Discaimer: I don't own crap... Richard how about you? ... 'I also own crap' Says Richard.

The Forum is now active. Feel you need to talk about what you just read in 'Black Sword'? Well bounce on over to the forum and talk about it with your fellow reads, not to mention your two handsome hosts! (Ha, say that five times fast)

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Co-AN: In this chapter me and Richard switched seats. This chapter was brought from concept to you almost completely by Richard himself, I'm just uploading it. This should shed some more light for those of you who felt a little in the dark about what was going on in the last chapter.

p.s. And before I forget a few of you have been asking how long we think the story will be, well lets put it this way; both me and Richard have fondly called this story 'The Beast' a few times. Does that answer your questions?

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AN: Now, we present the parallel story line. As some of you've guessed, the world is a little… larger than most people think; and quite a bit darker. Many reviewers commented that Prophecy Furball was actually wrong about the spirit travelers. Good catch, by the way, to those of you who noticed. Furball (as I call her) was indeed incorrect, as you'll see below. I like to remember that even prophets and wise men can be ignorant. Kind of makes you wonder what else Furball was wrong about.

Doesn't it?

-Richard 'The Old Man of Avatar Fan-fiction' Caine

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Ready Richard? Good

Curtain Up!


Sokka; Master of the Black Sword

By Richard Caine

Creative Consultant: The Jade Knight


-Tournament Saga-

Chapter 6

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The Story of Mai

Part 6: Archive

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My name is Mai Jai Xiao. I am an assassin of the Gel-Hassad. I have been called many things in my life: killer, lover, demon, and angel, but the truth is, I'm none of these things and all of them. This is the story of a young woman, the ancient will of long-dead Gods, an unlikely messiah, the price of secrets, and most importantly of all a clouded heart.

This is my story.

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I've watched the stars my entire life. It's funny, because I've hated them and loved them both alternately and at once. I used to wish that the angels of my dreams would swoop down and rescue me from the life I led. That they would take me to a place where I was the normal girl, a place where I could be myself without having to hide. But I gave that up long ago. I suppose it isn't in my nature to hold onto dreams; if you are burned once, I guess it makes you a little fire-shy. Now I suppose I accept my place in the scheme of things; the place that my mother made for me. But every once in a while, I will look up at the stars, remember that shy little girl, and I rail against it; because no matter how hard I try, it always brings back the hope. And I hate that. My friends would probably be surprised that I hated or loved anything, but I suppose that I don't do a very good job of expressing what I'm thinking.

It's kept me alive so far.

"So what are you going to do tonight?" Ty Lee asked with a brilliant smile. I lifted an eyebrow as I turned towards her and away from the evening sky of the Capital docks. Zuko and Azula had gone ahead. I think it was to see to something before meeting with their father. Zuko hadn't been very forthcoming, and Azula had been conspicuously absent. The two of us walked past a pair of guards to get into a sedan that would carry us up to the peak of the caldera. I settled into the cushions opposite Ty Lee, who was sitting in some impossibly flexible position, stretching her left leg up next to her face.

"What do you think I'm going to do tonight?" I asked. My nearly monotone voice conveyed my irritation well enough. "Go home and go to bed. We're finally free of those Kyoshi outfits and I can sleep in my own bed for the first time in months. I intend to enjoy it. Alone."

"It's just like you to be all alone," Ty Lee huffed. Then she gave me a sly look. "What about getting in touch with your old… friend?"

Even without her sing-song obviousness, it would have been difficult for me to completely restrain the small blush that colored my cheeks.

"What about it?" I asked flatly.

"Oh, come on," she shot back playfully. "I mean, look at the opportunity. A young prince… all alone and broody. Just like you. I mean you two could get together and have moping parties! It would be sooo cute!"

I nobly resisted the urge to skewer my second oldest friend.

"Thanks," I said. "That was just what I wanted to hear from you; such words of encouragement. Besides, he's busy tonight. He's got to see our Lord and you know it. I just want to relax, Ty Lee, and you know it."

"I do," she said with a sage nod and a serious face. Then she cracked a smile so wide she squinted. "But I also know that teasing you is fun. You do this cute little blushy thing when I do."

