Three Families Chapter 27: The Ruin, an avatar: last airbender fanfic

I had a lot of fun writing this one. Time will tell if others do, though.

He was atop Appa's howdah, the two of them cutting through the air as so many ships did in the sea below. Hundreds of them. Every single one of them was bright and shining silver, their hulls burning against the darkness ahead of them, and the black, volcanic shores beyond them. The day had come. Invading the Fire Nation. Ending the war.

"Why doesn't this feel right?" Aang asked, as he looked down at the fleets which he was arrayed with and against. The whole thing just seemed... off kilter. For one thing, the ships ahead of him were not belching smoke, but those behind him were bellowing white steam. Silver ships, belching steam and smoke. Black hulls, with red sails. And there was somebody else guiding the bison.

No, not silver ships. He shook his head, and looked down again, those ships weren't silver; they were off-white. He shook his head, trying to understand what he was seeing, the ships of white against the ships of black, and a storm blowing in from the east. "What is going on?" he asked.

"You're awake, thank Agni," a man's voice said from before Aang, holding the reins of the air bison and directing it toward the black ships. He glanced back, and there was indeed another upon the beast's back. But it was no man that he'd ever seen before. He was ropy of build, gaunt of face. His golden eyes were sunken, rimmed by dark circles as though from constant exhaustion. His hair was pulled into a phoenix tail, set by a five-point flame. Aang had seen that flame before... but where? "I worried that they'd finally managed to kill you. Who'd have thought the Avatar so hard to kill, eh?"

"S...who are you?" Aang asked, as he felt a prickly pain in his head.

"That knock was pretty brutal. Just calm down," he said back over his shoulder. "I've got enough trouble trying to get this thing to listen to me," he let out a laugh. "I guess you were right about the bison, eh? Not the easiest beasties to train."

Aang rubbed a hand over his face, but when he did, it didn't feel right. Like his face... wasn't his face. "Where am I?"

"You are safe, Pata. Bhanvara was not willing to let you go so easily, were you Bhan?"

Appa let out a bellow at that. That flame. Where had he seen it before? But before he could get an answer out of his own muddled mind, the red-robed man began to bring the beast into a dive, slashing down through the clouds and toward the flotilla of boats which sailed daringly toward the invading force. "Are you nuts!" Aang asked.

"Pata, you've gotta calm down," the man said, before wheeling Appa to a slow, dropping the beast on the deck of the largest ship of that fleet. Aang's eyes widened with fear as he beheld the standard which fluttered blatant in the winds. A black flame, against a red field. "I told you they wouldn't listen to reason, but you just had to have your way. It's a miracle you got out in one piece."

"This is a Fire Nation ship!" Aang shouted. The driver of the bison nodded, as though that were the most obvious thing on this planet.

"Of course it is. Easterners can't float worth shit, the Whalesh are too busy killing each other, and the Water Tribes are too far away. We hold them here, or the Fire Nations fall," he said. Aang looked around, and saw that other ships had other standards. A five pointed golden flame against purple. A red dragon against black. A blue dragon against black. Even a tree, depicted with its leaves ablaze, all different standards, fluttering both on a line under the largest and clearest, and fluttering alone on different ships throughout the flotilla. A soldier in black and red leather armor ran to the man, bowing deep, his fist to his heart. "Report!"

"This force is almost the whole of the Storm Kings' naval assets. They outnumber us three to one. What are my orders, Fire Lord?" he asked quickly. And right then, as Aang slipped down the beast's back, he knew that flame. That headpiece, propped up in his phoenix tail was the signet of rulership over the Fire Nation.

"Only three to one, eh?" He asked. He scratched at his chin. "What do you think of our chances, Pata?"

"Storm Kings?" Aang asked. He finally looked down at his hands, and his eyes widened, when he beheld that they were both far darker than his own, and that they bore not the blue arrow of an Air Nomad, but the scarlet points of the Storm King. Even as he did, a part of him drifted out, and he was both being and seeing the scene at the same time. Vajrapata shook her head, taking a deep breath. "They have not sat on their laurels since I destroyed their capacity to fly. They have... strange airships. I do not control the sky. This will not be a level fight."

