"Well," Asami said, heaving a sigh. "We're now officially out of food."

"We can find some. There are edible plants here in the spirit wilds. If we can recognize them..." Korra did not get nearly enough to eat that night, and she was sure Asami hadn't either. Her stomach turned over itself angrily, and to be honest, she wasn't sure if her reassuring statement was true or not. There had been edible plants in the spirit lands thousands of years ago, but the two worlds had been separate for so long that Korra was uncertain if humans could still handle the fruits from spiritual trees.

"The botany book I took from the library lists some edible plants, but mostly it talks about the diseases they get," Asami said. "We can use it to tell if a plant is safe to eat." Asami had been sifting through that book for the past few days, barely looking up from it, failing to watch where she was going. Korra had to save her from a stumble more than once.

"Does it say anything about the blight?" Korra asked.

"It has information about blights in general, but none on this one in particular. I'm only halfway in—maybe it says something important later on. Besides, we don't have an immediate visual reference to the blight we're talking about here."

"Lucky us."

They had set up camp at the edge of a stream, trickling blue and clear, with no sign of the blight anywhere nearby. Korra was glad that Asami had agreed to avoid the disease for now, until she could find something about it in their book, but they both knew that sooner or later, they would have to return to the streak of blight, with its awful smell and aura of despair. Korra did not look forward to that moment.

All she could think about was that vast brown wasteland, spreading ever outward. Deep down in her heart, she knew that it was her fault that the plants were shriveling and wasting away, her fault that the spirit world was dying, her fault that even the great Wan Shi Tong had succumbed to the blight and lost his mind. As the Avatar, it was her duty to protect the spirits as well as her own world and maintain harmony, and she had utterly failed to do so.

Speaking of spirits, there had been no sign of Wan Shi Tong these past few days. Korra suspected they had evaded him completely, but a part of her wondered whether or not the owl actually had the capacity to leave his library. Everyone, including Korra, had heard stories about the knowledge spirit, but all of them took place inside his library. There seemed to be no record of him ever leaving it, which made Korra doubt that he even could. Perhaps she was being optimistic.

Either way, Wan Shi Tong took a back seat to the problems she had now. There was another spirit occupying her thoughts, one that stalked her in a more insidious manner than the great owl ever could. It had already invaded her mind, poured through her soul like filthy water. Whenever she closed her eyes, she could almost see her veins and arteries darken with blight, shriveling and drying up under the weight of the disease. And in her core, in the very spring of this unstoppable plauge, she saw that face, that multitude of faces, changing shape and color and essence as the the clouds did, swirling and insubstantial.

Every time they stopped to take a break, Asami would sit down with her book on botany, searching for information on the blight, and Korra would try to track down that face. She would try to pin it down with her inner gaze, following the streaks and contours of its protean features, but if she lost concentration for a fraction of a moment, the face would change. Sometimes it wouldn't even be human. Sometimes it would be terrifying, sometimes it would be almost—just almost—recognizable, sometimes it would disappear altogether.

Whenever Korra crossed her legs and closed her eyes, Asami would be nearby, waiting, watching, occasionally glancing up from her book to make sure Korra was all right. If the clouds darkened too much, Asami would interrupt her session, help her to her feet, and try to brighten the sky again. About a dozen times a day, Korra wondered what she would do if Asami were not there to help her.

That night, as they set up camp, Korra wandered knee deep into the river to see if she could scout out some fish to eat. She could hear both their stomachs rumbling continuously, so she told Asami to wait on shore while she figured something out. They had not encountered any edible plants that the book had listed so far, but Korra was fairly sure there was a bed of freshwater weeds here that could be dried and eaten. You had to be careful when hunting for food in the spirit world—if the food you discovered was not poisonous, it could be sentient, which was much worse. If one had the misfortune of eating a conscious entity, like a fish or fruit spirit, then one ran the risk of being possessed and deformed for eternity. It turned out that spirits did not appreciate being consumed alive. Not that Korra could blame them.

She bent down into the water, thrusting her hands into the muddy riverbed. It felt nice, distracting even, to be half-submerged in the icy river. It might have been a heritage thing—to some degree, all water tribespeople found the cold water comforting. Maybe it reminded them of home. Korra had heard a rumor (originating in the fire nation, of course), that the wombs of water tribe women are not filled with amniotic fluid, but icy saltwater, and that all babies are born frozen in brine. That's why people from the water tribes were so tough, especially the women. Korra smiled at the thought. She could believe that she and her father had been born in icy brine, but never her mother. Her warm, kind mother…

Korra took a deep breath and dove, submerging herself in the freezing water. She let herself sink to the bottom, opening her eyes and relaxing. She thought about which members of her tribe were born of ice, and which were born of warmth—Unalaq and his children were definitely born frozen, Katara, definitely not. Councilman Sokka was a mystery. She sat down on the riverbed, letting the flow of chilly water wash over her. Varrick was not likely to have come out frozen; he was too fiery. Korra, deep in her thoughts, was so relaxed she could almost breathe in the river water, swaying in its current. Tarrlok was most definitely frozen; Noatak, not so. Now that she was down here, she realized that this was a peaceful place to think—quiet, isolated, and in the perfect medium. Water was the element of transition, of change, of healing, a conduit of spirituality…

Kuruk. What had Kuruk been born of? Cold or warmth, or neither?

Korra opened her eyes and saw him sitting opposite her, cross-legged at the bottom of the river. His eyes glowed with the lives of a thousand Avatars before him, and when he opened his mouth, Korra heard him loud and clear—better than she would've in the air.

"He will steal the face of the one you love," Kuruk said.