I did not.

That, however, was incidental to the truth. The truth was that I hardly knew him anymore. It was strange for me. One minute we could be closer than we ever were when I was dumping mud pies in his hair, or pushing him into fountains. The next minute it was as if the time from his banishment was an impassable chasm. I simply couldn't see what he was thinking anymore. His life, both our lives, had been so changed by those years that I hardly knew what to do with him. I didn't like that. I liked to think that there were still a few sparks there that hadn't faded, but sometimes I wondered if I was kidding myself.

"Look, I don't want to argue," I said, in a vain attempt to change the subject. "Let's just go home and relax for once."

Wonder of wonders, Ty Lee shut up. We spent the rest of the ride in a blissful silence. Ty Lee dismounted at her family's compound a little hesitantly, and I was carried the rest of the way to my family's estate, just outside the Royal Grounds.

I was expecting an empty house, in all honesty. My parents were away in New Ozai or Omashu. I didn't really care for either name. The servants had no doubt been warned of my approach, but they would stay out of my way if I wanted them to. They knew my moods by this point.

As I ascended the stairs up to the main door, the footman opened the door and stepped aside for me. I breezed into the house only to stop short. My mother, in all her court finery, was standing just inside the entryway. Joy.

"Mother," I managed.

"Daughter," she returned. "It's good to see you."

I bowed politely to hide my grimace.

"You are no doubt wondering at my return. Your father decided to remain in New Ozai to cement our presence there. It is a great honor, but we felt it too dangerous to allow your brother to remain in the city. Thus, he and I have returned."

She wasn't telling the truth; or at least she wasn't telling all of it. I remembered to bow, perfectly executed as my tutors had taught me.

"As you wish, mother," I said. "May I retire? I'm tired after such a long journey."

"Very well," she said. I couldn't see her face, but I could hear something in her voice I didn't like. "We shall speak of your… adventures in the morning."

Crap. Well, at least I'd get a good night's sleep first. I rose from my bow and left the entryway as fast as propriety would allow. Once I was out of sight, I returned to my normal long stride. Fire Nation etiquette stated that long strides were indecent for a woman. That thought only made me want move even more freely; Fire Nation etiquette be damned.

I crossed an inner courtyard at almost a full sprint, and closed the doors to my wing behind me. The servants knew that if they bothered me now, they would likely be in for an extremely bad night. I'm touchy when it comes to my privacy; but at least I have my reasons.

My wing was separated into a mansion within a mansion. It was self contained, with dining rooms, kitchens, and even staff quarters. Not that I allowed the staff to stay here any longer than necessary to maintain it. There were only two areas that were sacrosanct; places that were truly private. The first was my bedroom. It was set aside from my dressing room, beyond thick double doors. I had commissioned a very specific and unusual lock for my door, one that was difficult to open without a pair of unusual keys. Everyone knew about my bedroom paranoia within the household, and there was probably rampant speculation on the matter. That was fine with me; let them natter on about my bedroom. It kept them from thinking that I had any other place of privacy, and that was convenient. I was heading towards my real sanctum now instead.

I crossed through the formal dining room and ducked into a side passage. Walking up to an unusually surreal looking portrait, I splayed my right hand and pressed specific points on the canvas. My freakishly long fingers came in handy for that. I didn't know anyone else who had the range to trip all of the points at once with just their own hand; except for my mother of course.

I stepped back from the alcove, and it swung aside, revealing a stone staircase that descended down beneath the house. Looking over my shoulder to be certain I hadn't been followed by a busybody, I ducked into the passage and allowed the door to close. I slumped against the cool stone wall in the darkness that followed and let out a deep breath. The hallway was pitch black, but that didn't bother me the same way it bothered most people. I allowed the sclera that covered my eyes to retract, and the passageway became as brighter, the heat signatures showing the slight temperature difference between the air and the wall. It would be dim light by most standards, but it was enough for me.