"Then we'll cheat," the Fire Lord said simply. He offered her a hand, which she eagerly took. "You know the Virtues of Flame almost as well as I do. In the end, Valor. Send them to their Hell so buried under the bodies of our dead that they shall never move again!"

"Those are... were... my people," Vajrapata said quietly, and the Fire Lord paused.

"I know, Pata. But this is the only way it can go now. We're out of options," He looked across the gap, to the white steam-ships which powered toward them. "We fight or we die, slaves eternal to an airbender empire."

Vajrapata nodded, and sighed, and tears began to roll down her cheeks.

Aang finally felt himself pulled free of Vajrapata completely, and hovered, spectral and incredibly confused above the scene. Piece by piece, as he looked around, he started to understand. The Fire Nation ship was all blackened wood, its weapons primitive, its soldiers clearly desperate, but there was hope in their eyes. Whatever wrath had overtaken the Fire Nation, it would be a much later thing. Right now, these people were fighting for freedom from oppression.

He was looking at a past life. Vajrapata leaned in, and wept on the Fire Lord's shoulder, and he comforted her. Moving in from the fringes, a man bearing the golden circle of Ba Sing Se laid another, comforting hand on her shoulder, while to her other side came a woman. Her robes were scarlet, a hood over her head, but still showing the blue-painted face. She laid an also blue-stained hand on the Avatar's other shoulder. But Aang turned, and he could see a line growing in the sky, something which nobody else could. They all went about their tasks, preparing for the battle which was, in Aang's time, long decided and forgotten. The line was a straight, black wound in the heavens, which finally opened in a snap, and a rush of power, revealing red and virulent black, an eye the size of the sky.

AVATAR.

Aang felt himself being dragged away from the vessel, up toward that impossible thing which waited above him, immense, powerful, and unimaginable. It pulled him until the fleet below him was a dusting of black flakes and a dusting of white, like a Pai Sho board abandoned upon the ocean. Aang felt his spectral body confined, constrained. He looked up at that thing, staring into that scarlet abyss. And when he did, it stared back at him. There was a blink, slamming shut with power and immensity which beggared Aang's understanding. An ebon cord began to drift down from that being in the sky, and it reached to where Aang was floating. He pulled as much as he could away from it, but there was no purchase, and no give in its grip. When it touched him, he screamed.

HUNGER.

He was a leaf on the wind, in this thing's presence. It overwhelmed and swamped him, it beat him down and set his skin ablaze. But even as it did, Aang knew it. It wasn't just a spirit, angry or not. It was something much more than that.

This was Imbalance itself, given thought and action. The void caused by a century of his absence... but it was more than that. It was growing bigger by the day. All things in balance could last forever, in one form or another, but this thing had no balance. It could either grow or die, and it grew. It would grow until it was all that was. Until there was nowhere left to grow.

Then, the agony in Aang's soul ended, as he felt a powerful hand close on his upper arm, and his body was torn from the ebon grasp of Imbalance, and cast down toward the world, which had vanished into grey murk. Aang opened his eyes, and he beheld Korra, eyes glowing white with the Avatar's Bequest, staring after him, her gaze cast over her shoulder, as her arms began to spin through a mudra, lightning crackling around her fingers.

"THE DESERT!" the roar of a thousand voices came from her throat. One of those voices Aang himself. She launched forward, and with a crack of lightning, the might of Imbalance faltered, just a little. Just enough.

…

Aang's scream upon awakening tore through the camp, the colors to his eyes wholly too vibrant. He bounded out of his sleeping bag and kicked the boulder which Toph had slid into place to keep their sleeping place covert. Much to his surprise the stone didn't just roll away, empowered by airbending that he half expected, but exploded into grit and dust, which the winds instantly pulled away. "Wake up!" he shouted, his heart hammering in his chest, his voice echoing the legion.

"What happened? Did we get captured again?" Sokka's extremely drowsy voice came from the cave.

"Oh my gods, Aang!" Katara said.

"What? What's up with Twinkletoes?" Toph asked, being the only one already up completely.

"We need to go to the desert!" Aang, and hundreds of others said, and with a stomp of his foot, the earth catapulted the howdah from the ground to Appa's back, launched by a pillar of stone with the precision and skill which Aang himself utterly lacked.

