Quick Answers: My world of Avatar is the size of a planet. Thus, Kyoshi Island's much farther away. Appa is just a fast mover. Sativa managed to copulate with three people in one very specific three day period. It's not something she'd make a habit of. There is no cross-over with Children-verse in this story. Children-verse hasn't happened yet, according to one perspective.
The dream began as all dreams had; in darkness.
He opened his eyes, but there wasn't anything there to be seen. Just a pristine, empty void. But he took two steps, and then, there was light. Green eyes slowly panned around this place that he would come to in his sleeping. He remembered this place. He called it the orchard, even if nothing grew here.
Nothing could grow in this place. Nothing he didn't plant himself.
What would have struck a lay observer was how desaturated everything was in this place, that all things were either white, black, or some shade of grey between them. There was no color in this place. And there was no sound. He glanced to his side, and only there was there even a wisp of hue, and even then, it was a tiny, almost vanishingly small scrap of silver. This was a dead place. So Sharif Badesh bin Seema din Nassar walked alone. In his dreams, he didn't always come here. Some dreams were flights of fancy, but they faded swiftly after he awoke. But these dreams? They stuck, and they would not be forgotten. He walked along dead soil, to where a bridge all in metal and stone, not so much crumbling as half-completed and then abandoned, crossed a steep crevasse. He knew he had nothing to fear of the drop. There was water down there, and it would break his fall. He had been there before. This was an old and familiar place to the young shaman.
"Don't worry. It'll be alright," he said to the tiny wisp of a void spirit which accompanied him. In the Outer Sphere, the void spirits could be any shape, any form, almost impossible to identify by any sense other than smell. Here, though, they were all silver. The haughty, the arrogant, the indifferent, now much more humble.
I didn't want to come here.
Sharif tilted his head. "Then why did you come to the orchard?"
You were dreaming.
As if that was enough of an answer. Sharif sat, dangling his legs over the edge of the bridge. Nearby, the black, twisted forms of tree-trunks made great efforts to soar into the sky, but their strength had left them long ago. Now, they were but withered reflections of what once was. Their bark was hardened almost to stone. Their few branches stood permanently benuded. They stood as still and silent as everything else in this place. Even the water below was silent, still. The void spirit floated around Sharif, as he just took in the calm of the place. The peacefulness. But unlike in the waking world, where his mind was stunted and faulty, here he could think, could concentrate, could know. Pointedly, he knew that this was not idyllic or serene. No, this was the cold and bitter silence of something beautiful fallen into death. There were no birds here, no insects, no people, no pets. There was no whisper of wind as it moved from horizon to horizon.
Sharif looked up, and beheld a black sky. Not even any stars. "I never had one of you come with me. Maybe you'd know. Why are there no stars here? I know that there are stars when I wake up. So why not here?"
We were stars once. But that time is over. We have lost too many, too much.
Sharif leaned forward a bit, his hands clenched on his knees. His mind might have been damaged, but it was not destroyed. And for some reason, when he was here, he recognized what had happened to him, how far he had fallen. Here, he could think. And he knew that there was an important question he needed to ask. "Is this place real? Or is it just a dream?"
Yes. No. Both.
"That's not very helpful."
We are weak. The center has fallen. The fringes cannot hold.
Sharif had no idea what that meant, so he got to his feet and walked to the tree trunk, skirting around places in the interum which for all senses but his were utterly empty. Sharif knew better. "I've seen these trees other places. Not awake, but here. Do they mean something to you?" The silver spirit just floated, but Sharif could smell something like mourning in it. Something like regret. "Why did you come here with me?"
I needed you.
Sharif was confused. "What? You needed me?"
The Avatar does not understand. He fumbles in ignorance. I needed you.
"You're not making sense."
We are dying. This world is dying, a long, slow death. Its dark avatar walks the mortal world, and its hunger is insatiable. Someone must restore the balance. Someone must rebirth this place.
The sprite flew into Sharif's outstretched palm, and flared brightly. Sharif, not even fully understanding what he was doing, pressed that hand against the bark of the tree. As he did, veins of silver shot up the trunk, and a groaning of wood sounded in the emptiness. The silver reached to the stillborn leaf-buds and twisted them open, glowing white and pure as they shifted slowly, despite the absence of breeze. Soon, the entire tree was alight and alive, it's bark smooth and white, its leaves casting a pool of light. Sharif didn't know what this meant, but in his heart, he knew it was good.
Sharif pulled his hand away, and saw that it had been covering a knot-hole in the tree. He looked up at the silver boughs. "Is this for me?" he asked. But the tree answered him as trees would answer anybody, in that it both didn't, and couldn't. He slipped his fingers inside, and felt something hard and smooth in there. He pulled it out, and it popped out like it had been attached to a stem. It was a fruit, or something, but it was roughly the size and shape of his big toe, and a lustrous green, like jade, besides. And, it was as hard as any stone he had ever felt. He looked back up to the tree, and placed his other hand on it. "Thank you," he said.
He took a step away, but stopped dead when he felt a whisper of breeze against his ear. He turned, and saw that one horizon had turned brightly the hue of an old bruise, after it had faded away from purple but before it vanished completely. It was a sickly, horrid yellow, its color finally washing over the dead greyness, but skirting around the edge of the pool of light left by this tree, like it could not go there. Then, there was that sound, a sound against silence that would drive men mad. It was Nila's pressure-cooker, but set too high, all the valves in the wrong places. It was that groaning of metal, stressed almost, but not quite to rupturing. Well, if Nila's pressure-cooker were the size of a mountain, anyway. Then, a rumble, which started in the earth, rippling the water below the bridge and sending a shard of primordial terror through Sharif's mind. He knew this, too. There was a blast, Nila's pressure-cooker rupturing at last, but that groaning continued, unabated. Then, a banging, like smashing a pair of enormous, cracked bells into each other. Again. He looked to that orange horizon, and beheld how it turned red, like the flesh of an inflamed wound. And then, a final crash, a thunderbolt the length of the Chameleon River, but only its sound.
Then, he could see something moving toward him. There was color there. Horrifying color. Wrong color. And it swept across the not-places, and surged over the high walls of the orchard without pity or mercy; all of its blackness and redness and blueness snapping as it advanced in a wave. The sound of its approach defied any attempts of his to metaphorize it. The closest he could come up with was 'an evil hum'. He knew that if that wave touched him, he would die, his soul obliterated beyond any reclamation. It bore closer. Closer. He could hear screaming of metal, of mountains exploding and being worn down into sand. He could hear a great wind. And it bore down on him. Closer. And it touched...
…
Sharif woke up with a start, which jostled Patriarch enough to get the old bird to swing its big head toward Sharif with a note of query in its weary eyes. "It's alright," Sharif said, patting it on its large beak. "I just had one of those dreams again."
The bird let out a snort, which Sharif frowned at. "Well, you'd be startled too, if you were there."
The bird practically rolled its eyes, and settled its head back down on the earth. "Well, maybe you shouldn't judge me without experiencing it yourself," Sharif noted. But this time, Patriarch was staunchly ignoring him, so that he could get his own sleep. Sharif crossed his arms, but noted an odd feeling; there was something in his hand. He opened it, and saw that same lumpy thing he had held in the dream. He looked at it for a moment. What did that mean?
Exhaustion won out over curiosity, aided by the fact that Sharif's attention, while awake, at least, was outright pitiful. He pulled the blanket over himself, tucked himself against Patriarch's flank, and fell into a more random, but more restful, dream.
Chapter 5
Through Clouded Lens
Nila started, swaying on her feet as she almost fell over. Great. Not only was she seeing things, but she was starting to fall asleep standing up. She kept walking, though. She had to. She would not fail in this. She would prove Mother wrong. She would prove that she was worth something. So she ignored the terrible grinding of her empty guts and kept trudging, one foot before another, heading toward the horizon, the moon at her back. Keep walking.
If she had more of her faculties remaining to her, she would have wondered how Sharif had managed to get as much of a time-advantage as he had. She had to have been walking faster than he was. And she didn't stop for more than an hour or two of sleep a night. Hell, she hadn't shaved her head in days! Or eaten, for that matter. And come to think of it, she had drank out of a puddle yesterday. Not very civilized, but then again, she was Si Wongi. They would drink the blood of the dead if it kept them alive.