I followed the winding passage until it emptied out into an arching dome that wasn't on any of the house's layouts or in the records of the city planners. I was proud of that; I'd done it myself. The workers who'd built this room had been selected from the engineer corps of the Third Dragon, and now they were dispersed to the four directions, likely many of them dead from the war. The payments had been cash, and the only intermediaries had retired just last year. I was more or less home free. I just had to be careful.

I walked to the center of the room and sat down on the small bench that sat facing to the west. I closed my eyes and let out long sigh. It had been far too long since I'd had a chance to be here by myself, and the strain of my seeming had begun to wear me out. I had been out in the world a lot lately. It did wonders for my boredom, but it certainly didn't do my overstretched muscles any good.

I carefully stripped off the majority of my clothing, leaving on only my chest wrap and silk pants. The blasted stuff caught on everything, even if it did offer me a place to hide the tools of my trade. When I was down to the barest off necessities, I took a seat in a cross legged position on the central bench.

Sitting there, I breathed deeply and let go, allowing my thoughts to flow outward like my breath. All my desires and aches faded away one by one until I was suspended in the Void, my perception as clear as I could make it. From the emptiness, I carefully focused my thoughts on my body, working from the tips of my toes to all the way up to the crown of my head. At each stop I commanded muscles to relax and joints to realign properly.

A pleasant sensation overtook me as I finished. It was hard to work out your own muscle knots this way, but better that than being touched by someone. Just the thought of it made my concentration flicker for a moment. I hated most touching; it made my skin crawl.

Releasing my thoughts once more, I sought the calm of the Void again. I almost reveled in the emptiness, letting my cares and fears go. Slowly I opened my eyes, and stood up. The truest Void states are hard to describe. They are akin to a complete and utter focus, but they focus on nothing specific at all. Rather, it was almost as if the essence of the world flowed in and through you. Distantly, your mind would categorize and sort through the information presented by your senses. In the true Void state, there was no difference between computation and action; no hesitation between perception and motion. I certainly couldn't boast that; but every once in awhile I came close. Tonight seemed to be one of those nights.

I uncurled from my position and stood. I strapped my dart quiver to one arm, and my blades to another. I slid a pair of stilettos out of the belt I slung low over my hips. Slowly, at first, then with growing speed, I worked through my close range katas. Most people who have seen me work comment that I should hardly need any kind of close in abilities, but the wise understood. My friends, even Zuko, could understand this. Most of the time, the thrown weapon was not a killing strike. A clever opponent could always move, just a little, to turn a fatal strike into only a crippling blow.

No, the true Master of the thrown arts was a total range combatant. She understood that precision was to be admired and cultivated; but dead is dead. Against a skilled opponent, you might be able to injure or disable them at range, but the finishing blow would likely come from your own hands and personal blades. That was the way of things.

I flowed now, faster and faster, until I was spinning and twisting like a Sandbender dervish. My mind processed the input from my senses more quickly than I could truly be aware of. At the time I couldn't linger on it, for to do so would be to break the state of emptiness. I had not moved this well in a long time. Not since my little brother had been kidnapped. Free of my seeming, I could move as I wished, and my body thanked me for it. I had just finished my final kata of the series when my mind finally reached the most perfected state I could manage.

I knew when I had reached it, because in the fullest emptiness, there were the Whispers. I could hear them within my head, a chorus of a thousand voices overlaying one another. Some of my teachers claimed the Whispers offered prophecy and insight; that they knew the comings and goings of all things in all times. Others claimed that they were lies and distractions from the path of Knowledge.

I'd never found them that useful one way or another. Mostly they were a kind of subconscious guidance for me; a whispered 'duck' here or 'strike' there, and occasionally a 'keep your mouth shut'. Tonight, the Whispers felt louder than I had ever heard them before. I closed my eyes and let the voices flow over me. They were uncannily focused tonight. My heartbeat slowed as I listened. There was a single phrase that the whispers seemed to be repeating.

"Yoth ven-ia shavaas ta il," I whispered along. I felt a chill run down my spines. If the Whispers were right… this could change everything; and not in a good way.

"Lo, the Incarna walks," I repeated in the human tongue. I frowned for a moment, but released my expression, allowing my face to relax.

"Show me," I requested, softly to keep from breaking the trance.