"What's... Aang, why are you glowing?" Sokka then asked, emerging from the darkness. Aang looked down at himself, and started. His tattoos were glaring brighter than the morning sun, bathing the campsite with an otherworldly, evanescent light. Aang mastered his heart, the screaming in his head, the call to heedless haste. And when he did, the light dimmed, dimmer, gone.

"That was the Avatar State," Katara said, wiping the sleep from her eyes even as she got to her feet and moved to him. "What happened, Aang? What's this about a desert?" she asked. Aang looked to the northeast, past the Huang Zheng mountains, to where the Southern Earth Kingdoms gave way to the plains. "Aang, please, talk to us."

"We have go to now," Aang said urgently.

"Heh, sounds like somebody wants out of earthbending training," Toph said cockily.

The truth was, her earthbending lessons were about a tenth as unpleasant as Bumi's 'lessons' had been, but were still exhausting enough to have him drop like a sack at the end of every day he did them. And he still couldn't move a pebble, aggravatingly. But that was the least of his concerns. "The Avatars spoke to me," Aang said, patting the upset air bison which was understandably unhappy to have a howdah awaken it from its slumber. Appa calmed and quieted slightly at that. "They couldn't talk long, but there's somewhere I need to go. A desert."

"Si Wong," Toph said. "Why go to Si Wong? All they've got is perfume and misogyny."

"I don't know, but I'm convinced that I'll know what I'm looking for when I find it," Aang said. "And you should stay here. In case this is too–"

"Not a chance," Toph said, arms crossed before her.

"Nope, if you're going somewhere, we're going with you," Sokka said.

"Aang, you have to know, no matter what, you are not alone in this. You're stronger with us than without us," Katara said.

Aang looked at them, and hung his head. "Thanks, guys," he said. "Now we have to hurry. They don't contact me like that unless it's really important and..."

"We get it," Sokka said, dressing swiftly. "I guess we'd better get used to sand and heat. Sounds like a vacation, am I right, sis?"

"Oh... shut up," she said at a mutter, arms crossed before her.

It was good to be king.

While Zhao wasn't going to openly advertise his position as King of the North, he certainly had all of the perks which came with it. The blasted ice was all washed away, replaced by insulated metal, and his throne was no longer a dais of blue stone, but a proper, scarlet pedestal and baldachin, capped with the black, tripoint flame. With the elimination of ice from places of structural significance, he was able to pipe the heat left over from foundaries, which he assembled right beside the palace, into the palace proper, making the place as warm and toasty as any villa in the Fire Nation, if a great deal drier.

"No incidents of rebellion today, either, Lord Zhao," Kwon said with his usual, bored tone.

"Either the fight has finally gone out of them completely, or they're all frozen to death in the glaciers," Zhao said with a dismissive gesture. It had been a week since their last attempt, and that attempt had been bloody, but ended with every actor on the other side a burnt-up husk. "What about the miners?"

"They report an outstanding wealth of alumin and adamant, enough to build an entire ship out of Tribal Steel if we wanted to," Kwon said without eagerness. "They report 'it's like the Tribesmen don't even know how to mine'."

"Likely, they didn't," Zhao said. He flicked the page forward, noting the translations which were in place. He'd cracked her cypher months ago. Now it was just a matter of applying that translation throughout everything his oracle had written down. He gave an exhale of annoyance, that he was cut off from any writings she was producing now, any art which glimpsed the days yet to be, but he would make due with what he had.

He reached aside, and picked up his master copy, and when he did, he spotted something on its back cover. He lifted the book closer, in the blazing light from the lamps which surrounded his dais. There was a smudge on the back of the book he didn't remember before. A fingernail peeled it up, and it smelled of dried blood. He gave a glance around the room, but reminded himself that anybody who was going to copy his books would not be present now. And for all he knew, that smudge had been there for quite a while. It'd been weeks since he needed to go back to his baseline. He shook his head, and ran his finger through the pages, until he found the one he wanted.

"Ah, there we go," Zhao said. "The Great Divide, in so many words."

"Lord Zhao?" Kwon asked.