"I know," Korra replied. A cool, comforting feeling surged through her, even though she knew what was coming next—she attributed it to the fact that she was submerged in her most familiar element. She could almost feel the river water rushing through her veins, banishing the stain of blight that visions of the dark spirit had planted there.

"You must show no emotion, no expression, when you confront him. Or else he will take your face as well."

Korra nodded. "What is his name?" she asked.

"Koh."

Korra closed her eyes. She swore she'd heard the name before. She tried to sort through her memories, conscious and otherwise, to find him. She knew that if Kuruk was warning her about him, they must've had some sort of dispute. She wondered what other past lives had encountered the spirit, and if they had any information to give her. It was a pity she couldn't summon the souls of previous Avatars. Kuruk apparently had come to her of his own volition, so she might as well wrestle some advice out of him while he was here.

But when Korra opened her eyes, Kuruk was gone. Only the creeping, slender shadow of Koh remained, tickling the riverbed with his thousand legs. She could hear the swish of his body, the click of his tiny feet, even in the depths of the stream. Suddenly she wanted out of the water, so she swam to the surface, breaking it with a spray of icy drops.

She spied Asami, worried, standing at the riverbank. "You were down there forever," she said. "I was worried about you."

"Waterbender, Asami," Korra said, putting on her best mask of nonchalance. "I found some seaweed. I know how you like that."

"Ugh. I'd rather starve."

It turned out that Asami wouldn't have rather starved. She ate it with as much grace as she could muster, and Korra waterbent the moisture from the remaining weeds, to keep as a snack for the next day. Korra thought they were brilliant rations, but Asami preferred to avoid them and keep looking for what she insisted was "real food."

Sometime in the morning, when they had left the riverside, some of the local flora got it into their wooden brains to turn hostile. Korra was busy listening to Asami grumble, snacking on a strip of dried weeds when a branch flew from the sylvan periphery and swung itself straight for Asami's head. Korra dropped her snack and quickly tackled her friend, pushing both of them to the ground as the rogue branch twisted and creaked to a halt above them.

"That was close," Korra whispered, slowly and cautiously pulling herself to her feet.

"What's the big idea?" For a moment Korra thought Asami was chastising her for clumsily saving her life, but Asami was up and at the tree, red-faced, furious. "Why do you think it's okay to just smack people out of the blue?"

The tree shivered, creaking its answer. "Get out. It is your fault."

"My fault? What do you mean?"

Korra was about to tell her that the tree must mean this whole blight was the Avatar's fault, but the woody spirit continued: "You and your instruments, you and your saws and your fire and your machines. It is your fault that we are dying."

Asami clutched her book of botany to her chest, gritting her teeth and no doubt composing a retort. Korra glanced at the tree and noticed a streak of black crawling up its trunk. She put a hand on Asami's shoulder and drew her away from the spirit. "It's got the blight," she said. "We'd better leave it alone. Until we can really do something about it."

Asami pursed her lips but followed Korra, ignoring the accusations and insults the tree spouted after her. "It looks like I'm not wanted here," Asami whispered.

Welcome to the club, Asami, Korra couldn't help but think. Try being the Avatar in a world that doesn't want or need you anymore. But she said nothing. She only reached out an arm and lay her hand on Asami's shoulder.

"It doesn't matter," Asami said, before Korra had the opportunity to think up some comforting words. "As long as we have this book, we're going to find a way to stop the blight. Until then, it doesn't matter what the spirits think of me. As long as I do what I can to help."

Korra smiled. She wished she possessed a modicum of Asami's wisdom and self-respect. Korra had struggled to come to terms with the way the world thought of her for years—and Asami seemed to do it with about five minutes of critical thinking. Perhaps it was because Asami had not been subject to the decades of conditioning that told her that she was the single most important human being on the planet and therefore responsible for nearly every unfortunate occurrence that befell her species.

Korra mulled over the pros and cons of her station as they moved on. The trees gradually became more gnarled, stunted, darkened and twisted with disease. More and more of them were afflicted with blight as they pressed onward. It occurred to her that unknowingly, they had again stumbled across the edge of a desolate region. They checked the map, just to make sure they hadn't accidentally backtracked to the diseased area they had left a few days before. They hadn't—the blight was spreading fast, taking over miles and miles of land, seemingly faster than Korra and Asami could outrun it.

When they stopped to sleep that night, it was in a clearing carpeted with dry, dead grass and saturated with the repulsive smell that was characteristic of ill flora. Next to the clearing stood a giant tree, long-dead, devoid of the sustenance that the blight could reap from it. It remained untouched by the disease, nestled among so many other affected trees, so it stood as an oasis of sorts. Korra and Asami figured they could rest a little easier under the branches of this massive corpse than they could under the branches of a dying tree still heavy with the stink of blight.

When Korra closed her eyes that night, she heard a familiar, bone-chilling sound. She wondered if Kuruk was visiting her again, with more information, so she followed the sound with her mind. She tried to figure out where in her soul it emanated from, and how she could get to it. But the sound's source, and Kuruk, were nowhere to be found. It appeared, suddenly and distressingly, that the source of the sound was not within her spirit, it was not in her mind…

So that meant—

Korra bolted upright, opening her eyes wide, but the thousands of tiny clicks of his insectile feet continued to echo around her. Asami, curled up beside her, stirred and sat up, asking her what was wrong.

"Asami. I know this is a weird thing to say, but whatever you do, don't make a face."

In her confusion, Asami immediately made a face.

"I mean it. Show no expression. Please."

Korra put on her best mask of indifference and stood up.

"Why?"

"He's here. The spirit who's been stalking me in my dreams."

"Who?"

"Koh."