Thanks for waiting. Hubby left for Afghanistan this weekend, so I appreciate your patience. As a reward I bring you…Azula Croft and the Western Air Temple of Doom! Can't take credit for that phrase, got it from one of my reviews.
"Oh Dominatia, it's just a little exploring!"
Azula's therapy bison was beside herself, moaning and shaking as she watched her mistress fit herself with a climbing harness, some old rags, a couple of axes, knives, a skin of water, and a loaf of bread.
She had shed her usual Bison Lord robes for a simple set of pants and a tight fitting top that allowed greater maneuverability. Her hair was braided into a long plait that swept her back; her bangs casually swept her forehead. If these booby traps were anything like what she used to torment Ty Lee with, then she would need to be fast.
Dominatia looked down the 45 degree incline tunnel below the southernmost pagoda. She saw only a dark foreboding hole, a hole she couldn't fit through if she tried. Dominatia wasn't a fan of tunnels, but this tunnel's size particularly concerned her. It was very small. What if something happened? She wouldn't be able to get to Azula! None of the bison would! She voiced her concerns and laid her paws over her ears, still shaking a little.
"Oh my dear General,"Azula said with an empathy few creatures had ever seen from her, "I forget how little you've seen me in action." She stroked the bison's nose. "But I take after my brother, which means I'm very difficult to kill. I'll be fine! Now," she handed her General a rope, "just hold onto this and pull me up when I command you. Besides, Zuzu comes today. He can help if I get into trouble…at least, I think so…"Azula put her hand on her chin, trying to remember her schedule.
Dominatia glared at her mistress and slammed the rope down on the ground. Her lips curled back into an angry snarl.
Azula smiled despite her bison's attitude and brought something out from behind her back: a bottle of Earth Kingdom wine from Kuei's wine tour. "I've had my medication today Dominatia, but I can see it's time for yours."
Dominatia's attitude changed immediately and while the bison was busy clawing at the cork, Azula disappeared into the tunnel below.
" # # # # # #
About halfway down, Azula slowed her pace and let out more slack on the rope. Azula was careful with her footing; a few feet in the natural slope gave way to ancient, crumbling stairs and the sunlight filtering down grew very thin. She bent a flame in her left hand and the dancing fire provided dim, but sufficient illumination that painted the tunnel walls a ghostly hue.
Then a strange thing happened. Instead of going down, the stairs began to incline, and Azula's instincts kicked in. She paused, breathing deeply to center herself and draw from the natural environment. She constructed a large lightning ball which she directed up the staircase to illuminate the way.
Less than two hundred feet away was a large growling stone bison, its front paws reared in warning, its amber jeweled eyes glinting as the lightning flashed past it. It blocked about 60% of the entrance, and Azula guessed that the booby traps wouldn't be far behind or in front of this stone guardian.
The lightning flashed bight and blue against the bison, before dissipating against the beast's gray coat. Darkness hid its treasure once more.
"Now there's something you don't see every day," Azula observed, her voice soft in the darkness. She wadded up some of the rags and set them burning in a few corners of the cave for illumination. Then she disconnected the rope that connected her to Dominatia and tied it fast to a long stone on the side of the cave. Moving gracefully, she sidled over to the wall and placed an iron chink in between the crumbling stones. Then she delivered several blows until the iron rod was secure enough for standing. She climbed atop it and pounded another rod in in front of her. Booby traps were often triggered by a poorly placed foot against the earth, so she would just have to put her feet elsewhere. Her movement along the wall was painfully slow, as it required her to repeatedly place the chinks for the twenty feet between herself and the bison, but at length she reached the tunnel's stone guardian.
She landed lightly on top of the Bison's paw and mounted him with ease.
His timeless and angry stare bored through her. She placed a foot in his giant maw and cocked her head at the amber jeweled eyes, but decided against going for them. Anything obviously valuable was more likely to be death rigged, and she could always swipe jewels from Zuzu. Only the infamous book held her interest.
