Chapter 2: Prophecy

A storm was brewing in the skies above the Fire Nation Capital. Rain had not yet begun to fall, but the sky was dark with clouds shot through with lightning and trees were swaying in the high winds. Most of the Capital's residents huddled in their houses, waiting for the fury to come.

A figure hurried across the palace grounds, wrapped in a floor-length red robe. The figure paused and looked over its shoulder, as though making sure it was not being followed, and then turned and began to make its way across the courtyard once again, Leaving the residential portion of the palace behind, the figure hurried up the steps of the Fire Sages' temple.

The temple door opened slowly and a man in the robes of a Sage poked his head out. "Who's there?" he called. "We're not open for visitors at this hour."

The figure reached up and cast back her hood, revealing the coldly beautiful features of Princess Azula. "You will let me inside, Sage," she said. "I need to speak with your master."

"Of- of course, my lady," the Sage said with a slight bow. "Follow me." He turned and began to walk back into the temple, Azula following closely at his heels. They passed through the long, empty corridors and came at last to an ornate oaken door. The Fire Sage stepped forward and knocked softly.

"Enter," a voice said from within. The Sage opened the door and Azula stepped inside. The High Fire Sage sat at his desk and looked at the princess with wry amusement. "Princess Azula," he said. "I was led to believe that your brother ordered you to be guarded at all times."

"That is correct," Azula admitted, "but I wasn't interested in being followed here, so I gave them the slip."

"And what would be so important that you would risk the Fire Lord's anger just to come here and speak with me?"

Azula stared at her hands for some time. "It's getting worse," she finally said.

"You are referring to the madness that took you on the day of the Comet?" the old man asked in a tone that indicated neither anger nor approval.

"Yes," she whispered. "I'm a firebender, and this place is built over the heart of fire's power in this world. Maybe if I stay the night here and meditate it will help me."

"Forgive me," the High Fire Sage said, "but I was never under the impression that you put much worth by spiritual matters. I am curious as to why you would begin doing so now?"

A sudden light flashed in Azula's eyes and the Sage involuntarily pulled back. "It is not your place to question me!" she snarled and hit the desk, sending blue sparks shooting across it. Then Azula caught herself and pulled back, mentally chiding herself for the temporary loss of control.

"To be entirely honest, I still don't put much value by them," she finally said in a calmer voice. "But it's one thing I haven't tried yet, and I don't suppose it could hurt me. It's not belief, High Sage- it's a last resort."

"I see," the old man said. "Come with me." He stood and motioned for Azula to follow him. They passed through more empty corridors, going ever in and down, until at last they came to a vast chamber that Azula guessed had to be underground. The walls were black stone decorated with golden images of dragons, heroes, and above all the sun, but it wasn't the decorations that truly seized one's attention. In the center of the floor was a great crack, and from it arose a smokeless yellow flame that was more than twice Azula's height.

"This place is a border," the Sage said. "It is where the Fire Nation of this world intersects with a mighty source of fire in the Spirit World. There are places like it in all four nations, though the only other one I know of is the Spirit Oasis at the North Pole, where the waterbenders commune with the moon and ocean spirits."

"I've heard of the Oasis," Azula said. "That is where Admiral Zhao attempted to destroy the Moon Spirit to strip the waterbenders of their power."

"And all he accomplished was the death of a thousand good men," the Sage said. "Curse his name! If you believe that communing with the power of fire can help you, Princess, I know of no better place in the entire world."

Azula nodded to the old man and sat cross legged in front of the great fire, clearing her mind of distractions and focusing on it to the exclusion of all else, as she would an sufficiently powerful flame. It pulsed slightly in response to her touch, and Azula allowed herself a slight smile. Working with fire always seemed to help her keep her mind balanced, though this didn't seem to be having any special effect. Still, she was almost glad she'd come here.

