Avatar: The Last Cycle
Declining Legacy
Someone groaned, and a red hot spark of pain shot through his head. His mouth felt like sandpaper. His throat felt like he was trying to choke down barbed wire. His head felt like a beaten drum. He was getting tired of thinking of analogies. Oh man, did I get drunk again? Calm thought, thinking of his last remarkable hangover. Then he heard a voice from a few feet away, and carefully pried one eye open. Calm was lying on the floor, and in the next room, through an open door, he could see two young men. Both were wearing White Bands on their arms.
Memories suddenly shot through his head at the speed of light, and his eyes opened wide, fear suddenly throwing every other more minor emotion out. They caught me. He remembered. Oh man. This is not gonna end good. The two men in the other room were sitting at a small folding table, playing cards. One was a scrawny, weasel faced man with a dirty gray suit. He looked like the kind of guy who'd try to knock over a convenience store and make such a huge mess of it he'd end up in a shootout, a high speed chase, maybe a hostage situation or two, and then end up pleading temporary insanity after it. Not-so-temporary stupidity is more likely. Calm thought. The other man was a little odd looking, with slightly darker skin and charcoal gray hair pulled back in some kind of wolf's tail. He looked odd, kind of foreign, though of course here in Ozai city you saw all kinds of people. He was wearing a leather jacket, and there was a short bone weapon of some sort sitting on the table next to him. It looked like some kind of cross between an axe and a short chopping sword. He talked back to the other guard, chatting amiably, but there was a look in his eyes, a look of faint but certain distaste. He probably just cant stand the guy. Calm thought.
Fortunately for him, neither of them seemed to be paying much attention to their captive, and the door between them was only partly closed, so they probably couldn't see his face. Taking care not to move his body much, Calm scanned the room, desperate for some avenue of escape. The room was dark, small, and windowless. A small huddle of machinery lay in the opposite corner, near the door. Calm recognized the big rusty cylinder as a hot water heater. That'd be nice, if I were a Waterbender. He thought. He was lying on the cold concrete floor in a corner, and the rest of the room was taken up mostly by stacks of wooden boxes. There were no other doors out. All in all, not a reassuring situation. The foreign-looking one was pretty built, but the scrawny one didn't look so tough. I'm pretty fast. I can probably get he jump on them, take em down quick like, and get right out of here. Calm told himself. Unless of course they're benders… or they got guns… or more guys in the other room…ok, so maybe I got like, a twenty percent chance of getting past them. Faced with the hopelessness of the situation, he sighed. The foreign looking one instantly turned at the sound.
Oh crap, why'd I do that?
"He's awake." The guard said. "Go and tell Huan." His voice was deep, but soft. The scrawny guard seemed used to taking orders. He left through a door somewhere on the left side of the room. "You can get up now." The man told him. Now that he was facing him, Calm could see the guard was only a bit older than him, eighteen at the most. Groaning with the effort, Calm struggled into a sitting position, his whole body sore. His hat was gone he noticed sadly. He'd paid a lot of money for that hat. Well actually, he had won it in a bet. But it was valuable hat. Somebody had paid a lot of money for it.
"Word of advice." The foreigner said. "Huan wants something from you. Just give it to him. You'll give it up eventually anyway. You might as well save yourself some trouble." The man sounded more sad than threatening.
"Yeah, well, I never was one for taking the easy way." Calm snapped, immediately regretting it. This was no time to be shooting off his mouth. He gingerly pressed his fingers against his side where the boulder had hit him. He gritted his teeth at the pain. Lifting the suit and (ruined) white shirt out of the way, he could see a purple and yellowing mottling of bruise more than a foot wide.
"Well, cant say I didn't warn you." The wolf tailed man said. He stood up as the door in the other room opened again. Calm heard a muffled voice coming from beyond it. It was quiet, but when it spoke the rest of the world quieted too, so that it seemed to stand out like a drop of blood in a bank of snow.
"Balku, bring him in."