"Bring in the archers," Zhao ordered. Kwon nodded, and then made his way out of the room. A few moments later, a cadre of the red-masked archers, famous from ancient times and yore, moved swiftly to the base of his throne. As one, they bowed to him, an arrow head pointing toward him, his weapon to deploy as he saw fit.

"You called the Yu Yan?" the leader asked.

"Yes," Zhao said. "You will make all haste to the Great Divide, directly north of the dead city of Si Cheng. The Avatar will be passing through that area soon enough. Make sure he does not reach where he's going."

"As you command, my Lord," the Yu Yan archer said with proper respect and expedience. With a clap of his fist to his heart, he turned on his heel, and peeling back behind him, that arrow inverted itself, flying away from its master, into the heart of the Avatar. Zhao settled back into his throne, resting his chin upon his fist, and rereading what the Princess had given him. As he did, the fires flickered, casting a shadow across the burn on his face, and the cruel smile on his lips.

Chapter 7

The Ruin

The crashing of the sea against the hull was terrible, but it often was these days. Not like when Iroh was young; of all those in his immediate family, only he still remembered what the Fire Nation was like before the rains came, and stayed, and even then, it was a thing of a few years. The seas had indeed become almost untameably wild in the years since, and having a ship of this size upon it in those hellish storms was asking for trouble.

"We should have stayed in port," Qiao muttered from where she sat on the edge of the bed, her arms pulled close around her ribs. It was not the first storm the two of them had weathered, and likely would not be the last one. At least she didn't look so positively green as she used to. Her sea legs were a long time in coming, his poor departed wife.

"It will be alright," he said comfortingly, riding the heaving of the decks with aplomb. He rubbed her back where she sat, and she made that lovely little moan she did when he reached a worrisome spot, and leaned back into him. "We have suffered worse."

"Was the weather this bad the first time we came back to the East?" she asked.

"No, it was worse," Iroh confirmed. And doubly worse, because the first time she returned to her home continent, it was as part of a vanguard which was arrayed against Ba Sing Se. That had not been a good 'trip'. Not by any imagining. "You should lay down. You need your strength."

"Please, I've been sicker than this a dozen times," Qiao dismissed, waving the notion aside. "But you've got something else on your mind, don't you?"

"This is about you, my wife," Iroh began, but she cast a glance over her shoulder at him, and he fell silent. "Very well. What is your question?"

"Don't start with that," Qiao said. "If you answered every question I had, you'd still tell me less than a tenth of what I deserve to know. So you're going to tell me what's weighing so heavy on your mind."

Iroh had to nod at that. She was right. He was too private by a half, with everybody. "It is about Prince Zuko," he said. Qiao sighed. "What is it?"

"You spend a lot of time on the boy. Are you trying to replace Lu Ten with him?" she asked.

"Are you trying to replace him with Azula?" Iroh snapped, before wincing. Qiao turned, gaping at him. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said..."

"No. I'm surprised you actually said it, but I can't blame you for it," she said. She stood, and started pacing slowly, and unsteadily as her path was coopted from time to time by the ship's movement. "I worry about Azula. She's talking again, and that's excellent, but it seems like she's missed so much. I mean... she was already pulled out of her classes for three years before your brother exiled her. And she seems so... angry, so irritable and tense. It's almost like she knows what she's supposed to be, and hates herself for not being it."

"I had certain expectations of Azula. They've been utterly debunked," Iroh admitted. He gave a bitter laugh. "So much that I had expected has not come to pass."

"I know," Qiao said. She sighed, and then nodded toward him. "So what has your mind in a tizzy about Zuko?"

"It's not a 'tizzy'," Iroh said. "I'm just... surprised at him. He is growing up too fast. He is becoming too... adult."

"He was a teenager when his father cast him out," Qiao said. "I wasn't much older when you met me."

"Yes, but it's almost like he's fixated on his sister. I don't know what to do about that," he said.

"Nothing," Qiao said. Iroh looked to her. "You will do nothing. For the first time in their lives, they are brother and sister in more than just blood, and that has you afraid? I'd ask what was wrong with your family, if I didn't already know; the fact is, this is the way families are supposed to be. Brothers are supposed to want to protect sisters. That's the order of things."

Iroh nodded slowly at that. "Perhaps... but I worry that it might be deeper than that," Iroh said simply. "That there might be something driving him beyond filial love."