The emptiness in my mind was filled with vistas of deserts, the stars twinkling in the cold air. The sky moved around me, showing constellation after constellation moving through in a great sequence, years flashing by in an instant. Finally, the spinning and rotating sky ground to a halt. At the crest of a nearby dune, a strange man was silhouetted, looking up into the sky as the full moon crossed through the constellations of The Wanderer and The Black King in sequence. I could not see his face, for he was backlit by the stars, but when he turned to look at me, I saw ghostly pinpricks of light where his eyes would be. The stars were in his gaze... all of them. I tried to look away, but could not move until he looked away from me and returned to gazing at the moon. The dust and sand swirled around his feet, and I heard a single word carried on the wind; the Whispers chorused in unison. It was the only time I'd ever heard them do so.

"Incarna."

I had the extremely uncomfortable sensation that the Moon knew that I was there, and that I was not welcome here. Its glow shifted from brilliant white to a harvest red, just slowly enough that I almost didn't notice it. However, the shifting light cast the sandy dunes in a hellish orange light. The night air was cold like steel and the stars barely twinkled at all. They seemed harder and more solid than I'd ever seen them before.

The scene shifted again, and the moon backtracked itself through the sky locking into position at the Wayfarer. 40 days, I thought. It will take 40 days from now for this to happen. The Whispers echoed around me.

"It comes."

I came back to myself with a spasm. I found myself staring at the stars. The moon had just passed through the Wanderer far above, and my hands rested against the cool stone of a balcony. There weren't any stars in the basement. There wasn't a balcony either.

I panicked for a moment desperately looking down, but my seeming was back. My skin was smooth to the touch, and pale in the moonlight. Other than the fact that I was in my decidedly undignified undergarments, I was fine. I cursed and looked around.

I stood in my mother's observatory at the pinnacle of our Capital Estate. I didn't know really why (or even how) I came to be there, but I could feel something in the air tonight. It was something that hadn't been there before. A surge of panic coursed through me, but I fought it down. Maybe it was just the crazy that came with listening to the Whispers for too long. Not that that particular alternative was much better.

"You felt it too."

That voice removed the second possibility then. She never listened to the Whispers. I turned completely around to see my mother on the other side of the circular tower, facing outward. I knew in an instant that when I found my mother standing at the edge of the observatory's balcony, staring up into the banded constellation of the galaxy, it wasn't just whimsy that brought me here.

"It is a beautiful night, Mai, isn't it?" she asked, with an inclination of her head. I nodded, but kept my own counsel. Even though she could not see me, my mother must have heard the gesture. Nothing that pulled to the both of us like this was ever the product of a beautiful night. My mother, likely taking my silence for at least acquiescence, continued to speak.

"I have been consulting the charts ever since your little brother was taken," she said. Her tone was casual, but I felt the danger lurking there. She seemed to be expecting some response.

"What did the horoscopes tell you, mother?" I asked as blandly as I could.

"Something they never have before," she replied with an airy wave. She turned her neck sharply towards me in a sudden gesture. In a normal person, it probably would have sprained their neck, if not broken it. In this case, she rotated her neck all the way around to face me, a full one hundred and eighty degrees of motion. I found myself staring into my mother's eyes; her true eyes. The cross shaped pupils glinted in the starlight, and I tried very hard to suppress the shudder I always felt when she looked at me like that. I felt my own sclera moving aside, and the world was bathed in the eerie half light that our 'gift' gave us.

"The stars say that the Incarna is returning."

"I'll believe it when I see it."

I paled, realizing too late that not only had I'd blurted out what I was thinking, but that I wasn't nearly as sure as I sounded. I'd spent too much time with Ty Lee lately; maybe fatally too much time. But strangely, my mother, who was usually so strict about such things, just shrugged.

"I understand the sentiment," she said. She readjusted herself so that the front of her body was facing me. "Perhaps it's time that we looked for ourselves. The Archive will likely have what we need."

"I hate the Archive," I said bluntly. My mother blinked her secondary eyelids.