One foot, and then the other. At this point, it came as a note of pride that most anybody else would have collapsed of hunger and fatigue. But Nila kept walking, even as the seams of her robe began to pull apart. She kept walking, even as her shoes began to wear through. She kept walking, even as she dreamed while walking of that weird place where everything was grey and dead. She'd been having nightmares like that for ages. And the worst part about them is that they would linger, pressing in on her mind like some sort of memetic cancer. At some point, she was going to have to do some reading on mental illnesses... well, more reading, because she'd exhausted all of the literature available to the Sentinel Rock.
"Where are you little brother?" her rasping voice came out, even without her strictly intending it to. For the eighth time in this same night, she considered trying to shed some weight. But she dare not. It might be the only thing keeping her from death. Of course, the irony of the extra weight exhausting her to the point of heart-failure somewhat flew over her sleep-and-food-deprived mind at the moment. "I'm not mad at you. Really I'm not. Just come on out. I'll bring us back home."
Ha. The ruthlessly intellectual part of her brain chided her for being so whimsical. Not only was she engaged in a fool's errand, chasing down her mentally damaged twin brother, but she had long since completely lost track of where she was. All she knew was that she had to walk west. Maybe a little southwest. But mostly west. "Mother is going to be proud of me when I get home," she whispered. Ah, so there it is, that little voice in her mind snarked. Little Nila is desperate for approval.
"Shut up... me!" Nila shouted. "I don't need anybody's approval!"
Then go home, that little voice said.
"Not until I'm finished," she swore, her brow drawing down. If she was no other thing in this world, more than intelligent, more than unpleasant, she was implacable. Her mind, however that little piece of her seemed to want her sabotaged, was set. It was strong. It was willing. Pity her body wasn't. A few steps after she made that oath, her knees buckled, and she levered face first into the sod, her sudden drop only slightly deadened by the mat of long grasses which covered this western fringe of Dakong.
"Get up," she snarled at herself. "I'm not done yet. Get up!"
Her arms pressed on the ground, slowly, slowly pushing it away despite the weight on her back struggling to reunite them. And finally, she was on hands and knees. She let out a laugh. She wasn't done yet. She was still...
At which point she flopped back down to the ground and started snoring.
"Be more careful," his voice sounded gravely even to his own ear, but then again, ever since Whale Tail, he only had the one to work with. Lieutenant Kwon let out a world-weary sigh, his face taking on much of the same droopiness that his mustache held, but he obeyed his superior officer, more gingerly pulling at the gauze which bound 'round half of Zhao's head. Zhao let out a grunt, then a "that's better."
"The physician once again insists that you remain in bed," Kwon said in that same, flat tone that he took with all things. It made it very hard for Zhao, or anybody, in fact, to tell if Kwon was being sarcastic. Of course, with Kwon, the line between honest and sarcastic was vanishingly fuzzy. Zhao gave Kwon a glare with his still working right eye. Well, truth told, he'd find out if his left eye worked in a few minutes. "I informed him that your duties are more important than his medical advice."
"Very good, Lieutenant," Zhao said, turning the tome so that the light fell across it better. Ever since Whale Tail, he had been doing much reading. More than he had before. He had underestimated Azula's capabilities. He would not do that again. And just to make sure of it, she had oh-so-helpfully branded a reminder onto his face. But he wasn't out for revenge, oh no. She was far, far too useful to be fodder for revenge. So he poured over her journals, over the copies of the paintings that she had started making when she was eight years old. Every scrap, every doodle, every ow ow OW!
"I TOLD YOU TO BE MORE CAREFUL!" Zhao roared as the bandages tugged painfully at the burn. Kwon, though, was about as easy to intimidate as an iron bulkhead. He just stared flatly, his drooping mustache making him seem a straightman in some comedy of errors.
"I'll get the releaser. This will sting," Kwon said neutrally. Zhao shot a glare at the man as he trundled away, but reread a passage which she had drafted over the three days that would have been Azula's ninth birthday celebration, if anybody but the young Prince had remembered it. This was one of the first things he'd read that convinced him of her nature. A complete map and disposition of forces inside Ba Sing Se, an impossible thing, especially with General Iroh's great failure at the wall. A step-by-step guide in manipulating their abominable secret police. Written at a time in her life that nobody had even mentioned the existence of those infernal spy-catchers to her.
Extraordinary.
He sat back, glaring out the port hole, as the sun rose over the horizon. He could feel the power of Agni flowing into him, reinvigorating him even despite his fatigue. Azula would show him absolute victory, whether she wanted to or not. Even if she was aware of it or not. He had the most access that anybody outside of the impudent prince and the Fire Lord's lazy, moronic brother possibly could. It was just a matter of leveraging it.
There was a knock on the door to his chamber. He let out a sigh, and put the tome aside, sitting back in the swiveling chair which was otherwise screwed to the floor. Allowing himself a ginger touch of the bandages, he noted that yes, they still hurt more than just about anything he'd felt in his life. Zhao was one of the three greatest firebenders of the modern age. And yet she had punched through is defenses like they weren't even there. It was criminally hard to burn a firebender. And she did it without second thought. He pulled his attention back to the task at hand, setting the girl aside. "Enter."
The door opened with a squeak of metal and it was not Kwon who ducked into the room, but Hu. Hu was a skittish fellow, all knees and elbows. Zhao was fairly certain that, despite the Fire Nation's policy of not recruiting teenagers for the navy or army, Hu had managed to slip under their gaze. If he was older than fifteen, Zhao would eat his own bandages. "News from Kyoshi Island, sir."
Zhao snatched the offered scroll from the youth and skimmed along it with his amber eye. That eye widened at what he beheld. "The prince has annexed Kyoshi?" he asked. "That's bold. And not what she predicted."
"Admiral?" Hu asked. This was a matter of concern. Either she wasn't as potent has he assumed, or, more likely, he wasn't as observant as he hoped. Somehow, despite his pride, he hoped it was the latter.
"Is there anything else?" Zhao asked testily.
"General Iroh's ship was seen heading north, sir," Hu said. "To Hanyi Port."
"A wretched hive of scum and villainy," Zhao scoffed, before raising his knuckles to his chin. "So I wonder what straight-laced Zuko is going there for?"
"Sir?"
"Orders for the helmsman, Hu," Zhao said. "Set a course for the fleet to shadow General Iroh's ship. I want to see what they're up to."
"What about your duty in Great Whales?" Kwon asked as he entered the room.
"What duty? Great Whales is a prison, and I have better things to do than to play warden," Zhao pointed out with annoyance. He turned to Hu. "Well? Are you going to stand here until your feet rust? Go!"
Hu gave a start and ran off, only half-completing a salute before he did. Zhao shook his head slowly. "See to it that he has disciplinary action. He is sloppy. I do not abide sloppiness on my fleet."
"Yes, Admiral Zhao," Kwon said in his long-suffering way. Zhao tented his fingers and considered. Maybe there was more to this. Maybe it wasn't just that Azula could tell the future... maybe she was trying to alter it? Oh, now that would be an interesting thing to behold. But he would do so with her in his safe keeping. She was far too valuable a prize to run free. It was just a matter of opportunity.
Zhao had braced himself, so when that honey-textured goop rolled down the bandages over his face, he managed not to do more than grumble angrily in pain. But the pain was significantly less, he was aware, than it would have been if his subordinate were to simply rip this thing off. So when the stinging abated somewhat, he did the honors himself, peeling off the bandages, and feeling the shocking sting of the tiny shifts of breeze against his raw flesh. He closed his right eye... and opened his left. Everything was fuzzy, indistinct, and a bit dark, but he could still see movement, basic shapes. It was an inconvenience, but he would survive. Oh, yes, and it hurt like hell.
Just being open to the air, that wound hurt like being burnt all over again. But he clenched his jaw and rose to his feet, taking the two steps over to the mirror which hung over a water basin. He opened his eyes once more. His face, once unblemished by age or misfortune, now held a burn which erased almost a quarter of it. The brand was roughly the same shape of a flame in the wind, a raw, bloody red where it swallowed his left eyebrow, where it swooped down and then back up from his cheekbones. Nearer his eye, it was a darker red, like an old scab, and the eye seemed to have been frozen into a perpetual glower. Fitting. Zhao gingerly touched the wound, and made a promise to himself. He would not fail. Not for his own arrogance. Not for his own ignorance. He would never forget. And as he opened his eyes and turned from that mirror, he swore that one day, he would stand at the top of the world, and laugh as the last enemies of the Fire Nation broke themselves against the walls of their betters.
