crack in this man's iron-clad, cold demeanour. "Even for someone who has travelled as far as I had, it defied comprehension. Of course, I had heard stories. Avatar Aang had travelled there on occasion. The old General Iroh… the real one, not the fool child his grand-niece installed in the United Forces… had also allegedly travelled there. And, of course, spirits do sometimes abduct humans. But for a non-bender to venture there by their own will? Difficult to picture. But I wasn't going to let anything stop me."
Noatak sat cross-legged on the stone floor of the airbender temple's courtyard. Hermit life hadn't been unkind to him. His hair grew long, and he was sporting an unkempt beard, but he was hale and hearty, and stronger than ever. He was holding a white mask, painted in a conservative red pattern – the most distinctive feature was a red circle on its forehead. He acquired it on one of his occasional ventures outside the temple to procure supplies.
The purpose of the mask was hardly decoration. Noatak had meditated and pondered over his excursion to the Spirit World for a long time. He knew that the Spirit World was an opposite of the material world. It wasn't ruled by a set of hard, unbending laws. Everything there changed by the will of its inhabitants. The greater spirits carved out their demesnes in it, while the lesser ones made their way through that landscape. Humans whose spirits made their way there had to tread lightly, as they were below even the lowliest of spirits in their ability to shape the Spirit World. The Avatar could tread among them as an equal, because of their powerful, old spirit and their role as the bridge. However, benders were at no advantage there, for once. Bending did not function in the Spirit World.
Which was why Noatak wouldn't go as himself. He wouldn't go there as Noatak, a drifter escaped from Republic City. He would go as… Amon. It seemed like an appropriate name. It was short, and he could recall it belong to a spirit of vengeance and justice for the oppressed, somewhere, at some point. It didn't really matter how true it was. In the Spirit World, he would be Amon, the harbinger of equality. His mask would be a face of those the world denied a face and a voice. And he would leave the Spirit World with a weapon to fix the world's mistakes. As an idea, rather than a man, he would be safer. It's harder to grasp an idea. It slips away. It is greater than any spirit.
Noatak put on his mask and closed his eyes. He breathed in deeply, letting the energy in his body flow freely with the air. In and out. He let go of all thoughts save for his determination to get what he needed for his dream to come true. Even that wasn't a conscious thought. Merely a constant backdrop to his thoughts. Let his body go. Cross the barrier between the physical and the metaphysical. The human spirit was a remnant of the prehistoric times, before the worlds became separate. It was bound to the flesh and bone, and to the elements. But if the need was pressing and the will was strong, it could soar. And Noatak's spirit did.
Amon opened his eyes and looked through his mask at the surroundings he found himself in. It appeared to be underground. A small cave, buried under tons of rock. He looked around. A small hole led upwards. He crawled into it, and began making his way up. The passage grew ever narrower. It was as if the rock was bearing down on him, trying to keep him trapped.
But Amon had had experience with being held down, hadn't he? The entire bending world had always tried to keep him, and other non-benders, down. Compliant and in awe of benders. But he was there because he wouldn't stand for it. He began to crawl more quickly, and the rock was pushed aside. The passage widened, and Amon emerged into the Spirit World.
He found himself in a narrow, overgrown ravine. The hole through which he had climbed was nowhere to be seen. The ravine was covered by thick weeds and bushes, with a slow, small stream trickling through the middle. The sides of the ravine were occupied by large, naked, gnarled trees. It was not a welcoming sight. Amon knew that he would need to be on his guard there. It wasn't a place that welcomed mortal humans.
He made his way up the side of the ravine. He had very little idea where he should go. But he knew he would find nothing in such a dreary hole. Besides, the geography of the Spirit World was largely a matter of personal opinion, as far as he knew. Once he did have a goal in mind, getting there would be a question of clarity of direction, rather than physical locomotion.
And so, Amon set out. He landscape around him was a thick forest of dead, naked trees, blocking out most of the light. Shapes skittered around, between the trunks and branches. Watching him, and shadowing him. Eventually, one of them coalesced into something, for the lack of a better word, solid. A towering dark grey shape, with eight long legs and a pair of spindly arms, all attached to a thin, wiry body and a small head with a pair of bulging red eyes.
"I haven't seen a human here in a… very long time," it said. Its mouth was a gaping maw full of long, crooked teeth.
"One imagines we don't come here without a very good reason," Amon retorted, staring the spirit down without flinching. The thing snorted.
"Good reasons, bad reasons. Bad reasons, good reasons. Humans call them such long after it's too late to do anything. But humans don't come here anymore. They don't care about spirits. They encase their homes in metal and forget all about us."
