Author's Note: Only 70% of this chapter was written while drinking scotch…probably.

Legend of Korra: Warlord

Book 1: Soul

Chapter 2: Cliffs and Valleys

"Earlier you asked me what my name was…its Jarek" He stated as he held his hand out for me to grab. There was a lot for me to process at the same time, first of all from just staring into his eyes it's hard to believe that this was the same shell of a man that a had talked to previously, I mean beforehand his eyes were seemingly dull and lifeless, but now there seemed to be a fiery determination in them. The second thing was just how intimidating he was, it wasn't in the stature so much despite the fact that he was indeed quite tall, it was more in the aura and force of will he exuded that outright commanded respect. The last thing was the horrifying display of death I had just witnessed, I mean I've given more people than I can remember a good beating but I've never done or seen anything that visceral or brutal in my life.

"Korra" I stated back as I took a moment to think of my next move.

"Well Korra I'd hate to be pushy but if we're pulling off a jailbreak then I'm gonna need you to get up" He requested as he held out his hand for me to grab, it was hard to really say why I felt this way or what brought me to this conclusion but for some reason beyond my understanding…I felt as if I could trust this man with my life. I confirmed that feeling with myself by grabbing his hand and letting him help me to my feet.

"Alright we don't have much time so we're gonna have to be quick and quiet about this…I think I can lead us out of here but we're going to need to work together in order to escape from here, agreed?" He asked me as he searched the body of the dead guard, finding a knife in which he hid in his torn clothes and grasping the prod to wield.

"Yeah I agree" I answered since I really didn't have much of a choice at this point. He nodded and motioned for me to follow as he stealthily stepped his way down the hall as I tried my best to follow just as quietly. After a few twists and turns he stopped at a corner as I hugged the wall behind him.

"Got a guard around the corner…let me handle it" He whispered as he peered around the corner and in one smooth motion maneuvered around the corner. Before I could even see what happened he came back to where he was with one rather familiar short guard in a very tight hold.

"Hi there friend, I'm gonna ask you a question and you're going to give me an answer…if I like the answer then you don't die this day but if I don't…well you like the idea of not having your eyes gouged out and your head matter forcibly squeezed from your eyeholes until nothing remains right?" Jarek asked the muted guard as said guard nodded fearfully.

"Good now…give me the directions to the way out as quickly as in as few words as possible…oh and don't be too loud, I'm NOT a fan of loud noises understand" Jarek threatened as the guard once again nodded as Jarek removed his hand from the guards mouth.

"Take a right, then a left, head straight down the hall until you get to these huge double doors can't miss it" The guard bumbled out quickly as Jarek eyed him intently before nodding.

"Alright I believe you…I'm going to shock you with this stick now" Jarek said casually as he lifted the prod up and activated it, a hum of energy resounding from the instrument.

"Uhhh can't I just promise to faint like a dainty woman instead?" The guard pleaded as Jarek seemed to think about it for a moment.

"Hmmm…no" Jarek decided as he tapped the prod on the guards head, causing him to lose consciousness and crumple to the ground.

"That was…something" I whispered as he shrugged.

"Well at least we know the way ou-"

"Hey…aren't you supposed to be inside the jail cell?" A voice I recognized questioned as it was the other guard that dragged me to my cell…oh yes I remember him.

"Don't worry he's mine" I declared to Jarek who raised an eyebrow but otherwise made no moves as I quickly rushed the dim witted guard and delivered a powerful kick to the right side of his head, causing him to collide headfirst into the wall, instantly knocking him out.

"Yeah! Who's heavy now huh?" I vented at the unconscious guard as Jarek just stared at me in confusion. "…what? He deserved it"

"I'm…sure he did, though I don't think he needed more brain damage" Jarek whispered as he just decided to leave it at that and take the backpack that the now even more brain damaged guard had on him. "Right well we need to keep moving come on" He muttered as we continued our way down the halls with the directions we were given, although the complex turned out to be a bit more elaborate than we expected.

"The guy you zapped made this sound so easy" I muttered as we took a moment to catch our breath.

"No kidding" He whispered as the sound of voices echoing down the hall grew louder.

"Search everywhere, find them!" one of them bellowed which was followed by the sounds of heavy footsteps.

"Well looks like they figured out our well thought out escape plan, never would've seen that coming" Jarek voiced sarcastically.

"Why do I get the feeling that you're trying to imply something?" I asked as he raised an eyebrow.

"Now whatever could you mean by that?" Jarek asked innocently to which I gave him an incredulous look.

"Hey it's not my fault you killed that guy like that…which by the way was horrifying"

"Oh and you've never killed anyone miss avatar?"