"I do not care what you 'like' or 'hate'," she said in an arch tone, and I suddenly felt five again. "It may have what we need. Besides, how else do you propose we figure out what is sending out the call? Ask the others?"

It was a nonsense question, of course. The closest Elder was holed up in a town three islands over. I released a sigh and nodded. "Fine then. You want me to go?"

My mother snorted and gave an affirmative nod. I watched her hold out her hand to me, and I could see the sense-tendrils move beneath her pale skin of her forearm like eels whipping back and forth. I did the only thing I could. I crossed the distance between us and grabbed her arm. I felt the tendrils break through her skin and pierce me.

God, I hated this part.

I felt my spirit tear itself free from my body with a snap. Instantly I was elsewhere. I stood in the Archive, spirit form propelled there by my mother's assistance. I don't know exactly how to describe the Archive. It wasn't really a place, as far as anyone of the Gel-Hassad I'd ever talked to knew. It was more of a communal image; a mental construction that reached through time. Yet it was so real that you could reach out and touch the stones around you, feel the drip of water and the movement of the air.

Its origin dated back to a supposed better day, when the Old Ones had walked among men. I had my doubts on that count, but I'd never voiced them to my mother or any of the others. They had a kind of blind faith that I lacked in any form. Still, a story was probably better than no story at all. Besides, they were family and family was allowed its quirks. Only the Archive itself would likely know why any of them put up with me, for example.

The inside of the Archive was dark and curved in an organic fashion. It looked much more like the handiwork of a sadistic breed of giant black resin extruding wasps than the stone that it was carved from. The walls curved away in the warm darkness, covered with veins that seemed to pulse in the damp heat. There was a musk here that assaulted the nose. It was a scent that almost no one not of the blood could stand. It turned out that some of us extruded it when frightened, as I'd found out when I'd surprised my mother one day, but I suppose I had enough blood to counteract the dizzying effect of the pheromones. My spirit walked down the bone shaped corridors, listening. The Whispers were quiet now. Normally they were almost clamorous here, the place where they were closer to the world of Men. Now I could feel the silence like a weight on my shoulders. It was the quiet of being ignored for something of greater importance, and it was a sensation I knew well. Something, or someone, must have gained their attention. It was the first time I'd ever heard of that happening.

The sinking feeling in my stomach was growing. I picked up my pace to reach the central core before the vision faded. I knew that my time in this corner of the Spirit World was limited. None of us, not even teams working together, could stay here for long. This was especially true if we didn't have the aid of the Whispers. The many irregular corridors of the Archive converged on a single hub, like the spokes of a giant wheel. Each tunnel emptied into the massive domed structure, bigger than anything men had built in recorded history. But, then again, men hadn't built this either; the Old Ones had. I paused at the doorway, drawing the signs of acceptance in the air with my hands. There was no physical challenge, but a subtle pressure eased off of me and I could pass through the arch into the dome itself.

The bony ribbed floor sloped downwards in a gentle fashion to stop at a perfectly circular and mirror smooth pool in the very center. The diffuse pale blue lighting of the Archive cast shadows on the pool. The pool itself was the Archive in a sense. It was the place where memory and perception were stored among the People. It was the source of the living library that stretched through time and space, separate from it all.

My mother had told me stories of those who had encountered long lost relatives in the Archive, ancestors, or distant descendents. The laws of temporal paradox held no sway in this place. The future was not hidden here; it was laid out. It was the ultimate storage device, and likely the best library in the world, perhaps even greater than the fabled library of Wan Shi Tong. I had it on pretty good authority he was the only one who even came close.

The only problem with the Archive was that if you didn't know where you were looking and when you were looking, you could be buried beneath the weight of the information it possessed. It had swallowed up the souls of people stronger than me who'd asked the wrong kind of question.

I crossed the half mile radius to the pool and knelt down gently beside it. I took my hand and closed my eyes in concentration. This was the part that, as Ty Lee put it, 'sucked'. I felt a ripple of agony as my flesh and mind transformed themselves into their natural form quickly instead of the slow relaxation of earlier. This was the Mai that not even Azula had seen; the Mai that probably no one else would ever see if I could help it.

