When Korra bore down on Koh, she was blind with rage and sorrow. Asami, now voiceless and blind, reached out to her desperately. To any observer it would be obvious that she was pleading with the Avatar, that even though she was now senseless, she could still feel the rage and destructive power radiating around her. But she could not speak, so Korra could not listen. There was nothing she could do or say to calm Korra down. She had become a hurricane: unstoppable, violent and insatiable.
I will destroy him, Korra swore, more to herself than Asami. She flew over the trembling figure of her blind and helpless friend, straight toward Koh, who curled up like a snake ready to strike. He was still wearing Asami's terrified face, but Korra could see the pride and satisfaction in his stance. He was not scared of her.
He should be, Korra snarled to herself, and called forth a whip of air that struck the giant insect in the armored side. He flinched at the impact, but barely, so she twisted her body in the air and summoned up the largest fire she could muster. Flames burst from her hands and feet, swirling around the giant spirit, igniting any dried and dying leaf or branch it could. When Korra landed, panting, sweating with the heat of rage, half the clearing was on fire. Koh, however, was not. He switched back to his usual visage, and eyed Korra smugly.
"That's a wonderful face you're making," he said. "I think I'll take it."
He thrust his whole body forward, and Korra stepped aside, swinging her arms. As he sped past her, she swept a wave of air at him, accelerating him to the edge of the clearing, where the conflagration burned hottest. He slid to a stop in the dirt, rolling back onto his feet, untouched by the flames. Korra backed up to the pond, pulling a large snake of black water from its murky depths. She bent it into a thick spear of ice and hurled it at Koh, who managed to twist aside like some massive black worm, too quick and too sly for Korra's liking. She stood at the edge of the water, watching him recover, changing her stance and preparing to bend up a few pieces of the hard earth, in case he should rush at her.
He paused for a second, drinking in the sight of her, obviously pleased. "I do not have very many angry faces in my collection, but the ones I have are nothing compared to the exquisiteness of your rage."
She replied by throwing a boulder at him, which he sidestepped with his myriad tiny legs. He coiled and struck out at her, stronger than ever. She barely had time to dodge him, and had no time at all to throw in a counter-attack. With each assault on his person, Koh seemed to enjoy this fight more and more. With an infuriating jolt Korra realized that, like with Wan Shi Tong, all she did was make him stronger. She was feeding him motivation to take her face, feeding him everything he needed.
When he lunged at her again, she stepped aside, but did not retaliate. The rage that had overtaken her moments earlier weakened, and some semblance of common sense shone like a light amidst that anger. Her head was beginning to clear, and she recalled what the Mother of Faces had told her, and what Iroh had told her. Destroying Koh would not bring back Asami's face, nor would it stem the plague. It would only provide her with momentary, skin-deep satisfaction that would not cure the world of the blight or cure Asami's facelessness.
She sidestepped a swing of Koh's massive tail, and tried to imagine his pain, his thoughtless descent into the darkness of the blight. She imagined living with that black, twisted disease inside her all her life, and her heart twisted at the thought.
She sighed, calming her angry spirit, took a deep breath and blew a burst of fire at Koh, who recoiled. His surprise at the cold, controlled flames sent him drawing back, suspicious that Korra may try something out of the ordinary. He slithered around the fire, watching Korra, waiting for her next move.
Instead of throwing all her strength into a violent assault, she stepped back, toward the pond, never taking her eyes off the spirit. Twisting her wrists, quickly, deliberately, she drew two massive spheres of water from the pond, black with dirt and plague. She rotated her hands, shaking the motes of filth from the water, twisting the spheres around and around until she had two clear globes behind her.
Koh, evidently secure that he could handle whatever she threw at him, came toward her, eyes open wide, smiling. He slithered toward her, his eyes locked with hers, and Korra knew that now was the time he was going to make a grab for her face. Her face was frozen to his trajectory, and she was unable to move it aside. He had her face trapped, and he was making his move. She took a breath, desperately hoping her plan would work.
When Koh was close enough to her, throwing his weight forward so swiftly he could not turn back, Korra swung her arms up. The two globes of water formed a thick sheet in front of her, smooth and shining. Her form was perfect—from her shoulders to the tips of each of her fingers came the right energy, in the right amounts, to construct a perfectly smooth, perfectly reflective wall of ice. It formed so fast and so solidly, Koh could didn't even have time to turn his face away from its hard surface.