"Why?"

"It is hard to explain," he said. "I just believe he's putting too much emphasis on her, he is unbalancing his life."

She rolled her eyes at that. "Oh, you and your balance. If everything was balanced, when would anything interesting happen?"

Iroh was about to make another point when there was a tapping at the door to their room, which caused husband and wife to share a confused glance. Doubly so when it wasn't followed by a voice. Qiao, already standing, took the door and opened it a crack. Iroh could see her eyes widen at what she beheld. "Is something wrong? Oh, you look ghastly..."

"What is..." Iroh began, but Qiao opened the door further and showed Azula, her eyes puffy and red, as though from long and helpless weeping, and she clutched something to her chest. She stepped into the room, and looked up to her.

"I... I need..." she said stutteringly, before Qiao tutted and pulled the girl into an embrace, which the girl looked entirely too in-need of. Iroh just stared at the spectacle with the sort of baffled interest of watching a whole school of trouts climbing up a tree. Azula distressed was common enough. Azula openly weeping was a whole other beast.

"It's alright, Azula. What's wrong? Did you have another bad dream?" the older woman asked soothingly. After a moment of deep, harsh breaths obviously intended to keep sobs at bay, Azula pulled back, and turned that piece away from her chest, showing it to her aunt. "Oh... Oh, I see."

"May I?" Iroh asked, moving to them. Azula's eye twitched at his voice, and the glance she shot him was in its first instant utterly venomous, before dulling to it's usual dislike and distance. Qiao cooed at her, and she finally turned the picture toward her uncle, and Iroh was taken aback by its subject matter. The portrait was a masterpiece, a thing of hours and hours of work, but it portrayed Azula herself, chained, battered, and destitute. Alone in the blackness, with only the heavy chains which constrained her to keep her company.

"Is this why you missed dinner, and breakfast?" Iroh asked idly reaching toward that portrait. The agony, the pain, the despair of that work was so clear it was palpable, almost like a scent which filled the air. Qiao shot him a look at that.

"I couldn't st-stop until it was finished," Azula said, that odd accent which had infected her regained use of the Huojian language quite thick today. "I can't look at it. I don't want this..."

"Oh, you poor thing," Qiao said, pulling Azula back in for a second embrace. She pulled the painting from between them, and handed it to Iroh. "Azula, we're going to put this over here, in this drawer. Is that alright?"

Azula nodded mutely, against Qiao's chest. It was a strange thing that she actively rebelled against any of her works being destroyed, even though so many of them were discomforting or actively painful for her to be near. And he didn't understand it then.

But he did now.

Iroh rubbed the shiny, ivory button between his finger and thumb, as he looked off into the distance, and back in time, drawing up memories from so long ago. He hadn't known then, but every single picture she'd made, in the course of her entire youth, was an attempt to purge her mind of memories which didn't belong there. The more that Iroh pondered on it, the more he was convinced that the Azula who now strode a few paces behind him, her eyes burning a metaphorical hole through the back of his skull, was wholly the invader of his niece, where the girl who had done so much painting and poetry was the girl he had known from her infancy, but under a hellish burden of... well...

"Don't think I'm going to give you an inch of leeway, traitor," Azula said behind him.

"One cannot be a traitor for something he has never believed in," Iroh said over his shoulder easily, as the two of them walked north, through the insistent but acceptable wind. The older Azula, that was the infection which needed to be purged, so that the true Azula, the proper Azula, could return. But, Iroh considered, that the Azula which returned to them might not be the same one which they had come to know over the years. That was why Iroh was so pensive, so cautious. He was hesitant to harm his niece, because failing anything else, he wanted to do proud the last wishes of his wife. But if things came down to Azula or the world, the girl would not worry the scales long. It was less a matter of could he kill the girl, if the need arose; it was purely a matter of 'would the need arise'?

Because it would murder his nephew as surely as her.

"You're not being awfully talkative today," Azula noted.

"I thought you preferred me to walk in silence?" Iroh asked with a smirk cast back at the girl.

"I would prefer you to walk in a different direction," Azula muttered.