"NO...well probably not…look that's not my point"

"Oh? And what point of contention could you possibly have as we are in the middle of an unplanned jailbreak about to be swarmed by guards…speaking of which" Jarek interrupted himself midsentence as he swerved around to meet the guard that was attempting to sneak up behind the arguing duo and quickly slammed his head into the wall with a sickening crunch. At that moment half a dozen guards rounded the corner and prepared to face us.

"Wow I didn't even notice him" I remarked as I mentally hit myself for not being more aware.

"Yeah it's almost like having an argument in the middle of a jailbreak is a dumb idea…so uh want to call it a draw and beat these guys up?" Jarek asked as he got into a fighting stance unfamiliar to me as I nodded.

"Sounds good to me" I agreed as the guards charged us. Jarek entered the fray first as he dodged a truncheon strike and countered with an elbow to the face followed by a forceful kick to the chest which sent the guard reeling back into another guard as they got tangled on the floor.

One attempted to strike at my chest with a shock prod but I quickly countered and used my superior agility to maneuver around him and land a series of quick strikes ending with a strong punch to the jaw that sent him to the floor.

Jarek engaged two more guards in melee as he immediately went on the offense and delivered a punch to one guard's stomach followed by a head butt that brought the guard to his knees and had him seeing stars. Before he could be finished off however Jarek felt a truncheon land a blow on his side.

"That all you got?" Jarek taunted as he swiftly faced his second opponent, disarmed him and rocked the guard with a blow to the left side of his head with the guards own weapon, sending him to the ground unmoving. The guard reeling from the head butt attempted to stand back up but was quickly brought back down to the ground with a blow to the head from Jarek that caused a loud crack to echo down the hallway.

The last guard that had yet to engage us seemed to be weighing his options, after a moment he decided against a two on one battle and bolted down the hallway, unfortunately for him Jarek is not the merciful type and he took the truncheon in his hand and sent it flying down the hall straight into the back of the retreating guards head, causing him to sprawl unceremoniously onto the floor.

"Damn I'm a bit rustier at this than I thought" Jarek mumbled as he clutched his no doubt bruised side.

"Are you alright?" I asked in concern as I stepped closer.

"Eh I've taken much worse I'll be fin-Look out!" He suddenly shouted as before I could even process anything he suddenly thrust his fist out forward and a ball of blue energy shot out and flew just past the right side of my head and impacted something behind me. When I turned around I saw a guard slide down from the wall and crumple on the ground.

"Wh-What was that?" I asked in genuine confusion, he looked like he was about to answer but the sounds of more heavy footsteps started to fill the hallway again.

"No time escape first" He quickly responded before running down the hall.

"Fine whatever escape first then ask weird prison guy questions" I whispered to myself as I followed him down the hall. It didn't really take us too long to find the exit this time around as we rounded a corner and found ourselves in front of a pair of large doors which we immediately kicked open to reveal an open courtyard area that was overlooking the mountainous forested terrain glowing in the dusk light below, This would've been a good thing had it also not been for the dozens of fully equipped guards that were waiting for us as well.

"Uhh maybe we shouldn't have just kicked open the door without thinking" I pointed out as I tried to figure out how we were going to get through them all.

"No time for that now, this way" Jarek ordered as he veered off to the right with me following close behind. It didn't really seem to help as we just found our way to a ledge that looked to be a good three hundred foot drop into trees and a river, at this point we were most certainly surrounded with no place left to run.

"Ok anymore bright ideas?" I asked Jarek as he was scanning his surroundings rather calmly.

"Not really no" He stated simply.

"Well well this was most certainly not expected" Voiced a man that looked to be in his early fifties as the other guards parted ways to let him pass. "Well from the Avatar this was no surprise at all but you Jarek…I'm quite surprised, what happened to the sad, broken, docile filth that I knew?" He asked mockingly as he continued to speak.

"Korra do you trust me?" Jarek asked me as I gave him a look of confusion.

"Is…that really a question that you, the guy I just met in prison are asking me?" I questioned back.

"Well…yeah" He answered simply as I just stared at him incredulously. "Ok now that I think about it I kinda see your point actually"

"Are you two quite done?" the older man loudly asked in annoyance as Jarek lazily turned to address him.

"Hmm you say something?" Jarek asked.

"Yes I…have you even been listening?!" The man asked.

"No, should I have been?"

"I would like to think so considering that my men and I have you surrounded and outmatched" The man that I now put together is probably the warden pointed out.

"And you think I care because…?" Jarek asked as I wondered if he was being serious or if he was just messing with the warden, I honestly couldn't tell.

"I…you…wha…just get them and put them in the special cells already" The warden ordered his men with a sigh as they approached.