"Why wouldn't we? We have our own problems, without adding new ones by getting involved with spirits. We need to deal with benders, rulers, politicians…"
"Benders? What's 'benders'?"
"…the people who can control the elements through the movements of their bodies," Amon said, actually bemused by the spirit's apparent ignorance.
"Oh, that. The Lion-Turtles gave it to you when you packed up and left… when Avatar Wan decided to split you off from us." There was a certain amount of bitterness in the spirit's voice. "I miss the times when humans were around."
The Lion-Turtles gave humans the power over the elements? Not all of them, evidently. Or maybe the ability was not passed down from parent to child perfectly? Ah, well. It hardly mattered now.
"And why is that?" Amon asked instead.
"You were so scared. So bitter and jealous of us, huddling in your villages on the Lion-Turtles. You wouldn't have survived without them. Your resentment was delicious."
The spirit lowered its ugly head to Amon's eye level.
"But you, human in the mask. I smell… so much resentment in you. Such rage. What could possibly make one man so bitter?"
"I am not one man. I am Amon, a voice for the voiceless," the masked man said. "And the revenge for the downtrodden."
The spirit grinned horribly.
"So am I. My name is Kuurosivo. The spirit that dwells in the dark and lonely places. The forgotten and ignored."
"Fortuitous we should meet, then," Amon said, coldly. The spirit laughed in response, throwing back its head and displaying all its long, crooked teeth.
"My dear human who is many humans. There's no such thing as a coincidence in the Spirit World, or chance. You met me because of what you brought with you to this place. Coming here claiming to speak for the voiceless, as you do… you gravitated here. That's how this world works, now. I don't like it any more than you do, but that's how your… Avatar set it up."
"He's not my Avatar," Amon said, dismissively. "The Avatar represents bending. So he does not stand for me."
"Bending, yes. Little else, nowadays. The worlds were without their Avatar for a long time. Humans forgot us. Forgot to treat us as anything other than monsters to be avoided. Avatar Aang did his best, but had so little time… and the new Avatar is the product of their time."
"The Avatar is obsolete," Amon remarked. Kuurosivo grinned again.
"They are indeed. You and I think alike, Amon. The man who claims to speak for more than just one man. In fact… you would fit quite well here. In my forest. Among the lost and the damned."
"I do not plan on staying," Amon said, starting down the spirit. "I am here for a specific purpose."
"So you say. But with the Avatar so powerless and so distanced from the matters of the spirit… with humans no longer caring for us… there are those, within the Spirit World, that say the old covenant no longer matters. That we should take from them as we please, like we once did."
"Is that so? Then you've lied to me. You're no downtrodden. You're just another bully, hungry for power. You're not like me, and never will be. Stand aside. I am here for a weapon in a war against bending. To fix the world I live in. You're free to stew in yours."
Kuurosivo bristled, stretching to its full height and baring its teeth. Then, it lunged. Before Amon could react, he was pinned to the ground. Instead of devouring him, like he expected, the spirit stared into his eyes with its bulging, red ones. Amon felt a force, pushing against his soul. The spirit was trying to force its way in, to possess him and remodel him in its image.
He wouldn't have it. He had not come this far, to another world, only to be devoured by some ephemeral being that claimed to be marginalized and shunned, but didn't truly know anything about being downtrodden. He focused all his power of will to resist the Kuurosivo. For a brief moment, the spindly spider-spirit became benders. All benders, each and every one, who kept non-benders like him down. Who looked down on them and thought them irrelevant and powerless. All that he couldn't do to them, save for beating individual benders in combat, he strove to do to the spirit.
He felt excruciating pain as his soul battled against the spirit. His vision went black, and he began to forget who he was, where he was, and why he was there. His essence was being drained by the predatory being that had ambushed him. He focused on the grim, cold certainty resting in his mind – he was Amon, the lone voice of non-benders in a world that didn't care about them. The one who swore to end bending or die trying. But not like this, having fallen prey to a petty spirit that had grown bold because of the Avatar's failures. As he felt his soul fill with the spirit's essence, he concentrated only on filling it with such hatred and venom as to make it unbearable for the being.
And then, it was over. Amon lay down on the black grass of the Spirit World. Dead branches were falling to the ground all around him. He rose to his feet unsteadily. The forest looked as though it had been hit by a tornado. Trees were uprooted, and massive chasms were gaping in the ground, showing only inky blackness beneath. Dark shapes circled above him, like carrion birds above a dying ostrich-horse.