"Then stop following me," Iroh offered. He could feel her glaring at him. Then, with a few strides, she overtook him and started walking at the fore, leaving him behind, even as she quietly muttered to herself under her breath, glaring down at something which to Iroh's eyes, was not there. "Does that suit you better?"

"No, because now you're following me!" Azula snapped.

"What do you believe will happen when you have your revenge?" Iroh asked.

"It will be over."

"That was not an answer," Iroh stated. "When you find the Avatar, what will you do?"

"Oh, I'll think of something," she said, sweeping a hand down and up, until electricity crackled along her fingertips.

"That is not a plan," Iroh said. "What happened when you tried to take the Avatar with the help of your brother and I at Summavut? He escaped. What happened when you tried to murder the earthbender girl on your own? You nearly burned to death! You never think things through anymore. It is disgraceful."

She turned to face her uncle, a snort of blue flames emitting from her nostrils as she glared at him with eyes burning almost as hot. "You know nothing of disgrace, you fat, stupid old man," she said harshly. "You haven't earned the right to use that word."

"Then educate me. What will you do when you face the Avatar again?" he asked. "How will you surmount the layers of defense he gathers? How will you place yourself in a killing position? How will you fulfill your deed? How will you escape the scene of the crime once you have finished?"

"I..." she shook her head. "I'll think of it when it matters."

"The Azula I knew had a plan for everything," Iroh said.

"Then maybe you should ask the worthless eight-year-old you so value, then! Maybe she can sit and look pretty and be quiet, because that's what everybody wanted out of her. A doll, to be seen and then put away when important things happened," Azula snapped, which caused Iroh a moment's pause, especially considering she wasn't exactly wrong. Azula shook her head with annoyance. "You never understood me, Uncle, not now nor then. I will succeed where the girl failed."

"The girl didn't fail," Iroh pointed out. "She never had a chance to."

"And she never will," Azula said, but her tone wasn't quite as brutal as Iroh expected, and feared; it was not the tone which would have seen the old man pull lightning of his own. It was dark, grim, but it was hope.

Iroh fell back into silence, and the two unwilling companions continued to walk, north and through the mountains.

"Have you seen it yet?" Sokka asked from the back of the bison, as he tied the light shirt from under his vest 'round his head, if only to keep the sun from baking it to a prune. Even as it inched toward the horizon, it was still oppressively hot.

"I'm still looking, Sokka," Aang said from his place upon Appa's brow. "The desert's a bit bigger than I remember it being."

"Not surprising," Toph muttered from where she sat, knees tucked to her chest, in the back of the howdah. "The land 'round here hasn't gotten much annual rainfall at the best of times, and ever since the Great Drought began, the grasses have died off and the soil gives way to sand. And so, a desert gets bigger."

"Is it just me, or do things just seem to keep getting worse?" Katara asked, sweating herself into a puddle near the front of the saddle.

"Positive reinforcement," Sokka said with a shrug. "Any system which doesn't get reined in, just keeps going faster and faster."

"That's not what positive reinforcement is," Katara said.

"Well, it's one definition," Sokka answered her, somewhat testily. He then turned back to Toph, who at least wasn't going to treat him like an idiot. "Alright, where were we?"

"The prayer for the dead, I think," Toph answered. Sokka looked over the rubbings he'd made in Oma's Tomb, and spotted the point she was talking about. Slowly but surely, she was teaching him how to read a language thought three thousand years dead.

"By our ancestors who broke their shields against the white-haired menace from the north, they have settled into the soil, and their strength now reaches up into our feet. In our struggles, they give us strength. Their bodies, their souls from below, they bid up the grains and the rices, and they ask us endure beyond what they could, to bring honor and pride to those who yet remain..." Sokka went on in the dead language.

"Yeah, that's a lot like what we use now, if a bit more... grim," she said. Toph perked her head up after a moment of pondering. "Wait a minute; white-haired menace from the north?"

"Uh-huh, that's what it says right here," Sokka said. Toph started grinning at that.

"Well. I guess the Wiqing weren't just a myth and fireside horror story after all. Does it say anything else about them in there?" Toph pressed.

Sokka looked over the thing, but shook his head. "Sorry, Toph. I think that's the only thing I've got on hand."