You see, my mother's side of the family had a very distinct set of hereditary quirks, passed down for longer than any of the Four Nations' histories could record. My mother's oral tradition stated that we Gel-Hassad dated back to the twilight of the Old Ones. It was said that in the time before history, the Old Ones were the masters of this world. But the world changed; it left them behind. Even though they were nearly immortal, they reproduced extremely slowly, and humans simply out-bred them. The final straw came when the humans discovered the arts of bending. When they realized that their time was fading, some took steps to ensure a means of survival or a weapon to use against the human horde. The ballads claim that we were their enlightened servants, blessed with gifts granted by divine patrons. I figure things were a bit more complicated. It was probably far more likely that we were a product of miscegenation; the misbegotten children of dying gods. Maybe we were a breeding project to extend their lines, maybe just a slave race. In truth, I figured I'd never really know.

Wherever we came from, we must have had some peaceful time, but that was shattered by the Great War. Our records didn't show who struck first, us or the Benders. But we did know who struck last. The Avatar and her minions sank our continent home of Yegoth in a single night of destruction. It left a gaping hole between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom that remains an oceanic dead zone to this day. Only fools or brave men crossed directly through the Center Sea. There were… things that were set free that night; things that could sink a warship just as easily as a dinghy.

Just like that, a race that would have perhaps been competition for humanity was reduced to near extinction in a single day. For over forty thousand years my people had been trying to claw their way back from the brink. Their successes were probably dubious at best. We could hide as humans; we could (and did) breed with them, and for the most part we bred true. But it limited us, and it was damn painful to keep up the seeming. For thousands of years, the humans remembered us as demons and killed us when they could. Yegoth's destruction hurt them too, and not in a small way.

It took five thousand years of careful hiding and planning to reduce us to the state of legends and bogeymen. Now, though, the Elders thought we were almost home free. With the Avatar out of the picture, they had been able to use a proud man's ambition to steer the Fire Nation into wiping out the Air Nomads. The most extensive records of our existence were wiped out during the Comet, which our astrologers predicted, and which our agents, such as my grandfather, brought to the attention of the Fire Lord.

It must have felt good to turn our one-time oppressors against one another in the orgy of destruction that followed. Grandfather always spoke of it with pride; the insufferable old coot. And if a few hundred thousand humans died in the ensuing wars, well that was acceptable to them. I knew because I'd seen it in the Archive.

Now, I'm not a moralist. If the Fire Nation was stupid enough to take the bait, they deserved what they got. The stupid bending bastards had been grinding their numbers down for a hundred years. Maybe one day there'd be so few of them that we could rise up and takeover the world. That was what the Elder's hoped.

Whatever; I never believed in the pipe dreams of time-addled old men. I'd believe our 'uprising' when I saw it. It would never happen until the bloated corpse of the Fire Nation had clogged and destroyed the other nations utterly. Sure, it seemed close now. But I knew better than to bet on that. Hope was for idiots and dreamers.

I opened my eyes and looked down into my reflection in the mirror pool; seeing myself as I truly was without any disguises. Blood red eyes with cross shaped pupils stared back at me. My skin had darkened, and hardened to a leathery texture. Instead of long nails, I had yellowed razor talons. From my back, the interlocking and delicate stabilizing fins unsheathed themselves. The subtle plates of my exoskeleton ground against one another, springing up from beneath my skin, and my hair had changed, whipping unbound about my head like the snakes of a medusa. The only way I could describe it was that it was as if an islander's dreadlocks had suddenly been transformed into predatory snake tails. I could feel the tendrils testing the air around me, feeling with senses that purebred humans didn't have a name for. I suppose I could use the names the Old Ones gave us for them, but I really couldn't have cared less. To me, it was just a reminder of how important it was to keep hidden, play the nobleman's daughter; and I hated that kind of reminder.

There were upsides to the transformation, of course. I was harder to injure with my exoskeleton exposed, and I could move faster. My joints were free from the strain of concealing my nature, which meant I was more graceful. The lines of my face and figure were preserved and enhanced, even. The features of our lineage were geometrically perfected, and our bodies beautiful and eerie in their cross of human and inhuman.