Then the flame roared up to lick the ceiling, and the room was filled with a sudden blast of heat and force. The High Sage stumbled backwards, shielding his eyes, but Azula remained still, entranced, staring into the fire's depths, losing herself…

She stood in a palace made of fire; the floor was a sheet of smoldering obsidian, the great pillars and the roof of solid flame, and directly before her a throne of magma beside whose terrible majesty her father and grandfather would have seemed no more than schoolboys humbled before their headmaster. But no, the vision shifted, she hovered in the crater of a volcano and now, where the man had sat, there coiled a dragon upon a great stone ledge, his scales all the colors of fire, and yet none.

The dragon inclined his head and bent one great eye towards her, and as she stared into the infinite depths a world seemed to open before her. She saw the Fire Nation Capital, the palace, the temple in which some part of her knew that her body still resided, and then she was flying up into the sky and across the sea, past Ba Sing Se and into the wilderness.

There in a clearing in a trackless forest she collapsed to the ground, agony shooting up her arms. She stared down at them, and it seemed to her that she was becoming fire, that surely her body would be consumed and there would be nothing left of who she had been, nothing but smoke and ash…

And then a cool hand touched her cheek, and she looked to see an older woman standing before her, one she knew well and had tried to convince herself for so long that she hated. "Azula," Mother said softly, and there was pity in her voice, but at her touch pain was eased…

And then Mother was gone, and Azula stood alone in a vast emptiness, listening to the cold, soft laughter that echoed around her. Spinning, seeking desparately to find the source, she saw a young woman standing before her, pale as death and clothed in the night, and behind her was a deeper shadow, a darkness that Azula knew, though she had never seen it before.

The shadow girl laughed again and stepped forward, and there was a knife in her hand and she lunged, and Azula's eyes widened in pain as the girl's blade was buried in her heart…

And then she was once again in the hidden chamber below the temple, and stumbled back, panting, into the High Sage's arms. The old man regarded her with concern.

"That was no hallucination like I've ever had," Azula said slowly, struggling to regain her composure. "That… that was…"

"Real?" the Sage asked. "Yes, I believe it was. I did not see what you saw, but I saw the dragon, and I believe I know who that dragon is, or represents. The waterbenders say the Moon is a spirit; so too do we hold, does the Sun."

Azula managed a wry grin. "And does this happen often around here?"

There was a long silence. "Only once in memory has the fire spoken to us before tonight," the High Fire Sage finally said, "and that was the day before Sozin began the War, warning him that he walked the path towards ruin. He did not heed it, but the Sages remembered."

"Are you certain that the spirit of the Sun?" Azula asked. "Azun believed a spirit supported his cause; I may have spoken with it myself, if that was not a dream."

"And you want to know if this could be a trick," the Sage finished for her. "I do not believe so. The legends say that this flame's source lies deep in the Spirit World, in what some of our writings call the Palace of the Sun, though I myself do not think spirits have need of such things as palaces. If the thing you fear is powerful enough to corrupt that, then I would think our entire nation would already be under its heel, and it would have had no need of the fallen general." He paused again. "And if it is not so bold of me to ask, what did the flames reveal to you? I have a… professional interest in these matters, you might say."

Azula stepped back from him slowly. "That I need to see my brother," she said.

Outside, it began to rain.

/

A shadow perched on the roof of the Fire Sages' temple, and at its heart was a young woman who watched the princess and the High Sage hurry towards the main body of the palace with a snarl on her lips. One hand fondled the hilt of her dagger- the same dagger that took the father's life- and the shadow considered the pleasure of using it on the daughter as well.

But the time was not yet. She knew it in her soul that Azula must live, for now at least, but that this would change in time. She had suffered, but she still had hope, had life, something that had been crushed in the shadow long ago; only when Azula knew utter despair would the time be right to end her life. And besides, there were greater matters afoot, and the tyrant's daughter yet served the shadow's purposes. Soon the day would come when the princess was no longer useful to the cause, and then she would die with the shadow's blade in her heart.