She scaled the guardian's head and set more rags burning along the back of the bison. Then she sat cross legged, bending two flames in the palms of her hands for greater illumination.
The bison had been impressive, but his keep was even more so. The narrow tunnel fanned out into a large atrium, a holy chamber that had both a sense of confinement and infinity. The floor, if one could call it that, was a series of pegs jutting up from a pit with unknown depth. Looking at it, Azula was reminded of a darker version of the airball court where Dominatia and her friends liked to play. Several immense statues of nuns lined the walls, their impossibly long legs stretching down into the darkness. For all Azula knew, the pit had no bottom. Several smaller stone bison were clawing their way up from the gaping earth. They grimaced sadistically as they balanced on the stone pillars and reached out toward Azula, their claws set in a frozen attack.
The roof was a strange collection of stalagmites carved into arrows. They looked natural, and yet unnatural at the same time. The beautiful statues of nuns scowled at her as they held giant bows, bows whose strings were as tall as Azula. She noticed that they were set with arrows.
Azula put out one flame and set her hand to her chin in study. This was definitely Air Nomad art. It had the arrows, the soft lines, and the proper colors. At the same time it was far different from the serene architecture of the surface temple where her troubled mind had found peace. It was sinister, foreboding, and yet desperate. She lit another wad of rags and cast it into the pit below.
Then she saw them.
Four skeletons set in the lotus position, tucked into the corner of the cave. Their clothes had been burned away.
Azula cocked her head, considering them. She clapped audibly, and then addressed the lifeless bodies: "Impressive. Now, since you've obviously got nothing to say, I will have to think like you. If I were an Air Nomad, trying to protect my secrets from the Fire Nation, how would I rig these traps?"
Of course the skeletons were silent, but she didn't need their advice. Azula was as much of a genius as she was a nutcase; a thought soon came to her.
She took up a bending stance. Her blue stream of fire snaked onto the threshold of the hall, right where the cobblestone floor gave way to the spires. The response was immediate; the whirr of arrows deafening. Azula flattened against the back of the statue. When the hall fell silent again, Azula raised her head. Several arrows were teetering on the pillars of the floor, some were stuck fast into the stone bison and nuns. Not all of the nuns had loosed their arrows, and most of the ones that had flown were normal size. It meant that they came from somewhere other than the statues. She squinted, but the dark walls behind the bright limestone nuns remained hidden; Azula could only guess that there were mechanisms designed for launching an arrow shower hidden in the walls.
And suddenly she was filled with respect for these people. They were supposed to be peaceful, weak, and according to her father "unworthy" of existence, but they had constructed a death trap far more entertaining than anything Azula used to train on, and the Bison Lord could already tell it would put her skills to the test. She felt a rush of adrenalin and impatience, and she set to navigating the hall, one precarious step at a time.
Her first attempt at footing ended in disaster. The pillar sank quickly beneath her and she used her bending and a climbing axe to secure her grip on another. When she reached the top of it, she noted it had a pale blue arrow carved into the top. She couldn't remember if the one that failed her was painted, but she used a very small flame to distinguish one pillar from another and chose only those with pale arrows. The technique seemed to work for her.
She avoided the columns with the smaller growling bison. Azula noticed that they had a small dead space between themselves and the apex of the columns upon which they rested. It looked as though they were designed to spin about them and deliver a mechanical blow she'd rather not experience.
When she was halfway through the chamber she hung from one of the pillars and then launched a round of fire into the hallway. Another storm of arrows played above, while Azula hung safely below the reach of the trap. When the storm cleared, she pulled herself up.
Keeping to the arrow tipped spires, she crossed the pit to another chamber, one that beckoned her with a distant dripping of water.
Pei Chen had been right. There was something very different abou this place. Not that Azula was scared. Nothing scared her. Well nothing except for Kuei and things that didn't make sense, which he didn't. But that was off the subject.