"Sure boss." The foreigner, who was apparently called Balku, grabbed his weird axe-sword thing and gestured for Calm to come. Seeing no alternative, he followed, his bones aching as he climbed to his feet. Through the small room, dominated by the card table, and into a wide open space. It was warehouse, with all of the boxes shoved up against the walls to leave an open area. Three massive windows in the high up walls allowed in the gray light of the coming dawn. There was a large chair opposite the main entrance, as if this were some kind of audience chamber. A young man was sitting there, but Calm was more interested in scanning the room for any method of escape. A semi circle of White Bands were blocking him off from the rest of the room, and leaning against the wall next to the door was a single man in a jet black suit and expensive fedora hat. It had a line of white felt around it's rim, matching his white armband and pristine gloves. Under the shade of his hat's brim the man's face was all in shadow, except for his wide grin. Hanging at the man's side was something completely innocuous, and therefore extremely ominous in the situation- a canteen.
"Don't bother trying to escape." The soft yet striking voice spoke again, from the large chair at the center of the circle. "Tsun would certainly enjoy it, but you, I guarantee, would not." Calm faced the man in the chair. A pair of burning torches on either side of him lit his face clearly.
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The building was old and carefully designed, architecturally shaped to give the impression of importance and wisdom. A pair of lionturtle statues flanked the doors, worn by age and rain, and darkened by the shade of the tall forty story building that dwarfed the library on the right side. Above the main entrance was a statue of an owl, a mythical creature that was one half of the common owlbear. There was a steady stream of pedestrians bustling through the buildings wide open plaza, but very few actually entered or emerged from the building. Like the bending academies, the temples, and the ancient traditions of the continent once known as the Earth Kingdom, the library was largely neglected today, it's repository of knowledge unneeded in these modern times.
Lan crouched on the roof of a low building across the street, keeping low so that he would be unseen by all but the most perceptive observer. He considered what he was wearing- plain tan trousers, baggy and oversized as they were a hand down from an older orphan, and a black over shirt that hung down almost to his knees and was belted over. Both were noticeably dirty and scuffed, but weren't kids his age always like that? There was no immediately noticeable way to tell he was in fact homeless and destitute. They would probably not have him thrown out.
Lan dropped down into the alley behind the small building and emerged out into the street, keeping a careful eye out for any White Bands. He quickly passed over the plaza, smoothed down his unruly brown hair, and slipped into the library. The woman sitting at he front desk didn't even glance his way.
Inside the labyrinth of shelves and books, he eventually located a directory. The nonfiction section was on the third floor. When he reached it, he seemed to be the only one aside from a young woman restocking the local history section. He found his way to the world history section and skimmed through the titles, until he found what he was looking for.
The Avatar: Tales and History of the World's Greatest Benders. He snatched it off the shelf and plopped down onto a comfortable chair near the middle of the room. The cover illustration showed a tall, bald man with blue arrows tattooed onto his arms and head. His eyes were glowing, and he was surrounded by circles of floating stones, balls of fire, and a stream of water. Subtle brushstrokes implied that the air was whipping around him as well. He opened the book, skimmed the table of contents, and began to read.
He had planned to read only a brief explanation of the term "Avatar," but half an hour later he was engrossed, all his attention focused on the book. He was amazed at the stirring tales of near ridiculous uses of power- Waterbending to stop a five mile wide grassfire, Earthbending to raise a sunken city, Airbending to halt the advance of a deadly storm. Massive battles as well, an Avatar using lightning to strike down a rebel warlord in the midst of an army of twenty thousand. The non aggressive use of Bending to avoid a massive battle that nevertheless resulted in the death of great tyrant Chin the Conqueror.
Most of all, he found himself impressed by the exploits of a young boy, a year younger than himself, who mastered the elements in a single year and ended a hundred years of war. The author of the book had obviously been impressed as well. The section devoted to Avatar Aang were much longer than any of the others. Lan continued reading, devouring the text as a starved man would food, until he came to the end of Aang's story and yawned, realizing he had read for more than an hour. He stared, bleary eyed, at the illustration of Aang, standing beside his friend the Firelord, a cheerful, yet knowing smile on his face, and a shiver ran up his spine.
There's just no way. He thought. There's no way I can be…one of them. I don't even know how to Bend! And yet, the memory of the explosion came to him, the fire roaring from his hands, the air blasting out from his open palms, and the earth below rising up in response to his stomp. He, Lan, thirteen year old orphan boy, had destroyed a three story building in a matter of seconds. Two White Band thugs, professional fighters, killers, had run from him in terror. And afterwards, thousands upon thousands of images had run through his head, blurred together, rushing by so fast that he was still trying to pick them apart days later. Faces of people he had never before seen, eyes glowing white, set in a long string, with him at the end, all watching him expectantly.