He even had the battle plan ready for it.
"Would you like a pain killer?" Kwon asked, producing a bottle of whiskey from Agni only knew where. Zhao, for once, didn't feel like chastising the man for his sarcastic tones.
Zhao snatched the bottle then pointed to the door. "I have a destiny awaiting me. See that Hu's incompetence doesn't render me late."
"Yes, sir."
As Kwon left, Zhao just stood there, stripped to the chest, a smirk on his face which couldn't shift the shape of his wounded left eye. "And now, we see what surprises the Princess has planned."
Zuko could feel eyes boring into the back of his head, and feel the impatient tapping of Azula's foot behind him. While it was a relief that she'd managed to throw off that funk which sometimes took her more swiftly than usual, it meant that she was capable of jumping straight into being a brat. That meant that Zuko was torn between being glad that Azula was safe and well, and being annoyed at her antics. Not that she'd call them antics. Despite her being a bit more than a year younger than he, she seemed to strive with every whit of effort to be the older of them. Needless to say, in her state, she wasn't up to the task.
"Forty," Zuko repeated flatly, staring at the vendor. "I could buy five times this much for forty. This is just insulting."
"Times are hard. The benders are having to put up a lot more earthworks to irrigate the fields," the vendor rationalized, rubbing at a short scar on the side of his jaw. "Prices go up so that..."
"People like you can gouge people like me. Ten. That's more than what it's worth."
"You're stealing the bread from my children's mouths!" the vendor shouted.
"On the contrary, I'm buying it for its fair price," Zuko countered. He gave a glance to his sister, who was now inspecting her nails, but used the facade to inspect the vendor caustically.
"I doubt he has a wife, let alone children," Azula pointed out.
"Twenty," the vendor hedged.
"Ten. You won't find anybody with that much to spend, let alone willing to spend it," Zuko asserted.
"Why don't you just pay this twit the twenty and go?" she asked in Whalesh, which oddly she could pull off without the accent which plagued her every other spoken word. The oddness came from how her normal 'accent' wasn't even close to Whalesh.
"We don't have twenty gold. And besides, it's the principle," Zuko answered in the same tongue.
"Bloody savages; why can't they run under the silver standard like we do?"
"Because some people don't know what money is worth," he said in Tianxia, the vendor's tongue, and let the man think of that what he would. Zuko leaned on the counter. "Now, I am going to offer ten, and you are going to accept it. Considering how few others have come by here, I wager this is more business than you've seen in a month, let alone in this week. And if you don't accept the ten, then you will get nothing, and a burnt-down store besides."
"Is that a threat?"
Zuko smirked at that, a smirk which he and his sister shared very much in common. "No," he answered. "But I will feel morally obligated to tell all of the people out there that you're withholding valuable provisions and consumables that some of them are on the streets begging for and charging an exorbitant price. Racketeering, I believe the practice is called. As I see it, you have two choices. Either I have it, or you lose it. But I guarantee you, you won't the same inventory as when I walked in when the sun rises again tomorrow."
"...ten?" he said weakly.
"Nine," Zuko countered.
"But you just said!"
"Consider the lost gold a personal stupidity tax," Zuko said, leaning back. The vendor glared, but it withered until his shoulders slumped and he nodded, defeat in his posture and in his voice.
"Nine. Very well. It will be on the dock before supper time," Zuko shook his head at people, at peasants, trying to gouge him. They should know better. He was royalty. He was trained in squeezing blood from a metaphorical stone. Of course, he had learned very early on from his father that the easiest way to get blood from a stone was to hurl it very hard at somebody who had too much to begin with. Besides, his need was far more important than this nobody's.
He turned, a quip on his lips, but it died when he saw that he was alone in the store. He quickly turned back around. "Where did she go?" he asked, an accent of his own slipping into his words.
"What? The girl?" the vendor asked.
"Yes, of course the girl!" Zuko shouted.
"I... I wasn't paying attention. Maybe she went for a stroll?" he said. But Zuko was already storming away. He should have known better than to ask this peon. Nobody would look for Azula. She was very good at vanishing when she wanted to. He didn't even know how she had picked up such a proficiency. Zuko stormed out into the street, his hair flicking as he turned one way, then the other, trying to spot her. Of course, trying to find a black-haired teenage girl in the East Continent was akin to finding a particular grain of sand in Si Wong, or an individual snowflake in the Poles. Nearby, a muttering woman was gathering up fallen radishes from a cart. Zuko grabbed her and dragged her attention to him.
"You. Did you see a golden eyed girl move past here?" he asked. She glanced aside. Amber eyes, eh? He tried that again, this time in his native tongue. When he did, he noted that her eyes went wide as the radishes, which had been teetering on the brink of spilling into the mud, finally abandoned their perch and made haste into muck. She winced at that.
"A rude girl? She knocked over my radishes! Somebody should scold her for that!" she said, outrage flooding in where trepidation had vanished. Zuko set his jaw, though, so that he didn't explode into an unhelpful display of firebending and violence. "She ran off that way, the road to Gaoling. Give her a proper caning when you catch her. Nobody should abuse radishes!"
Zuko released her and began to run, not toward Gaoling, but to the seedy wharfs that this entire town abounded. He severely doubted that this city ever truly had a golden era. From every splinter and glob of dirt, it seemed that this place had been built a crap-hole, and would live the centuries as a crap-hole, until the Great Crap-Hole Fire swept it into crap-hole ashes. And it took a great deal of self restraint not to start that fire. Especially now. He thundered up the waving, unsteady and uneven boards of the wharf, up the metal gangway, and threw open the outer door to the cabins. He confronted the first crewman he saw, a grey-haired man with respectable sideburns. Jee, if his memory didn't completely desert him. "Where is my uncle?" Zuko demanded.
"In his quarters, sir," Jee said, a weary eyebrow raised.
"Prepare my armor and a cloak," Zuko ordered, before storming past. The subordinate had something on his lips, but the way Zuko brusquely disregarded him told him whatever it was, it could wait. Zuko moved to the heart of the ship and threw open the door to Uncle's room. Much like his own, it was by and large naked metal, with only a few decorations from home. Most jarring, though, was that Uncle had taken down the three point flame of the Fire Nation. That felt like treason... but Zuko wasn't going to call Uncle on it. Auntie Shou was too recently passed to tear at her widower like that. And just as he suspected, he found Iroh in his mourning whites. The old man – for in this moment, he appeared ancient, not merely the older brother to Zuko's father – wiped his face with a billowing sleeve, before turning to Zuko. There was an expression of annoyance to him.
"Azula has run off," Zuko began.
"Again?" Iroh cut him off.
"...yes, again," Zuko admitted. Iroh let out a laugh, but it was not happy. A part of Zuko missed the Iroh that used to be. So care-free, so humorous. There was a levity that the man brought to the trip which made it seem some sort of adventure, rather than an ignominious exile. But now, that man was gone. Or at least, away for a while. "She was spotted heading for Gaoling. What's in Gaoling?"
"Gaoling?" Iroh asked. "Nothing is in Gaoling. We tried burning it down a few decades ago, but we were thrown back. Why do you ask?"
"Azula wouldn't head there for no reason, but it's the only place she could reach without heading through a swamp. And if I know my sister, she would rather drown in a bucket than walk through a bog. So we need to catch her in Gaoling before she heads off somewhere else."
"You have thought this through," Iroh noted. "Good."
The old man rose, shrugging in his white robes. He let out a sigh. "It is a relief that you started to think things through," he continued. "You were rash when we started. Headstrong. But you have grown. And I haven't," he turned, and Zuko could see that Auntie's picture was on a small shrine he'd put together. "I've been mourning long enough. It's time I pulled my own weight. And that'll be tough, because I've got a lot more of it than you do!" Iroh finished with a booming laugh. It petered out into a sigh, and his expression wasn't quite so bleak when he took Zuko's eye again. "Well? Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to find your sister?"
"Meet me on the gangway in five minutes," Zuko said, relieved that Iroh was going to be working with him. Much as he had experience working alone, he knew from his own history that when his family worked together, they were practically unstoppable.