"Ok Korra I'm gonna need an answer from you now" Jarek asked me as I stared at him once again. It's hard to place where this instinct was coming from; I'm not even sure if I'm thinking straight at this point, but when I stared at Jarek something within me told me that I could trust this man without question.

"Yeah…I trust you" I answered sincerely as he looked at me and gave a soft smile.

"Ok…then off the cliff we go"

"…Wait wh-" I didn't have time to finish as I found myself being grabbed tightly and before I knew it I was falling downward, I hate my instincts sometimes.

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" I shouted as the last thing I remember was the sudden sensation of being submerged in cold water before falling unconscious.

I woke up with a bit of a headache but otherwise relatively intact…and considering that the memory of being flung off of a cliff by a guy I just met in prison just came back to me; I was just honestly surprised that I ONLY had a headache.

As I started to fully come to I scanned my surroundings, I was laying on a couple of blankets that were made into a makeshift bed of sorts, it looked to be the middle of the night as the only source of light in this campsite was a fire where I could smell cooked fish. A lone figure was sitting next to the fire cooking said fish that I recognized as Jarek who looked a bit different.

For instance the long beard was all but gone revealing a strong jaw line, his dark silvery hair which before was down to his back and messy was now just touching his shoulders and looked a bit neater, the worn prison clothes he had been wearing before have been replaced with earth kingdom style clothing that weren't the best fit but worked nonetheless. All in all I had definitely misjudged his age as he looked much younger than I had originally thought he was.

There was a lot on my mind at the moment and there was only one way I could think of to express it, so I threw a rock at Jareks head.

"Oh I see your awake, fish?" He offered without so much as acknowledging the projectile that had just bounced off his head, which really only made me angrier for some reason.

"NO!" I shouted as gave me a surprised look.

"A girl from the water tribe who doesn't like fish? That's a new one"

"Wha-No I like fish!" I corrected

"Then have some, I'm sure you're hungry" He offered again

"I don't…I'm not…I" I was finding it very hard to form words right now.

"So…do you not want fish then?" He asked

"LISTEN YOU…" and once again my stomach proves that it's actively out to get me. "…just give me the damn fish" I mumbled in defeat as I took a seat by the fire and grabbed the meal.

"You could've at least warned me that you were going to throw me off a cliff you know" I chastised as I took a bite of the fish that tasted a lot like how the water tribe cooks them.

"Well technically I threw both of us off a cliff"

"Oh well clearly that makes it all ok then" I stated sarcastically

"I'd like to think so, I mean I threw us off a cliff and now we're not in prison AND we have fish. Frankly I don't see the issue here" He reasoned out as I felt myself start to mentally short circuit.

"…I really wish I could fire bend right now"

"And I really hoped that I could find some sea prunes to make this dinner even better, but you know no sea, no sea prunes" He explained with a shrug.

"Yeah I was gonna ask, where did you learn to cook water tribe style food like this?" I really couldn't get over how much I was being reminded of home right now.

"I…picked it up…so whats next then?" Jarek asked quickly changing the topic.

"What do you mean?" I asked mouth half full of fish.

"Well…I mean you're out of prison now and you're the avatar right? So aren't you supposed to go punch this Amon guy and save the world or something?" Jarek asked as I could feel the overwhelming weight of all the responsibilities I have.

"I…I don't know what to do, I mean yeah I definitely want to go and destroy Amon for everything he's done, but without my bending…what can I really do?"

"Well I mean I think you handled yourself pretty well in there without you're bending" He pointed out

"I…appreciate what you're trying to do, but that's not the point. I mean as the avatar it's my duty to 'use the four elements to bring balance to the world as well as mankind and the spirits' so I can't really do any of that if I don't have my bending"

"Oh is that all?" Jarek asked sarcastically.

"Yeah that's all, no pressure or anything right?" I muttered equally as sarcastic.

"Ok well I guess you know exactly what to do then"

"Oh do I now?"

"Yeah you said it yourself, your avatar and the avatar needs bending…so there's your answer" Jarek explained.

"Well I mean it's not like it's that simple…"

"Isn't it?" Jarek interrupted as I shook my head.

"No it really isn't, I still don't even know if any of my friends are ok and Mako…" I trailed off as I remembered Amon's haunting words.

'…he'll break soon enough'

"Look believe me I understand the position you're in right now…but think, you've been stripped of your bending, you have no idea where your friends are and you don't even know the state of the world right now. The best thing you can do right now is take a step back and figure out a plan…but hey I'm just the guy from prison who threw you off a cliff so you know, take my word with a huge grain of salt I guess" Jarek explained with a shrug, as much as I was tempted to throw another rock at his head for reminding me of…THAT incident, he did also have a point. I wanted to do nothing else but run out, find my friends and go kick Amon's teeth in…but I have no idea where they are and without my bending I'm not even sure if I'd be able to even get to Amon himself before getting captured again and that definitely wouldn't help anyone.