When Koh smashed into it, mouth open wide, it was his own face he swallowed. He stuck to his reflection in what almost seemed to be a forceful kiss. He writhed and squealed, voice muffled by the ice, trying to pull away from his own voracity. As he flailed and twisted, Korra backed up, trying not to look through the ice at the rapid deformation of what was once Koh's face. When he finally managed to pull away from the ice, all that seemed to be left of him was two tails of one massive millipede, attached at the middle. When he curled up in agony, thrashing in the dirt soundlessly, Korra could not tell which part of him had been his front end and which had been his back.
At this point it didn't matter. Koh was reduced to a faceless insect, devoid of voice and sight. When Korra approached him, all he did was curl up and tremble. She bent toward him, hand outstretched, and touched him on the armored hide. She knelt next to him and closed her eyes. Perhaps, somewhere inside the spirit, she would be able to find Asami's face and bring it back to her. Perhaps, if she was lucky, she could find the source of Koh's pain and do a favor for his kind, earnest mother.
She breathed in the stench of his resentment, and darkness overcame her. When she opened her eyes, she was alone in a vast black wilderness. Here and there floated small, bright objects, swaying slightly, as if in a light breeze. But there was no breeze. There wasn't a sound, there was nothing.
Korra stepped forward, cautiously, to the first round object, and looked it over. It seemed to be the glowing, disembodied face of a monkey, twisted with agony. She moved on, looking over face after face after face—hundreds of them, thousands of them. All of these lives, and the lives close to them, had been destroyed by Koh's insatiable hunger. The floating victims of his twisted nature spanned all races, all walks of life, all species, they ran the length of several millennia. Korra could not possibly look at them all. She hung her head, knowing it was impossible to find the one she was looking for. If she dared to try to pick out Asami's face from the rest, she would be searching here for years. She sighed, heart twisting inside her, and turned around. Before her, instead of the usual gamut of faces, there hung only two. They were identical copies of Koh's true face, giant, expressionless, staring one another down. They made no noise, they did not blink. They only gazed at one another, oblivious to everything around them, locked in their own world. Korra did not know what else to do but approach them.
She stepped between them, and could almost feel the power in their stares burn her skin. She reached out her hand and placed it on the tip of one's nose, then reached out her other and did the same to the opposite face. She didn't, and couldn't, know for sure exactly what she was doing, but she did know that if the Avatar was anything at all, she was a conduit. It was simply through instinct that she let herself be the bridge between the two identical faces.
Something cool, sharp, like a splash of cold water, rushed through her, and she opened her eyes. The faces were gone, all of them, and she was standing in the clearing, still smoldering from the fight with Koh. She looked down at her feet, and saw his massive black body start to crumble. It deteriorated rapidly, shedding its armor, legs turning into dust. She half expected a tiny bug to crawl from his insides, reborn like Wan Shi Tong, but this time there was no infant spirit that emerged from this corpse.
For all Korra knew, she had killed Koh.
She clenched her fists, filled suddenly with regret. She had not meant to. She had wanted to help him, she had wanted to assist his mother, who had been so wise and kind. But she had failed, as she had failed so many times before. She took a deep breath and turned away from the crumbling body. She instead made her way toward Asami, who was lying facedown in the dirt. Korra bent to her, not sure what to expect. When she turned Asami over by the shoulder, she breathed a sigh of relief.
Her beautiful features had been returned to her, in what seemed like full health. Korra couldn't help running her hand across Asami's cheek, brushing a strand of hair away from her pale skin. Asami's eyes fluttered open and she looked up in surprise.
"I can see you," Asami said, still dazed. She blinked twice, then reached up to touch her own eyes. "I can see you so well."
Korra grinned. She was about to open her mouth to say something clever, but suddenly Asami's lips were in the way. Asami pressed her newly recovered face up to Korra's own, and for a moment, they just sat still, glued to one another's features. Korra lost herself in Asami's embrace, joy burning up from her stomach. She had done it—she had given Asami back her features, those intelligent, kind features that she loved so much. She dreaded to think how if she had failed, Korra would never see Asami's grin, or her twinkling, clever eyes ever again. She did not want to think about having to live without hearing her laugh heartily and speak with fluency and grace. Just the fear of losing Asami again made her clutch her tightly, afraid to let go.
They sat in silence, attached at the lips, until Wan Shi Tong, who had been suspiciously absent as soon as the danger showed up, emerged from his hiding place.
"Are you two going to go at it all day?" he chirped angrily. "You're going to make me burp up a pellet."