What do they want from me? What is an Avatar supposed to do?
Whatever was needed, according to the examples in the book. But the book also said that an Avatar wasn't trained until they reached sixteen. Not only that, the four Bending arts were supposed to come naturally to them, a product of the hundreds of times they had mastered them over the years. Whereas he had never shown any predilection for a single style of Bending. As far as he knew, neither of his parents had been Benders…although he knew very little about them. Besides, surely if he was the Avatar, this awesome collection of spiritual power, someone should know about it. Shouldn't there be somebody there to teach him? To tell him what he was supposed to do?
Besides, if the Avatar is such an important part of the "Balance of the world," why haven't I heard of the last Avatar? In fact, I've never even heard of someone who could Bend more than one element before… Glancing at the book, he turned it back to the cover page and checked the publishing date. He was surprised to see the book had been written only ten years ago- which meant the previous "incarnation" of the Avatar should be recorded. Let's see what happened to them…
He started with the Avatar directly after Aang, who had died peacefully at the age of one hundred and eight (technically, two hundred and eight, since he had been frozen in an iceberg for a hundred years, a portion of the story Lan was sure must have been simply myth). She was a girl of the Water Tribe renowned for saving a stretch of coastal city from a massive tsunami as well as preventing a war of imperial expansion by the then powerful Northern Water Tribe. After that, though, it things seemed to be going down hill. The next Avatar, a remarkably powerful Earthbender, had also achieved great deeds, but he was quoted on his deathbed saying his greatest regret had been failing to prevent the shattering of the ancient Earth Kingdom into dozens of smaller city states. The next Avatar had not lived long enough to be fully trained- she was assassinated by her own people, who were waging a war of conquest with the eastern most city states.
The next Avatar had witnessed the break up of the Fire Nation and the decline of the great Water Tribes. The Avatar after that had been more of a guru than a Bender, and had written a long pessimistic treatise on the decline of the Bending Arts and the loss of ancient knowledge and custom. On and on, as the world grew more contemporary and the old traditions became more and more ignored, the once all important Benders became rare, and then nearly unseen. As Bending grew rarer, people turned to technology to support them, and as technology increased, the Bending arts became again more rare. The last Avatar had died fourteen years ago in Ba Sing, shot to death by a mafia organization she had been trying to put down. It seemed she had never completed her training. In fact, no Avatar had been capable of reaching the all powerful "Avatar State," the link to one's own past lives, in over a hundred years. The author of the book wrote that many of the Avatar's exploits and abilities were no considered nothing more than primitive mythology, and though the author did not share this outlook, there was no proof to show for the truth.
Suddenly, Lan shivered in the library couch, the book lying forgotten at his side. If he was right, if the voice inside his head was something more than common madness, than he was the heir to a once grand, but declining lineage. He felt as if the whole world had suddenly been dropped on his shoulders. How am I supposed to fix the world? How am I even supposed to learn to Bend?
The library was silent, and no answers came.
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The torches lit the visage of a powerfully built young man. He was perhaps nineteen years old, but his eyes had a depth to them that implied wisdom beyond his years. But while those hard gray eyes shone of wisdom, they gave no hint of mercy. Calm found himself itching to look for an escape path. The man stood up to speak to him. He was tall, slender, but strong, his body obviously honed and perfected by years of arduous training for the martial arts. He wore a simple black overcoat with a golden thread belt, and long black hair that fell past his neck from a topknot at the back of his head.
When he spoke, it was with a surprisingly soft tone that sounded like silk over steel, the kind of voice that had no need to threaten or intimidate, because the consequences of refusing his orders were obvious and needed no explanation. "My name is Huan. The White Band's are my brothers. Calm Lee Chow, I want you to join us."
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This chapter was a bit darker than the tone I had planned for this story, but I felt it was important to clarify the state of the world and how the society of the Avatar world has declined. Also, the previous four chapters were quick little prologues of sorts, to introduce the characters. This is more like the length most chapters will adhere too.
Thanks for reading, I appreciate any comments/criticisms. See you at the next chapter.