"Ok…maybe you have a point, but I don't even know what I'd need to do to get my bending back, I tried mediating which didn't work, I tried healing…but then remembered that I need bending to do that so didn't work and I even tried hitting my head really hard and that REALLY didn't work…so unless you have an answer for me on that one then you might as well throw me back up the cliff do I can throw myself back in jail" I ranted a bit more passionately than I wanted to.

"Well unfortunately I don't know how to give you the kind of head trauma that fixes magic powers…but I might have an idea that could work…probably…maybe…" I gestured for him to get on with it "…anyway, tell me how much do you know about my homeland?" Jarek asked as I attempted to recollect anything from Tenzins history lessons and only came up with memories of falling asleep from boredom.

"Um not much honestly, I know that it's far to the west of the fire nation"

"Ok knowing its general direction is a good start, well I guess to give you the short of it my people don't have the ability to bend elements and only very few of us can do what we call spirit manipulation which is this" Jarek explained as he made an unfamiliar hand gesture and a blue tint of energy formed around a small rock on the ground that lifted off the ground a few feet before Jarek flicked out a finger and the rock went sailing through the air off into the darkness.

"You did that back in the prison" I recollected

"Mmhm, it's a power that lets me use the energy from within me and harness it into a physical form, letting me do all kinds of fun stuff…but it's not as reliable as bending since if I use too much spirit manipulation too quickly then the strain of it can do serious damage to me" Jarek explained further as I tried to wrap my head around the concept.

"Anyway so yeah we can't bend, but there's this place to in the northern marshes of my country that we call the valley of a thousand deaths, named that due to the fact that over a thousand people that we know of have walked in there and never returned…my people are kinda straightforward when it comes to naming things"

"Sounds…inviting" I commented trying to imagine what this place looked like.

"Oh yeah definitely…well it gets weirder, the valley is almost like an entirely different world, the land itself constantly shifts and reforms before your very eyes, the currents in the rivers change direction at will, even the air itself seems to have a mind of its own"

"That all sounds like bending!" I exclaimed as Jarek nodded.

"Yeah that's what I was thinking too…of course when I went there last time I didn't even know what bending was so at the time for all I knew it could've been magic" Jarek said with a shrug.

"So you've been there before?" I asked curiously.

"Once, some idiot from the village I was from went in there and didn't return so his mother asked some of the men to go and find him, me being an even bigger idiot than her son went with a few others to that place…I can't even begin to describe to you the feeling that I had being in that place, the deeper we got the more I could feel…something, something immense. Anyway long story short we didn't find him and we all decided to get out of there before anything happened"

"So…if this place is so dangerous then why do people keep going in there? I mean just why?" I questioned.

"Well that has to do with a legend that basically says that anyone who finds the heart of the valley will be given great power…or something equally vague and ridiculous like that. I personally have never been desperate enough to bank on an old legend for 'power' but many others are"

"So your idea then is to go all the way to your homeland to some marsh where we have to find the 'heart' of some valley that has killed over a thousand people for 'power' that was promised from some old legend, am I understanding that right?" I asked Jarek.

"…Alright when you put it that way my idea does actually sound pretty stupid"

"Well then I guess I'm pretty stupid for actually thinking of going for it" I admitted to a surprised Jarek.

"You're actually considering it?" He asked as I thought about it, I mean this seemed like a huge long shot that had no real guarantee of anything…actually it was just that, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that I had NO other options to try, no other tricks, nothing. So as unlikely as it was that this would actually do anything, if it meant that I had a chance of getting the power I need to save my friends then I had no other choice but to try; besides I still had that instinct telling me to trust Jarek…even though he threw me off a cliff, but if you ignore that fact…and the fact that I met him in prison…and EVERYTHING else really, it only seemed like I was having a major lapse in judgment…that's all.

"Yup I mean I have no other options so sure why not go into the valley of certain death?"

"…you're not one to think things through are you?" Jarek asked as I just stared at him unamused.

"You're the one who suggested taking me there in the first place!"

"And you just assume that I was taking you there too? Way to prove my point"

"Wait wh-"

"Well then again I mean I guess I don't have anything better to do, not like I had anything on the agenda after twenty years of imprisonment so…fuck it sure I'll take you there"

"...as soon as I get my bending back I'm lighting you on fire" I deadpanned as he just gave a cheeky smile.

"I wouldn't have it any other way"