What was even more off the subject was the ancient library laying casually beside by a still and ancient underground river. Books and jewels of all kinds dotted the towering shelves. Azula walked toward the shelves, the blue flame in her hands, but stopped when her foot crunched on something suspect. She looked down; true to the spirit's story, there was a skeleton grasping at a giant book. Azula hurriedly picked the book up and smiled at the illustration of the sky bison on the front. She meant to leave the second her mission was accomplished, but as she secured the article to her back, Azula couldn't help but notice her Nations' craftsmanship, the ancient spear that held Pei Chen's skeleton fast to the floor.
Azula was here for the book. She knew that. Pei Chen had pleaded caution; also no secret. Get the book and get out; pretty much the mission.
But when she looked at the mortal form of the spirit she'd conversed with, she was seized with something. It was incredibly unfamiliar and painful, like it was wrenching her on the inside and crushing her from the outside, and it literally froze her feet to the floor.
And while she stood there frozen, malevolence began to churn in the waters behind her, energy in the air about her. Memory and time manifested itself in the form of a scene from unknown history: a residual haunting. Suddenly the skeleton before her was no longer a skeleton, but a flesh and blood woman grabbing at the spear in her chest and gasping for air. She didn't seem to see Azula.
In addition the chamber was no longer dark and flickering with Azula's blue flame, but orange and fully lit. It was no longer silent and peaceful with the steady drip of water, but alive with the sounds of battle and death.
She turned around and saw dozens of soldiers, nuns, and monks locked in battle. Several ran right through her. One took a spear and jammed it through Azula's head into a monk who collapsed onto the stone floor behind her. None of them saw Azula. She was a fixture in the room; she might as well have been a chair or table, an inanimate object that could have no part or opinion in the destruction. Quaking, she slowly backed away from the library as the spirits performed before her terrified eyes. Azula was grateful that she hadn't yet been noticed and hoping it would last.
But it didn't.
A Fire Nation soldier, after neatly destroying a monk, stopped where he was and looked straight at the Princess.
She felt her heart stop because she recognized him almost instantly. It was amazing how skilled the royal painter had been.
"So, princess, you've come to help us finish them off. Make sure you get the bison."
Azula screamed and forgot the fact that she was running into a chamber complete with bottomless pit and booby traps galore. She triggered several arrows, but she ran so fast that it mattered little. The arrow stalagmites began to fall from the roof above, missing her by mere inches. She forgot to avoid the pillars with the small bison clinging to them; their claws tore her shirt and left welts on her back. But worse than the physical pain was the sense that she was being judged. By the spirits, by the dead, by the Universe, by all that had lived and would live. There was also a sense sense that her judgment was just; it was deserved, and that it had been far too slow in coming.
By some miracle she made it through the hall alive and past the stone Bison, but on the way out her foot touched a hydraulic trigger. The descending stairs fell away slightly as she ran down them, revealing an ancient metal track, and the stones before the bison sentinel crumbled. This complete, there was nothing propping the bison up, and physics assisted him in a rapid and merciless descent on his prey. The groaning of stone on metal was deafening and horrid.
She was almost at the point where the stairs started climbing again when she felt something knock her from behind. The impact tore her breath and strength and filled her with such crippling pain, Azula couldn't tell whether she had or hadn't been crushed by the barreling stone sentinel. She looked up, and the sunlight at the end of the tunnel wavered. .
Her hand procured a futile reach for the rope she'd secured so that Dominatia could pull her up. It was too far away, and she was too weak to get to it. Her last thought as she drifted off was that she was dying, it was deserved, and perhaps everyone would be better off this way.