Zuko descended the floor to his own chamber, pausing only briefly to glance into Azula's uninhabited room. Together, they were unstoppable. And with Agni as his witness, Zuko would not see his family torn apart.
The stomping of feet was something between a wake-up and a lullaby. It was a confusing thing to conflate, but it seemed to hold two different meanings depending on if one was just about to descend into sleep against if one were only just rising out of it. The wind was brutally dry, but she had long been used to such weather. There was more than one desert in the world, after all. Her form, atop the saddle of the ostrich horse, was covered from head to feet in a long robe, dark red in color, and divided for riding. The way the legs of the beast moved, 'twixt her own, served to keep her awake in that weary first few hours, as the sun shyly crept up over the horizon.
Of course, even as it did, she rose with it.
Every passing moment saw her feel a bit more lucid, a bit more aware. The sun was important to her. It was important to all of her sisters, as well, but for vastly different reasons, and none of them as personal as it was for her. For one, it was a thing to be avoided, another, a sign of good seas. One of them just like basking in it. But her? The sun fueled her. The bird strutted along the unbeaten, invisible trails that she couldn't see through the grass, but the bird followed without question or comment. She didn't doubt that this was some sort of Ostrich Horse track, something marked by something she was blind to. It didn't matter to her, though, as long as she could reach the West Coast, what matter the path to get there?
Even as she rode, she thought about her sisters. It had been a very long time since she saw them. She owed much to them. Well, to one sister in particular. The bravest of them. And oddly the dumbest. Possibly, the two were interrelated. She made a good point, though; if any of them wanted to have a life of their own, they would have to strike out and claim it. So that was what Tzu Zi did. And so did everybody else.
Tzu Zi thought she spotted something, and sawed on the reins, pulling up the Ostrich Horse before it trampled the figure on the ground. She raised a brow at the form, before sighing and dismounting her bird. "Don't run off on me. I hope you learned your lesson from last time."
The bird let out an apprehensive 'kweh', and settled down onto its belly, looking around the horizon as Tzu Zi approached the body on the ground. Brown eyes surveyed the form. It was in a robe, much like her own, only this one not divided, and colored stark black. Well, it obviously had been black, before it got caked with so much grit and sand that it was now an off-brown color. She bent down, and gave the boy a shove. When she did so, she had to amend her estimation of the figure's gender. While she had assumed from the shaved head and swelling body-shape a male, the features were far too fine, the lips too full, to be masculine. She leaned back, wondering what backwards society had the girls shave their head. Of course, she would be the last to know; Tzu Zi wasn't even a native of this continent. Most of its customs went quite above her head.
Tzu Zi pressed a hand to the face of the girl on the ground. There was an odd texture to the skin. When she pinched the cheek, it was very slow to pulling back to its native position. Badly dehydrated, then. From the gauntness, probably starving as well. She gave a glance behind her, to the sun rising up over the plains. "This is your doing, isn't it?" she asked. Agni, the god of the sun, was as usual silent. She let out a sigh, and stooped down. "Well, don't say I've never done a good deed in my life."
She tried to lift the girl, but found it a much harder proposition than she had bargained for. Despite the slenderness of her arms and neck, and the boniness of her besides, she seemed to weigh a tonne. As well, her body felt... oddly solid. But she was still breathing. And she muttered something in no tongue that Tzu Zi could translate when shifted, so she wasn't a corpse. Not yet, anyway. And lucky that Tzu Zi had come when she did. With a heave, she flopped the odd girl over the front of the saddle. Aki let out an unhappy noise at now having to bear the added weight, but Tzu Zi clucked her tongue, and the Ostrich Horse silenced itself. Tzu Zi poured some water against the girl's lips, and she seemed to drink it even in her stupor. A good sign... well, better than the alternative. With that done, she climbed aboard.
"I know, it's not pleasant, but we can't just leave her to die," she said, remounting the bird. Aki swung her head around, and Tzu Zi could have sworn that the great bird was giving her a disparaging glare. "I refuse to be countermanded on my own horse, by my own horse. Get moving!"
Aki let out a snort, then began to walk, away from the rising sun.
Bored.
She had the best education that money could provide. She could speak almost every language on the planet, knew the provincial etiquette of every culture in the East Continent, and even some of the West besides. She could play songs on flute and biwa by ear – although that was mostly because she had no other options – and knew things far and beyond even what her parents were aware of. For example, they didn't have any concept of what kind of bender she was. Of course, all of this was underlining the fact that she had a monumental vocabulary, whether or not she liked to employ it. But for all her manifold tongues both foreign and domestic, the simplest word encapsulated her position best.
Bored.
Criminally bored.
Murderously bored.
Psychotically bored.
She let out a world-weary sigh, rolling useless eyes as she planted her chin on the heel of an upturned hand, and 'watched' as the celebration went on without her. It was a double irony, that she was bored out of her mind. This party was, supposedly, for her. Her birthday, no less. But Mom and Dad had spent the last twelve years of her life making sure she was utterly isolated from people her own age, so why would her thirteenth be any different? As it was, the party in the vast and cavernous chamber was mostly songs released into void. Nobody came. Hell, if Toph Beifong were to guess, she'd reckon that there might be seven or eight people outside the immediate family and house retainers that even knew she existed.
"Is something wrong, Tuofu? Are you tired?" Dad asked. Toph allowed herself to roll her defunct eyes, because as much of a shrewd businessman as Lao Beifong was, he remained casually oblivious to her capabilities.
"I'm not tired, Dad. Just bored."
"How can you be bored?" Poppy asked, her tone concerned. Of course it was. Mom was always a twitch away from flying into panic, it seemed like. "We have some of the best performers from the Earth Kingdoms here."
"Yeah, and who are they performing for?" Toph asked. "Nobody's here."
"Of course there are, Toph," Dad said. Lied. Even if she lacked the ability to feel the tremors through the stone up through her feet, which showed not only the a-vasting emptiness of the chamber, but also things which lay beyond through solid stone, even if she couldn't feel the heartbeats of everybody present, she'd still know, because when it came to her, Dad was a terrible liar. "All of your friends are here."
"What friends?" Toph asked cuttingly. "When have I ever had an opportunity to make friends? When have you ever let me out of your sight long enough?"
"Toph, we've been over this," Mom said.
"We're just trying to keep you safe, Tuofu," Dad placated, but Toph slumped in her chair, crossing her arms before her chest in annoyance. That was always their excuse. Any attempt at independence was brutally shut down, all because they couldn't get past the fact that Toph Beifong had been born blind.
One, though, caught Toph's attention. Somebody who she couldn't immediately recognize, before she even came into toe-shot. Toph shifted in her seat to rest both soles upon the surface, clearing the resolution as that unknown girl approached. Mother started saying something, but Toph tuned it out completely, cocking her head to one side as she focused not only to her earthbending, but to the sense of hearing that she'd cultivated from the cradle. She could hear voices out there. There was too much distance, too many layers of stone to pick out the words, but she had the tone. Weariness and boredom. Anger from the girl, which made Toph frown in confusion. The guards became alarmed, and began to shout. And then, heat.
Toph's clouded eyes widened as she slammed her hands down on the table and turned to her father. "Dad, somebody's attacking the guards!"
"What? Don't be preposterous, nobody would..."
Another explosion, this one far louder, as the outer doors to the manor were blasted off of their hinges. Still two halls away.
"What's going on?" Lao asked, but Mother got an odd calm to her. Toph couldn't spend any time wondering why Mom didn't pass out from shock and panic, and actually seemed more stable now. She had other things to worry about. More voices. The guards were rushing to the entry hall. This time, she could make out the gist of their message, to the tune of 'stand down and surrender and you will not be killed'. And answering that? The girl laughed. Laughed!
"Dad, we've got a problem here," she said, pushing herself out of her chair and standing atop the broad granite surface of the table.
"Tuofu, get down! You'll fall and hurt yourself!" Dad said, but she could tell that he kept glancing toward the door. Toph did hop down, but this time to put herself between her parents and that stranger, and the sounds of violence which were becoming clearer, crisper, with every passing moment. Finally, the laughing stopped, and she could feel the girl just outside, breathing deep, but not from exhaustion. From anticipation. The girl said something that even Toph couldn't interpret, despite the close proximity, then launched forward with a kick, and it seared with flame.