He looked towards Kuurosivo. The spirit was reeling, rolling on the ground and trying to get back to its feet. There was what looked like a gaping hole in his chest. Tendrils of black smoke were emitting from it… and towards him.
"What… what have you done, human?!" it shrieked. "I have never… if I'd known you humans can feel such hate!"
Behind his mask, Amon smiled slightly. He was not sure what had happened, but it appeared that in trying to devour him, the spirit had instead lost part of itself. Left it in him, perhaps.
"You know precious little about us, or anything else. Crawl back to whatever hole spawned you, spirit. You were right. The Avatar is obsolete. But that means so are you. After benders have been put in their place, perhaps humanity should turn towards you… the original oppressors, whom benders simply replaced. With the Avatar no longer relevant, we lost our last reason to bow down to you. Begone."
As the spirit slithered away, Amon sat down on the ground and reached within himself, to examine what had happened to him. He felt different – he also felt an alien presence in his soul, flowing through his chi. He shuddered. Glad as he was that he had survived the encounter with Kuurosivo, he knew that it had marked him forever. He knew that spirit possession was fatal to humans. He only had a discarded part of a spirit within him, so he would live… for a time. But he would never be the same
There was another feeling, however, one that felt familiar to him. It filled him with a strange sort of confidence. Perhaps, since he had wrested a part of a spirit from it by force, he could use it as he saw fit. And the spirit wasn't entirely wrong – there was a certain kinship between them, and it was enough to bring Amon into the spirit's lair.
Half-consciously, he reached out to the ground below him. A human figure rose from the ground, composed of black wood. Streaks of red flowed through it, mimicking the flow of energy through the body. It was featureless apart from that. Amon looked at it, finding the ebb and flow of chi familiar… he knew it well. But now, he could touch it. Manipulate it. He felt his senses extend in a way that made it hard to picture what it had been like without them.
He put his arms on the mannequin. He remember that Avatar Aang had touched Yakone's forehead and sternum when he took his bending. He did the same, but he couldn't get a grip in the energy flowing through it. He considered it. Chi passed through chakras. To affect it, he would need to affect the chakras. Copying Avatar Aang's methods would do him no good. He was his own solution, and would have to do it his way.
Any chi-blocker learned that different strikes were required to block different benders. Their chi didn't focus through the same chakras. But Amon sought something fundamental, like what Avatar Aang had done – he took the bending of both a firebender and a waterbender. He needed to strike at the very core of bending.
Slowly, thoughtfully, he placed his right thumb on the spirit-mannequin's forehead. Located there was the Light chakra, that dealt with illusion and was blocked by lies. Non-benders deluded themselves into a feeling of superiority because of their personal power. Perhaps stripping that illusion away would disrupt one's chi enough to make bending impossible. With this realization, Amon felt a connection to the spirit-puppet representing a human. He was making progress.
Still, he was not quite there. He needed more. He examined the mannequin some more. Beneath the Light chakra was the Sound chakra, dealing with truth and blocked by lies. Yet the lie that was the Avatar and the world order they propped up didn't seem to adversely affect any bender. Maybe the harsh, naked truth would. Yes, that was it. Guru Pathik had taught Avatar Aang to let go of lies and illusions. Amon would destroy the benders' powers by inflicting the raw, naked truth of what they really are, and what kind of world they create, on them.
He gripped the mannequin by the neck, applying pressure to where the Sound chakra would be on the human body. He concentrated on the truth he wanted to force the benders to witness, and saw the flow of energy through the human effigy change. It changed its course, and became subdued. Normal. Equalized.
Amon raised his fists to the Spirit World's alien sky and cried out in triumph. Then, everything went black.
Amon awoke on the cold floor of the Eastern Air Temple. He shook his head. The memories of the Spirit World were hard to reconcile with what he saw around him now. But, he had been there. He could feel it. The alien energy throbbing through his veins. He remembered the palpable feeling of sheer triumph when he first exerted his power. Now, however… in the material world, he could feel that the power he brought with him did not belong there. He felt drained by it… eaten away. A human could not steal from the spirits without paying a price, clearly.
That was fine. Hastening his death was an acceptable price to pay for a weapon to strike at the heart of the bending world. Amon got up and looked at the darkening sky. The end of bending began that day. He turned his gaze towards the north-east. Republic City, where Noatak had been born, was there. It was also where Avatar Aang finally had finally proven his weakness to the world. Carved from the wounds of the great war, instigated by the power-hungry benders and enabled by another weak Avatar, it represented a new world – one that did not need bending anymore. The man who had just irrevocably become Amon knew that the first blows in the battle for equality had to be struck there.