How the shadow hated the princess and her brother, arrogant spoiled fools who cared nothing for the consequences of their actions. The new Fire Lord was somewhat better- at least he tried to make amends, feeble and meaningless his attempts might be- but did he honestly think that anything he did could make up for the blood spilled during a century of warfare? How could he know or care the damage his people had inflicted upon this world! Azula had at least some knowledge, for she was far too perceptive for it to be otherwise, but she cared only about herself and hadn't made any attempt that the shadow had seen to heal the injuries she had caused.

Of course the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes were no better. The latter walled themselves away from the world in their great city of ice, pretending that they could ignore it all, and the former – well, the earthbenders' corruption was obvious, and they too would feel her vengeance in time. All the nations were led by fools or tyrants and cared nothing for the people who served them- and now the Avatar was their performing monkey. Someone had to act to bring judgment upon them all for their crimes and incompetence. The shadow had known that Ozai would have been a valuable addition to the cause, for with prodding he could have been made to destroy himself and lay waste to all that his forebears had made in the process, but she had still rejoiced when he had refused and she had been given an excuse to kill him.

But her vengeance was not complete- far from it! Though she sat here now on the temple roof as rain poured down upon her, she didn't care. A little dampness was small enough price to pay- and she would pay any price still to bring down the surviving nations, no matter how severe.

Soon, whispered the quiet voice that sometimes spoke in the darkness of her mind.

"Yes," the shadow repeated aloud. "Soon."

/

Though she had spent her life in the company of warriors, benders, and acrobats of all types, Ty Lee remained the only person she knew who could meditate while doing a handstand.

Other people thought this strange, much as they thought that Ty Lee's exuberance, often unconventional comments, and insistence that she could see spiritual auras reflecting a person's mood were strange. The acrobat-turned-Kyoshi Warrior had long ago stopped being bothered by it. Born to a family that already had six interchangeable daughters, Ty Lee took any acknowledgement of her individuality as a complement, regardless of how it was intended. And unlike Azula, she'd never seen the point in holding a grudge. Making new friends was much more fun all around than making new enemies.

Becoming tired of handstanding, Ty Lee lightly flipped over and now stood balanced lightly on one foot. From below she heard sounds of amazement- all of the Kyoshi Warriors were acrobatic to greater or lesser degree, but few were up to performing fluid gymnastics while perched on the dojo's steep roof. Ty Lee, for her part, thought that practicing on the ground was boring. The risk of falling made successfully balancing all that more rewarding.

Suddenly a jolt shot through her body. Ty Lee's eyes widened in shock and her limbs stiffened, and she found herself falling towards the ground. Then she hit, and all was dark.

The acrobat opened her eyes slowly and saw one of the other Warriors standing over her, a concerned look on the other girl's face. "Are you all right?" she asked. "I've never seen you fall before."

Ty Lee had always felt something of an attunement to the Spirit World- she truly could see auras around people when she tried, though Azula and Mai (and most of the Kyoshi Warriors, for that matter), barely concealed their skepticism. Today she was certain she'd felt something from the spirits- but what it was she couldn't say.

Still, Ty Lee's fundamental nature wasn't one that could be kept down for long. "I'm fine," she said, lightly hopping to her feet. "What's for dinner?"

/

This chapter was one that got fairly substantially rewritten, particularly the section dealing with Azula's vision. In the previous version, Agni the Sun Spirit directly manifested and told her to seek out her mother; on reflection, that felt a little too pat, so I changed it around to Azula getting a rather cryptic oracular vision instead. Agni himself I left in place, since this deals with the esoteric practices of the Fire Sages rather than the day-to-day beliefs of the Fire Nation people; if there's anywhere he fits, it's there.

We also see a bit more of our regicidal friend from the prologue, though we still don't know her name (trust me, that's coming in a few chapters). Exactly what's up with her is intended to still be mysterious, though we get a few hints; unlike Azun, whose backstory wasn't all that exciting, hers is shaping up to be much more important. Speaking of characters, this chapter also reintroduces Ty Lee. Of Azula's two "friends", Mai was heavily featured in Heart but Ty Lee was nowhere to be seen; I intended to rectify that with Path.

-MasterGhandalf