"FIREBENDER!" Toph screamed. She heaved, brusquely upending the entire table behind her, sending the dinner that had been prepared scattering and pooling around her bare feet. Her parents shouted out in fear and alarm, but they would thank her in a second. Well, two seconds, because that was all the time it took for the girl to get her footing again, and charge a last time. This time, the marble doors exploded into the room, and fire billowed in with them.
With a practiced shift, something far smoother than any earthbender Toph had ever 'seen' or trained with, she called up the stone of the floors into a wedge, which the doors smashed against and rebounded off of. The heat was stifling, but in her protective lee, it flowed past her, searing and spalling the back wall. She could 'see' both of her parents now cowering behind that helpfully upended table. Well, Mother's hair did look like it was on fire, but she swatted it out with half a mind. Despite how stifling and suffocating they were, they were family. Nobody hurt Toph Beifong's family.
The simplest of all earthbending moves; move a rock.
A great chunk of the wedge which had protected her shot forward with her motion, and the firebender easily kipped away from it, landing on her toes and the fingertips of one hand. Despite having no eyes, and a damned poor sense of facial feature, Toph could swear that this girl was smirking.
"Who the hell are you?" Toph shouted.
"Inevitability," The girl answered, an odd accent to her voice. Toph just couldn't place it. And she didn't have the time to, because the firebender immediately surged forward into flame, a sweeping kick which seemed to bathe the room in flames. Of course, it was postponing the inevitable as it was; Despite blindness, despite her tiny stature, Toph doubted there was a greater earthbender on the face of this planet than she. So after calling up a pillar to cut the stream, she let it drop... and then she waited.
Her foot, sliding across the soup-coated, almost stingingly hot stone, sent out a ripple that no eyes could ever see. It was not with those useless orbs that her world entered her. It was by earthbending alone, and she could see everything. The firebender before her, her parents behind her, the musicians who were well off to one side, and still playing, if badly off key. She could see at least one of them edging for a side door. And she could see where this firebender was going to touch the ground.
Toph sent out a kick with a foot, and a new ripple moved out, but this one was of a different sort. This wasn't to give her 'vision'. This was weaponized. The firebender girl landed, and instantly her footing was lost, as the earthbending Toph instigated caught her heel and sent it for a ride. With a smirk of her own, Toph began to sweep in with a precise, three fingered strike... but then the firebender did something quite remarkable. Even off balance... no, because she was off balance... she used the unwanted motion to launch her into more attack. Toph panicked, bringing up a barrier, which was actually smashed to bits by the kinetic force of the firebender's attack. The heat began to sting and crack at her, it began to press against her skin and steal the breath from her lungs.
"I'm gonna whup you for ruining my party!" Toph shouted, twisting and flaring out her arms. The very floor surged toward the firebender, who still hadn't completely regained her balance. But then the girl did... something. Something looping and unstable... but it ended with a loud bang, and the attack flowed past her, smashing into the wall. Of course, the girl had been thrown back against that same wall with some force. But obviously, not nearly enough.
"A party? Well, forgive me," the girl said sarcastically. "Allow me to deliver a present on behalf of my father, the Fire Lord. Would you like to see it? Oh, right. You can't see, can you?"
Toph instantly ransacked the lessons of diplomacy and politics that she had been force-fed, and the answer that came to her didn't make a whole lot of sense. There was no way this was Azula. She didn't sound like a National, for one. And Princess Azula was some sort of victimized artist, not a firebending warrior. "Is that a cheap shot?"
"I'm sorry, did that go over your head?"
"YOU CALLIN' ME SHORT?" Toph shouted.
"Oh, I've missed this," the firebender said with something almost like a laugh. She finally settled, glancing at her nails. "In case you were wondering, earthbender, your present is fiery death!"
She lashed forward again, and this time, with such fury that Toph knew that it was going to end in blood and charred bodies if she didn't do something drastic. Mom and Dad were probably already diving into the deeper stages of denial that their little girl was in a pitched battle for their collective lives, so it fell to the frail, weak, tiny, blind, helpless, unknown daughter of the Beifong family to set things right.
Besides, it wasn't like Dad didn't have the money to repair the east half of the house.
Because as the firebender launched forward, Toph caused a huge wave of stone to hurl both of them through half of the building, and dump them both outside.
"They've headed further ashore, Admiral," Kwon said wearily. Zhao squinted, and idly noted how only half of his face really obeyed his command anymore.
"What is past Hanyi?" he asked.
"Gaoling, sir," Kwon answered.
"Why does that name sound familiar to me?" Zhao pondered.
"Mining town, quite wealthy," Kwon said idly. "It is the domain of the Beifong families, if memory serves."
"Beifong are ridiculously wealthy, aren't they?" Zhao asked, a smirk coming to his face. He rubbed at the mutton-chop sideburns which now were woefully asymmetric with his maiming. Still, a good idea was a good idea, no matter where it came from. "I suppose you heard the rumor that Kyoshi fell because the Princess happened upon its shores? Well, I believe it is no rumor, but Agni's honest truth. Gather the men and moor above the marsh. I think it time that we gain a stronghold in the Southern Earth Kingdoms for the Fire Lord."
"I didn't see any orders," Kwon noted.
"I don't need orders," Zhao said, that smirk blossoming into a harsh smile. "I think it's time to redistribute some wealth. Take from the rich, give to the Fire Nation."
"And by the Fire Nation, you mean yourself, right?" Kwon asked flatly.
Zhao shot him a glare.
"As I suspected," Kwon finished, but offered no comment, no commendation or condemnation, and ducked out of the room to fulfill Zhao's orders. If Kwon were one whit less useful than he was, Zhao would have had him demoted and cast aside long ago, if not simply executed for treason. Not that Kwon had a treasonous bone in his body; Zhao just knew the right people.
As much as he liked the idea of conquering some land, the greater part of him was his curiosity. What was going on in Gaoling. Was she there? He wanted to know. And he would find out.
Zuko's eyes widened when he heard the first bang, rippling and distant across the plains. The gates of Gaoling were only a minute or so away, but the sound had been quite extreme. He turned, giving a glance to his uncle, who had an expression of tight worry as his own golden eyes latched onto a spot well ahead. Unconsciously, he tugged the robes a little closer so they could better conceal the armor he wore. "What do you see, Uncle?"
"Fire," Iroh answered quite simply. "Whatever Azula came here for she has obviously found it. We need to hurry."
Zuko turned once again to the rippling of head that he could see in the air. Why would she come here? Why would she attack? He wished he could figure it out, but he had far more important things to worry about. Keeping his sister safe was chief among them. "You don't need to tell me twice, Uncle."
Nephew and Uncle both made haste into the city of Gaoling, as the alarm klaxons began to scream the terror which was showing itself in its midst.
Toph wasn't one to second guess her decisions. If she had, she might have regretted taking the fight outside. While it did give her a bit more room to move, and a lot less people to protect, it also meant that this firebender chick was setting the gardens, the outbuildings, and a not-insubstantial portion of Gaoling on fire. Her parents were safe, so that was a good thing, but whoever this girl was, she fought with a single-minded mania which defied not only common sense, but simple sanity. And Toph was exactly the sort of person to understand single-mindedness; it was one of the pillars of earthbending.
She then rerouted her stream of consciousness before it became a stream of deadness, because the firebender hadn't ceased, or slowed, or even relented one iota. Toph rolled in the dirt, pulling it up around her into a shell which the blast of flame that was sent against her broke against. It instantly crumbled, no longer resilient enough to sustain itself, but she only needed it for a moment. With a shift of a foot, a flick of the hand, a chunk of stone roughly the same size as her body rose up and surged toward the firebender. Toph waited, listened. Which way was she going to dodge? She could work with either.
She didn't dodge. Rooting like an earthbender herself, the firebender surged forward, two fists leading, and a shockwave pounded through the air as her fire burst the rock before it could even reach her. That was an outcome Toph hadn't seen coming. Firebenders never stood their ground against earth. That was why the East had held its own so long. But this one did.
Toph surged up, pulling the great weight of the sod from behind her opponent, trying to bury her under its massive weight. But there was a blast of heat, and the girl vaulted up onto the crumbling crest, surfing it down to the grounds and blasting out with another wave of heat. This one, Toph simply dove behind a present boulder to avoid. Gods damn it, this wasn't the way this fight was supposed to work! Earthbenders stand their ground, and firebenders dodge! Like waterbenders and, supposedly, airbenders! And somehow, this chick had inverted the whole paradigm!