The downside was that I looked like an ideal nude debutante crossed with a half breed komodo-rhino/insect. I turned away from my reflection quickly, trying to put the strangeness of my own face out of my mind. Instead, I closed my eyes and reveled for just a moment in the complete freedom of motion that I enjoyed in my natural state. It was the only thing about this form I liked, but it was almost worth it.

Then it was back to business. I sat before the pool with my legs curled into a full lotus position. I cleared my mind, one piece at a time, until all that remained in front of me was a single symbol; the Old One's symbol for their savior and warrior; the one who fought the Avatar and lost all those years ago. They called it the Incarna. I had no trouble retrieving the glyph from my mind. I remembered this particular symbol even more clearly than the flag of the Fire Nation. Exhaling slowly, I leaned forward to place my hands onto the surface of the pool. The cold sensation of the stored memories arced into my mind.

A thousand images assailed me, unlike anything else I'd tried to retrieve from the Archive. Usually, the experience was like the trickle of a fountain, images sliding smoothly past until I decided to seize upon one. This time it was as if I had been assaulted by a team of waterbenders on the full moon. My mind was nearly washed away in a tide of information; too much for any person to handle. I flung about desperately, trying to fight my way out of the current. Somehow, in the maelstrom of thoughts and contrary images, I seized upon something familiar and dragged myself out, inch by bloody inch.

I was literally blown through the layers of reality, away from the Archive. I snapped back into my body, standing across from my mother in the observatory. The force was so powerful that I actually broke contact with my mother's arm. Her own sense tendrils retracted into her forearm just quickly enough to not get torn completely out of her arm as I was flung across the room and into a marble pillar.

The impact hurt, but my body was built for punishment. I pushed up on the floor, trying to get into a sitting position. I could already feel my body reverting, but I was too shocked to even notice the stinging pain as I transformed back to my human shape out of habit. Mother looked at me with the first true expression of surprise I'd seen her have in a very long time. I pulled myself up as the sclera closed over my eyes, leaving me perfectly normal looking again.

"Did you see anything?" she asked in a concerned voice. "Did you get an image of the Incarna?"

"Yes. Maybe? But it's not what you're thinking" I shook my head. It was all I could do not to laugh hysterically or start crying. I hadn't retrieved the prophetic charts or the convergence of information on the subject. In my flailing for something familiar, my mind had closed on an image; an image that I was now trying to sort through as quickly as I could. Him. Of all the damned fools on a planet of damned fools, it had to be him. It fit with the man in my vision too well; a young man, but strong and powerful in his youth. I looked up at my mother; from the confused look she gave me I doubt much of my emotional turmoil made it through to my face. Besides, due to my physiology, it actually hurt to make most facial expressions.

"I think I saw a potential candidate," I said. I was still out of breath, and my voice came out raspier than usual. "The one you looked for, possibly the one whose presence you scryed. The Whispers told me. He travels with the Avatar."

"He hunts him?" Mother asked, not understanding. The thought was probably too strange for her to understand. I shook my head again.

"No, Mother," I said, and this time I allowed myself a small sarcastic smile. "I've actually met him. He was in New Ozai when Tom-Tom was captured. He might as well be the Avatar's valet; and he certainly showed no aptitude as a warrior king at the time."

Even as I spoke, I realized it wasn't entirely true. I'd actually watched him avoid three of Ty Lee's strikes in the throne room of the Earth King without trying terribly hard; something I had only done a few times myself. Sure, he looked like an idiot doing it, but I couldn't discount the accomplishment. Then there had been the fact that I hadn't been able to hit him in New Ozai. Maybe there was something there after all. The thoughts faded when my eyes took in the look of shock that covered my mother's face.

The expression of sheer disbelief cheered me up. That boomerang hurling idiot was apparently supposed to be the messiah of my long suffering people. I felt that my cynicism was beautifully justified in that moment, a shining crystal of truth that in a mad world, only the disdainful have a chance at sanity. It was at this point, with the foreign and painful feeling of a happy smile plastered on my face, I allowed myself to faint.


Richard Caine

The Jade Knight

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