"Oh. Well," she sighed and turned. "Take a break, Brain. I've got some thinkin' to do."

Sokka shrugged, and slid the rubbings back into the protective case which Toph demanded he obtain to protect them. Much as he liked the notion of learning something – potentially something which hadn't been known for thousands of years – the process of running every bit of information past Toph, who had a spectacular education in history for her age, was exhausting. Doubly so since she demanded every moment she wasn't training with the Avatar, and she had a lot more stamina than the rest of the group put together. Sokka left his rapidly dehydrating sister and hopped the rail, landing beside the highly focused Avatar, as the bison below them skudded through the air swiftly but with ease. "So... are we there yet?" Sokka asked.

"I'm not even completely sure where 'there' is," Aang admitted uneasily, his grey eyes continuing to swing along the horizon, looking for anything which wasn't more damned sand! "I mean, she only had time to say one thing, about the desert. And the desert's... well, it's not small, now is it?"

"Long as we don't fly into the Rotting Expanse to the north, we'll be fine," Toph's voice came over the rail.

"Oh, I know all about that," Aang said. Then he paused. "Unless that's where I'm supposed to go."

"Wait, what's the Rotting Expanse?" Sokka asked.

"It's a place no airbender is to ever fly," Aang said. "It doesn't seem to affect the bison, but any man or woman who goes in there dies slowly and painfully not long after leaving. Brother Pathik once said that there was an evil air there, and I'm not going to doubt his expertise, since he's lived pretty near it for..." he trailed off. "But then again, by now, he's probably gone."

"Hey, don't get down," Sokka said. "Avatar Kyoshi lived to be two hundred and thirty. Bumi's still around! Who's to say that Pathik couldn't swing right past a century?"

Aang gave a chuckle, and a slight smile came to his face. "Yeah... maybe you're right."

"Of course I am," Sokka gave the airbender a hearty clap on the back which almost pitched the kid forward. Toph was right. He was pretty spindly. "I'm guessing, then, that this thing we're looking for is a 'you'll know it when you see it' kind of deal?"

"I have to assume."

"GUYS! I SEE IT!" Toph shouted from the rail, pointing into the distance. Instantly, Sokka was back up onto the howdah, leaning forward to pick out what she'd spotted, but there was nothing over there but the endless scrolling of the sand seas. Sokka's sudden excitement dropped into annoyance, and he turned to Toph, who was now leaning back, with the most smug smile on her face. "That's what it'll sound like when one of you finds it," she said, waving a hand before her useless eyes again to prove her point.

"Very funny, Toph," Katara groused, and slumped back into the spot she made a raisin of herself upon.

"You should drink something," Sokka said. "You'll get dehydrated at this rate."

"I drink constantly. I haven't used the bathroom since we reached the desert!" Katara moped. In fact, the longer they spent here, the weaker she seemed to get, and her pallor was starting to become unsettlingly grey. "I don't like this place."

"I think it's nice enough. Nice and warm. Plenty of sunshine. Bit dry though," Sokka opined.

"Please. There's only one cloud in the sky and it's probably just a dust-storm," Katara said, pointing over Sokka's shoulder. Sokka spared it a glance, and then that glance became a double take. "See? Bad weather."

"No," Sokka said. He dug through their pack at the back of the howdah, until he extracted the spyglass he'd stolen from the Fire Nation months before, and peered through it. "That's... not a duststorm."

"Then what is it, o-holder of the telescope?" Toph asked from where she sat aponder.

He focused in on that cloud, orange against an indigo sky. It was close enough to the color of sand that a passing glance might have mistaken it, but Sokka wasn't just giving this thing a passing glance. So when it struck down with a violet bolt of lightning, lancing at something beyond the horizon, while it did drive Sokka to a blink, he knew something was off. What thunderheads would there possibly be in a desert like this? "How close are we to the edge of the desert?" Sokka asked.

"Actually, we're near the center of the southern portion," Aang answered from the bison. "What is that? I can't see that far..."

Sokka continued to watch, and as he did, the whole cloud shifted, boiling in and around itself, until it turned from the dusty-orange to an infected-wound pink, then into greens, which was about when Sokka stood in place. "Aang, remember how you'd 'know it when you saw it'?"

"Yeah?" the Avatar asked.