"You're pretty good at this, whoever you are!" Toph shouted over the rock in her most insulting tone, even as she began to bend. "You might even be able to keep up with me, if you practice real hard, real long!"
"Whoever I am?" the answer came back. Toph flicked her fingers one last measure, and a portion of the boulder slid away from the rest of its bulk, slotting around Toph in a complete mannequin, a suit of armor from the earth. "You must be deaf as well as incompetent. I am Azula. Crown Princess of the Fire Nation. And you are an enemy of the Fire Nation. I'm just doing my duty, in killing you."
Toph frowned at that. When the hell had she ever done something to be the national enemy of the Fire Nation? Inwardly, she kicked herself, rolling her useless eyes inside their stone cage. Obviously it wasn't about her. She turned her thoughts briefly to her parents. Yeah, Dad was richer than most gods of the Underworld, but he was about as threatening as a penguin and as antagonistic as a hare. Mom, maybe? Nah, that just didn't fit into Toph's world-view that Mom would fight the Fire Nation.
"Well, y'ain't doin' it very well!" Toph shouted, surging out from behind the stone, her limbs, encased as they were, still flowing through bending motions. The first Toph attempted was disrupted, interrupted, because the instant she jumped clear, she was intercepted by a blast from... Azula. How she pulled that shot, Toph didn't know. Doubly so, because nothing Toph had ever heard of Azula even mentioned that she was an adequate firebender, let alone... this! Toph regained her balance, thankful for the armor which prevented her gruesome mauling, and counterattacked, thrusting forward both fists, then again with a flair. This time, the wave of stone which raced toward this impossible Azula was far too large, too massive to interrupt, to burst. So she didn't. As the stone began to leap up, trying to pin, to capture her, she managed to shift her foot right onto the stone as it rose, using its momentum to send her flying into the air. And utterly out of Toph's 'sight'.
While she could feel heat, for that one, pristine, critical moment, Azula might as well be invisible.
Therefore, it would come as no surprise, that Toph was taken utterly unawares. Without any warning from her earthbending, nor her ears, suddenly Azula was just there, right in front of Toph. Toph thrust forward a hand, to blast Azula away, but Azula was faster, as she twisted from her landing, two fingers leading as they drove into the armor, and then ignited an explosion. Toph was lifted off of the ground, her armor cracked and shattering. Even before she landed, she pulled as much of it back into place as she could, but before she could even get back to her feet, Azula had bounded onto her, one foot on her chest, the other pinning down Toph's good right hand under a knee.
Toph tried to sweep her off, but Azula idly backhanded, and another explosion flung Toph's hand painfully back to the ground, shattering the armor. Toph bit back tears of pain. Gods, she never even took this kind of lumps when she was training with the badgermoles, and they weren't exactly gentle. Azula punched downward, her fist stopping a bare inch from Toph's face, but that inch filled with fire. At first, Toph thought she could withstand it. Firebenders didn't have stamina. She couldn't keep it up for long. But she did.
And it was getting very, very hot inside Toph's stone helmet. First, it stung. Then, it seared. When her skin felt like it was going to start to blister, to catch aflame of its own volition, she finally and quite unintentionally let out the most pathetically girly scream of pain and fear that had ever come from her throat in her entire life. With just the muscles of her face alone, she burst that helmet, releasing her head from the oven that she had created, and the instant she did, Azula stopped, a smirk on her face that even Toph could 'see'.
"And now, I..." Azula began, but that smirk curdled slowly. Toph could tell, from the way Azula's heart was hammering, that she wasn't calm, but Toph also knew the difference between rage and fear. Azula was quickly transitioning from the former to the latter. "Wh...why am I...?"
"Get off me, ya crazy bitch!" Toph ordered, and attempted to shove Azula aside. More than attempted, even, but Toph hadn't expected to succeed. Azula sat on the dirt, her heart racing harder and harder, as she began to sway in place. "Why did you..."
"I don't know," Azula interrupted. "I don't know I don't know I don't know..."
She was practically starting to hyperventilate. Toph staggered to her feet. Gods damn, that was the most one-sided fight she ever got into, and it ended like this? The fates had a weird sense of humor, it seemed. "What is wrong with you?"
"Run," Azula said, her voice changing, the accent becoming thicker, almost unintelligible. "Run away while you still can."
"Why did you do this?" Toph screamed.
"I..." she shook her head. "I'm sorry. You were my only..."
Toph turned, but could hear something coming. From far away, she could feel an approach. Many, many feet, pounding on the ground. "Is that an army?" she asked.
"Very likely," Azula said quietly, bitterly. "Run."
Toph glared down at the Princess, who was now pulling her knees up to her chest, hyperventilating... and crying? "Screw this. You're the least of my problems."
So Toph left the closest thing she'd ever found to a proper opponent behind, and dashed unerringly back into her burning house. After all, her family needed her. Even if they would never admit that fact.
"Is that what I think it is, Uncle?" Zuko asked, as he could see the fireballs begin to arc up into the sky. Iroh nodded grimly.
"It seems Zhao has more than his fair share of timing. Or luck," Uncle chimed in. "It is worrying, that he would chose now to strike, and so far inland."
"If he's trying to go by Azula's 'predictions' then it's luck," Zuko pointed out angrily. Mostly because he rejected the alternative utterly. Azula was sick. She needed help. Not more people keeping her sick so that they could worm out a prophecy or two.
"Whatever it is, we must hurry. We are nearing the heart of this," Iroh said. Zuko nodded, pulling his broad hat down to cover his face just a little bit more as he began to wade through the crowds. Many were running away from the heart of the blaze, but they would swiftly find that they had nowhere to run. Only Zuko and Iroh headed in.
"How are we going to find her?" Zuko asked.
"Follow the trail of rubble," Iroh offered with a shrug and a smirk. Zuko glared at his uncle, but Iroh then cast a hand toward one of the buildings at the very heart of the conflagration. Even the carved motif of the flying bore was charring, the gilt dropping off as the wood underneath was consumed. Zuko made it a point to know the important political figures in the East, but he couldn't conjure up the flying boar. They were either new, or unimportant. Which begged a question, as to why Azula would come here. And when he turned a corner in the wall, and saw that a massive portion of it was scree in the street, his fears had been confirmed. There was an earthbender here, and by the looks of it a powerful one. Zuko had no intention to tangle with some brawny man from the east. Just get his sister and get out.
Luckily, the hole made it quite easy to get inside. Zuko had to take a moment to take in the scene before him. There was a vast garden. Great and exotic trees grew, each a punctuation mark on a poem crafted in botany. More local flora was cut and crafted into pleasing shapes, or in mimicry of animals. A stream passed through a corner of it, spanned by a brief, rounded bridge. Great paths of flowers abounded, from roses to tulips, and a great many lotuses and orchids besides.
And with the exception of the stream and the bridge, every single bit of it was on fire.
Zuko rushed through the grounds, screaming his sister's name. The place looked like it had been torn apart by an entire squad of the Earth Kingdom's best benders. Every inch of him was prepared for the worst, the news he hoped he would never have to bear. Then, he could hear his Uncle calling, not for her, but for him. His stomach settled in his feet. His hands became numb, even against the pounding heat from the fires around him. He swallowed, dryly. And then he was running. Please, Agni, don't do this. Not to her. She doesn't deserve this. Not her. Please.
When Zuko stumbled into that secluded corner of the gardens, and saw Uncle kneeling next to Azula, and that she was filthy but otherwise not-dead, he could have wept with relief. But another instinct sadly got in the way first. "What did you do?" Zuko shouted over the din. "Why did you come here?"
"Prince Zuko, this isn't the time for..."
"This was a mistake," Azula said. "I shouldn't have done this. W-Why did I do this?"
Zuko had harsh words that begged for release. Begged. But this was his sister. "Let's get you home," he said wearily. "Zhao's army is coming. They're probably going to invade, now that the militia is spread thin."
"It's just like that smug, sanctimonious bastard to attack when the wonder by necessary," she said sarcastically. Then, she grew pale. And so did Zuko. "He can't surf when nothing heavy. Words and parchment... Zuko, I can't... No no no no..."