# # # #
Kuei had never seen the Western Air Temple. He'd heard stories, but the striking thing about it was the way the Earth and Sky blended together in perfect harmony. The clouds danced about, but the fluid stone of the statues and the shelf upon which it was built was steady, timeless, and imposing. Kuei could see a few bison flying around in the distance. He couldn't tell if Dominatia was among them. As they got closer however, Kuei was filled with the sense that something was wrong. The bison were bellowing almost constantly; some were growling at each other, and their flight patterns were sharp and spastic, not soft and casual like Appa's. They seemed irritated, distressed.
Bosco growled beside him, and Kuei reached down to absently pet his companion.
Given the nature of the King's love interest, Kuei had had several of his most trusted soldiers accompany him. General Fong was one of them. He stepped beside Kuei, placing his hands on the rail of the war balloon. A no nonsense military man, General Fong plainly stated what Bosco and Kuei already feared. "Something is wrong, my King."
Kuei nodded. "Try to steer clear of the Bison as you bring us in, General Fong. They seem very upset."
"Agreed," General Fong declared, and he set the descent in motion. They were a few feet away from linking up with the ledge when Dominatia came barreling toward the war balloon, mewling frantically at the men. Her eyes fixed on Kuei, and before the King could offer her another belly rub she had picked him up by the scruff of his neck.
General Fong drew his sword.
"It's all right!" Kuei called, though bison slobber was beginning to creep down the back of his robes. "She's a friend, and I think she wants to show me something!"
Fong shrugged, but motioned his men to follow the bison and her royal chew toy. Dominatia glided quickly over the earth, then deposited Kuei at the mouth of a giant tunnel. Kuei looked down the hole inquisitively. Bosco came running up and pawed at the mouth of it, his nostrils full of Azula's scent.
Dominatia began to warble desperately at the King.
Kuei looked at her, adjusting his glasses. "What's that Dominatia? Azula's trapped in a well and you can't get to her?"
Dominatia frowned, obviously irritated at having to repeat herself.
"Oh a hole!" Kuei corrected. "You'll have to forgive me Dominatia, my bison is a little bit rusty."
General Fong arrived alongside the King, his command ready to serve. "Shall we go after her, my King?"
Kuei pursed his lips, and looked down at Bosco, who was mewling with concern and pawing at the rocks. Though he loved her, he couldn't deny the fact that Azula was very dangerous, and surly, and well, just kind of a pain in general. She was barely in touch with reality when on her medication and well cared for; he didn't want to imagine what she was like now, after being in a hole for spirits only knows how long deprived of food and water and other such necessities.
"Only a few of us should go," Kuei decided at last. He looked at General Fong. "Azula's very mistrustful. I know she won't hurt me, but I think she might not be so gracious to someone she doesn't know. General Fong, you may come to assist me, but let me approach her first."
# # # #
It didn't' take long for Kuei and his General to find the fallen princess.
She was lying at the foot of a giant smashed statue, and at first glance Kuei feared she might be dead. But when he put his hand on her face and tried to shake her awake, her sharp eyes focused on him. A second later, she slapped him hard on the cheek, jostling his glasses and dissolving his worst fears. He almost cried with relief.
A second later, she appeared to be sleeping again.
"The temper's definitely not overrated," General Fong observed dourly. He started pushing aside the stones trapping Azula, and Kuei assisted him. Kuei had only recently started working out. The King had always been naturally slender, and before he had a love interest it seemed silly to spend much time on his physique, but he decided after becoming interested in Azula that he'd better hit the gym a little. It had paid off with better muscles and increased strength. He pushed the rocks aside with Bosco and Fong's help and surprisingly little struggle or fanfare.
At long last the Bison Lord was freed. Kuei pulled her close to him, his eyes brimming with tears. She was very limp, as though she'd been Chi Blocked. In truth she was precariously going in and out of consciousness. After several minutes her eyelids fluttered open and her eyes focused on him with a remarkable, spooky clarity. She sat bolt upright and pointed a warning finger at him. "You're an awful strange hallucination," she snarked, swaying just a little. "You look like that King. That King who likes…. crazy women," Her eyes rolled back into her head and she swooned again.
Kuei caught her.