And Zuko was helpless, as Azula released the worst sound he remembered ever hearing. That groan from the back of her throat, as her entire body folded on itself. Her eyes were wide and desperate, before tightening. She tipped over and almost landed hard on her face, but Zuko managed to prevent that, at least. But there was nothing he could do about what would come next. So when Azula's eyes rolled back in her head, and her body began to spasm like an entire army of demons had slipped inside of her and were fighting amongst themselves over the best way to torture her. Zuko turned a panicked glance to Iroh, who could only shake his head and sigh. Not with disdain, though; Uncle would never judge her for that. This was a sigh of powerlessness. So the two princes, once and current, gently held the flailing girl until slowly the spasms began to quiet, her movements began to smooth.
She started blinking again, but from her eyes, there was no thought going on in there. She was in a state of perfect confusion, blood leaking from the corner of her lip where she must have bitten either her tongue or the inside of her cheek during her seizure. "Ghuh," she managed, her head swaying. Zuko looked to Iroh, and the two quickly hoisted her up onto their shoulders. Six months. Six months since the last fit. Zuko hoped, beyond all hope, that they had finally stopped. This proved that it was a hopeless dream. "We've got to go. I will not let Zhao have my sister, and I won't let these peasants have her either."
"Then we had better move fast," Iroh agreed.
"You'd better not slow us down," Zuko muttered, but Iroh laughed at that, the jolly laugh he used to use, back when Auntie was still alive.
"Prince Zuko, you will someday discover that it is you who has to keep up with me."
And with that, the Fire Nation royalty limped away from the burning garden, and for the moment, not a single one of them knew what transpired here, or why.
Consciousness slid back into Nila's form much the same way that mystics climbed mountains of broken glass. Slowly, with great difficulty, and no small amount of pain. Rather than the slow, numbing bleed of a thousand cuts on the hands and feet, her pain came in the form of a terrible headache and a feeling rather like the ground was drunkenly fighting with itself as to which direction constituted down. She smacked her lips, noting the taste. "Ugh. My mouth tastes like mud," she muttered to herself in her native tongue.
"Ah, so you weren't babbling incoherently. Being the case, that's some crazy language you've got there," the perky voice instantly set her on edge. Her hands flashed to her side, where the case would dig into her hip when she slept. But it wasn't there. Neither was her robe. Who had done this? What sort of pervert would strip a teenager to her nickers? Her tattooed hands instantly flashed to conceal her rail slender form, somewhat ineffectively. The answer to both of the previous questions came when Nila focused her vision across the fire which burned against the night. Night, eh? She must have been out for a while. "You were out for a while," the stranger pointed out. Yes, idiot, I'd already deduced that, Nila thought to herself.
"Where are my things?" she demanded in Tianxia, since it seemed to be a language in common. The stranger was a girl, by the voice, and dressed in a robe even more concealing than Nila's own. Only a pair of big, brown eyes could be seen through a part in the cowl. The girl nodded to one side, and Nila could see her robe, pristine and black once again, but draped over a misshapen lump near a mound which was obviously a sleeping Ostrich Horse. Her eyes narrowed.
"I didn't touch anything," the girl assured. "Well, except for this."
Nila's eyes went wide when the stranger hefted the plain leather case for her bow, but she quickly switched surprise for derision. What did she care about that thing, anyway? "Is that a threat?" Nila demanded, as the stranger toyed with the weapon.
"Aren't you a paranoid one?" she chirped. Nila could tell she wasn't being perky for the sake of perky; it was just the way her voice was. Much like Mother's always sounded like she was impatiently waiting for you to do what she wanted. "No, I just wanted to take a look at it. I've never seen one of these things in person."
"Si Wongi don't let their weapons fall into outsiders' hands very often," Nila said dismissively. It wasn't a topic she was interested in. "Where are we?"
"A couple dozen miles west of where I found you," she answered. "What's your name?"
"Why?"
"Am I not allowed to know? Is it some sort of tribal taboo thing, like if I know, I'll steal your soul or something?"
"No, it's because you practically stripped me naked and kidnapped me!"
"You spent most of the day sleeping, and if I didn't force water down your throat, you probably wouldn't have bothered waking up," came the response, in the same perky voice, if with a sarcastic undertone. "I'm Tzu Zi."
"Why did you take my clothes?"
"They stank, and we passed a river six hours ago. I figured no point in not cleaning them."
"You had me ride naked in the saddle for how long?" she asked.
Tzu Zi sighed. "First of all, you're not naked. Second of all, would you rather be dressed in filth?" she countered with what Nila could only assume was a smirk under that cowl. Nila tried to answer that, but the only answers either agreed with this stranger, or made Nila seem like some sort of mad derelict. So instead, she glared for all she was worth. "Where are you going?"
"Give me back my bow," Nila said. Tzu Zi shrugged, slipped the weapon back into its case, and idly tossed it over the fire. Nila caught it easily enough, but she was extremely uncomfortable about this whole situation. She was not used to being this exposed. As such, she practically hid behind the case. "What do you want from me? I don't have any money, and I'll open my own arteries before letting you drag me to the auction block!"
"Slavery? Really?" Tzu Zi asked. She scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Mom was right, you people are barbarians."
Nila let out a bit of a laugh at that. "Yeah, we really are."
"So I reiterate. Where are you heading?"
"Funny you use the word reiterate. I doubt many would even know its meaning," Nila said.
"I don't assume everybody I meet is a moron. Is there something wrong with that?" Tzu Zi asked. Nila actually appreciated it, but she wouldn't say as much.
"West. Beyond that, I can't really say."
"Can't or won't?" Tzu Zi asked.
"I ask the same of you," Nila said. Oddly, this was probably the longest conversation she'd ever had with somebody near her own age. Mostly because this Tzu Zi wasn't an ill-educated, vapid trollop, or a muscle-brained, glory-addicted thug.
"I'm going to meet my sister on the coast," Tzu Zi said. She shrugged. "I don't see any reason we can't share a bird as long as it's effective. Aki won't mind. Won't you, Aki?"
The bird let out a snort at that, as though it had been listening in.
"Your sister. On the coast."
"They're running around all over the place," Tzu Zi said idly. "I've got another one somewhere in the north, one joined a circus, I think... and I'm pretty sure one's hiding in Ba Sing Se."
"...How many sisters do you have?"
"Six."
"All older?"
"Technically, we're all the same age," Tzu Zi said with a shrug. Nila tried to figure out how that could possibly work, outside of some truly bizarre calendar manipulation, and failed. After all, it's not like seven children could be born in one... litter? Is that the term? She was going to have to look that up. "So what do you think?"
"About what?"
"Taking the bird to the coast?"
"With you, the pervert who stripped me naked and kidnapped me."
"Sure, why not?"
She looked to the west. Still, despite every whit of her rational mind telling her that she must have overtaken Sharif, that inkling in the back of her mind told her that he had yet outpaced them. "Fine. Fine! But if you try anything else weird, and I'll... Do something unpleasant to you."
"I think the girl doth protest too much," Tzu Zi said lightly, and there was a merry grin in her eyes. Nila answered it by throwing her boot at her.
A man clearing his throat behind her was all the warning that Sativa got. She pulled the last cinch tight on the lizard hound, so that her things wouldn't shift on the creature's broad, low back. While useless for riding, they made good pack animals. Especially since she would dare not hire a sandbender to take her where she needed to go. She turned, clapping the sand and grit off of her callused hands. Sha-Mo, the chief of Sentinel Rock, was barring the path to the winding road down into the Grit Ocean. She stared impassively at him, green eyes meeting green.
"What is the meaning of this?" Sha-Mo asked.
"I was hoping to see you before I left," Sativa said. "It is fortunate you came. This way, I didn't have to seek you out."
"Who is the outsider?" Gashuin demanded with a harsh tone.
"You will still your tongue lest I nail it to the wall, child!" Sativa snapped, a tattooed hand sliding toward the ornate case that rode at her hip. Gashuin only looked more incensed by that, but Sativa honestly didn't care. She turned to Sha-Mo, and gave a shrug, before waving her hand toward her companion. "Since it is obviously your question put through ignorant and ill-tempered lips, this is Piandao, a swordsman, artist, philosopher, and tutor of some repute."
"I haven't heard of him," Gashuin muttered.
"I doubt your generation would," Piandao said evenly. How he looked now was a vast improvement over how he was when he'd arrived. His beard, now trimmed, hugged his jawline, rather than dominating his face. His hair, once straggly, was tied back. Despite the decades, she could see why she had thought him such a handsome man. In a way, he still was. "Are we done here?"
"We have everything of value," she said. She turned back to Sha-Mo. "In three days, somebody will come to collect the contents of my shed. When they do, you will not hinder them in any way. I will be displeased if you do."
"Who do you think you are, ordering a man around?" Gashuin sneered. Sativa silenced him by casually unclasping the flap of her case, letting it droop open. Gashuin wisely shut the hell up.
"A war is coming," Sativa said. "And this is a war the likes of which you have never seen and have no preparation for," Gashuin opened his mouth, so she cast a warning finger at him. "You might have seen battle. You all might have seen battle, blood on the sands and people crying for their mothers. But I promise you, Sha-Mo, you have not seen anything like war. You have not seen the tides of forty thousand men surging through a breach in a line two hundred thousand strong. You have not stood in the fire and the flames, the only smell of blood and ash. You are ignorant children, playing at a game you know almost nothing about, and I have far better things to do than to coach you in the grown-up rules."
"How dare you..." Gashuin began, but this time, when he was silenced, it was for good, because in the space of time between 'dare' and 'you', she pulled the recurve bow from its case, nocked an arrow, and drew it, its point at Gashuin's chest. Just before her knuckles, a wad of cloth clung behind the point.
"This is a crime, Badesh," Sha-Mo pointed out coldly.
"Sativa, is this wise?" Piandao asked.
"What is a crime is the way that my family has been treated for the last decade and a half," Sativa said. "What is a crime is that I have sacrificed much of my life for the safety of my people, and they spit on me. They spit on my children. They spit on my accomplishments, and they spit on my house. I have given you everything I had. You mock my shortcomings, you belittle my gains. You threaten and ostracize my friends, you incite and enrage my enemies. And what is your reason? I am a woman. An unmarried mother."
"Killing us won't change any of that," Sha-Mo said cautiously.
"Why would I kill you? What revenge would that be? I have traveled far, Sha-Mo, far beyond the tiny world with its tiny throne that you sit upon," she said, relaxing her bow and turning it into a brazier. The oiled cloth caught alight. "I have learned many flavors of revenge, in my years. Some of them cold, some hot, some bitter, some sweet. But the greatest revenge – my greatest revenge – is that you are no longer relevant. My revenge is to ignore everything that you are, everything that you stand for. My revenge is being so much better than you in every way, that your every gift becomes an insult, your every word a blasphemy. You have nothing I want. And if I'd been a wiser woman fifteen years ago, I would never have come back. So take back what you gave me, Sha-Mo," She turned, and loosed the arrow back into the house. There was a moment of pristine silence. And then came the explosion, vast and abounding, a fireball rising into the sky, as most of the building was instantly gutted by the spare explosives that Nila had left lying around.
Now wasn't that an odd thing for a mother to be thankful for?
"By all means, collect it at your leisure," she said, sliding the bow back into its case. She gave the lizard hound a cluck of the tongue, and the low beast began to sidle down the path, Piandao giving a wry smirk at the destruction she left in her wake. Without turning back, she shouted. "And don't try to steal the shed's contents for yourself. It's booby-trapped."
"It isn't really, is it?" Piandao asked quietly as the rest of the town rose in alarm at the cacaphony they were leaving in their wake. She spared him a glance, before reaching up and tearing off the coif which she had worn every day for the last three years, and for a contiguous eleven before that. She tossed it idly into somebody's garden, and let her hair, still black as it was when she was a child, fly in the wind. It felt good not to be bound by this stupidity anymore.
"Of course not, but now they won't dare call my bluff," she admitted with a small smirk of her own. It was an odd form to her face. She hadn't smiled much in the last fifteen years. Far less than she had in her youth.
"And the house, was that strictly necessary?" he pressed. She nodded slowly, a sigh leaking from her throat.
"I had many happy memories in that place. But it was vital, because there is now no going back. Thus begins the saving of the world, not with a whisper, but a bang."
"I forgot how poetic you got when the mood took you," Piandao offered.
"It's been a long time since I had an adventure," Sativa said, that smirk growing into a weary smile. "I just hope I'm still up to it."
"I have no doubts in my mind," Piandao said staunchly.
The people must not have wanted what Sativa Badesh bint Seema din Nassar left behind very much, because there wasn't so much as a token effort to snuff the blaze, and it raged for several hours into the mid noon, before the last remnants of wood and volatile chemicals finally burnt away. With the sun directly overhead, it would have been impossible for the shadows of that now-roofless building to hide anything. And yet, somehow, they did.
She stepped out of the shadow, the ragged edges of her yellow and orange kavi fluttering in the updrafts, of hot air rising away from the ruined home. She didn't feel it, not strongly. Not just because of what she was, but because of the unconscious bubble of airbending which now surrounded her. Grey eyes swept across the Inner and Outer Sphere, and beheld the hundreds of newborn fire spirits, motes of red light, dancing heat, disembodied flame. She opened her mouth, and revealed the horrible blackness that was her maw. The spirits knew little in their short existence, and the last thing they knew was terror, as they were dragged by an inexorable gravity into the gullet of something far larger and hungrier than they. Her lips moved, as they always did when she stopped feeding, speaking unconscious and blasphemous prayers which tore the spirits into nothing.
RAVAGING FIRE, DESTROYER OF LIFE, SEARING WHIP, STARVATION OF FORESTS
GEAR OF ANNIHILATION;
FALL TO THE HUNGER OF YOUR RIGHTEOUS MASTER.
BURN, AND BE FORGOTTEN.
Not much of a prayer, but it sated the hunger of that thing which lived inside Malu now. A little, anyway. She had already come far, but the Spirit World was a hungry place. She needed to feed. And this place was... convenient. Most fires only created a trifle. This place was teeming. She looked around, flat grey eyes taking in the building. Something... unusual happened here. She moved, not by walking, but by folding in and out of the world which few others could ever reach. She looked at this room, this husk from fire. It was a smell, a memory of a smell. Void. She tilted her head, like a confused animal. Why would the void come here? She perked up. Unless... unless there was another. A shaman like the Avatar, but less protected? If the thing inside Malu knew how to smile, it would have. But as it was, it simply felt the hunger return. Malu took a step back, into the tiny pool of a noon-day shadow, and her body vanished once more from the mortal world.
Spirits and Souls are very different things. The best way to describe a soul would be a perfectly frictionless sphere, whereas a spirit is more like a 4 year old golf ball. While the golf ball has a lot of useful applications which simply cannot happen with a frictionless sphere, it is also vulnerable to manipulations which the sphere is immune to. That is why shamans can control spirits, but spirits can't (with a few very specific exceptions) cannot control souls. The shaman's soul is also an interesting case; a frictionless sphere cannot meaningfully interact with a golf-ball, since there's not enough grip. But if that sphere has even a patch of it which is 'roughed up', then interaction can take place. A shaman's soul is at least a little bit like a spirit, just enough to give them traction. This can happen because they were born that way, as Sharif was, or because of a traumatic experience with the Spirit World, as Iroh's was. What's the biggest advantage of not being a shaman in 3F-Verse? That thing inside Malu can't eat you.
I'd initially intended for Tzu Zi to be a one-off character, to show up in a couple of chapters, and then get bussed until the end of Book Three (If I get that far, don't get your hopes up). But as I wrote her, it became obvious to me that she had a lot more potential as a foil for Nila, and a means for her to slowly start developing her character. Plus, it helped set up a personal exploration arc for Nila which I'm probably going to enjoy more than some people are. And yes, Nila is more like her mother than either of them is willing to admit. For Sativa's F-U speach, I kinda cribbed from Shylock, but you take what you can get, right? If I can't steal from The Bard, then who can I steal from? I'm already snatching enough from the Russians as it is, considering the amount of Turgor/Tension/The Void and Roadside Picnic that I've been up in lately.
Oh yes, and Azula: That's what happened to her when she was little. Only that time was WAY worse. More will get explained about it as things go on, but you notice how Azula's diction was broken in chapter 2, how she didn't seem to make a lot of sense, and spoke in something approaching word-salad? That's because she was recovering from a milder version of what she faced here. See? Always thinkin' ahead.
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