"I think I just saw it," Sokka said. "Its that cloud right over there. We should check that out."

Appa banked easily toward the cloud, which grew larger and larger in their unaided vision, until it suddenly winked out, like it had realized it was being watched and decided to hide. Sokka gave Aang a glance from the howdah, one which was returned in confused kind. "Did that just...?"

"Keep going," Sokka said. He pointed down. "The lightning burnt the sand into glass. We follow the glass, we find where that cloud came from."

"What kind of cloud disappears into thin air?" Aang asked.

"All of them?" Toph posited from Sokka's side. They all turned to her. "What? That's kinda what a cloud does."

"She's not wrong, Aang," Sokka said. "But this wasn't a normal cloud."

"Well, you have fun chasing clouds," she said, before shuddering for a moment. "Gods, what was that?"

"I didn't feel anything," Sokka said.

"No, I felt it, too," Katara groused, rising from the pool she'd been forming, and staring at the horizon. Aang, though, was wincing as though he were in a degree of physical discomfort. "Aang? What's wrong?"

"It just felt like somebody kicked me right in the bending," Aang said. "Sokka, are you sure you didn't feel that?"

"Nope. I feel great," Sokka offered. "Must be a bender thing."

"Lucky bugger," Toph noted. She shook her head. Then, her eyes went wide. "AANG DIVE NOW!"

With a clipped yelp, Aang followed her order, dropping the bison and all those aboard it roughly a dozen feet, landing Sokka at least with a jarring of teeth and a rolling of eyes. "Wh..." Sokka tried to illucidate.

"What was that about, Toph?" Katara asked.

"There was acid in the air," Toph said, her head swinging around. "I could feel it! How can that be right? Acid doesn't just hang in the air!"

Sokka looked to the horizon again, and this time, just peeking over it, was something which stood against the oppressive blue of the sky. "Yeah, I think I could feel it, too," Aang said unsteadily. "It felt like... burning."

"Yeah," Toph offered with a nod, useless eyes fixated ahead of them all.

"Anybody care to explain how a blob of acid could hang invisibly in the air?" Sokka asked dryly as he brought that lens up again. There as a rock ahead of them. Of course, calling it a rock, as evidenced through the scope, was something of a disservice to the word. It was more obvious once he recognized what those semi-regular shapes along its edge were. Towers. The whole edge of the rock was in fact a wall, clad with a faded blue metal which was warped up its side. "Maybe that town might be able to tell us more."

"Town?" Katara asked. Oddly, despite her discomfort, she actually looked better of condition than she had been before they'd taken this detour. Sokka nodded, and pointed ahead of them. As he did, a new set of clouds boiled up as though reacting to their trespass, purple and green and orange, belching down violet lightning bolts. Then, the act of fury and defiance given, the clouds boiled away to nothing once again.

"Did... did you guys see that, too?" Aang asked.

"Yeah, Aang," Sokka said.

"What is this place?" Katara asked.

"I think that's something a closer look will answer," Aang offered. "This place has to be the place the Avatars wanted me to go!"

Sokka looked ahead, but all he could feel was a sinking sensation his stomach as that great stone grew larger in their vision. He might not be a bender of the four elements, but he knew one thing with an almost mystical precision. He knew when things were going to go wrong.

Sharif stared down at himself, the steady in and out of his own breathing as he slept. The others would be close by. His sister was keeping an eye on him; well, to be more accurate, she was watching him like a fire-hawk, but then again, in the state he was in at the moment, he could understand it. He wasn't exactly the easiest person to keep focused, and the great expanse of the Divide had no end to dangers along its twisting length. Crumbling rocks were only the most obvious and gradual of them. Ordinarily, they would have been fighting off canyon crawlers the whole trip through, but the others were taking care of that for the beleaguered and tired humans.

As Sharif paced silently around himself, Grey Voice tracked his motions. Again, not surprising. Grey Voice had once been a companion to a shaman, and as Patriarch had said, shamans seemed to 'rub off' on those spirits which surround them.

You should be sleeping, Scarred Child.

Sharif turned, finally catching a glimpse of Patriarch himself. The stallion looked almost as weary as the travelers, but for different reasons. "I think it is time, Patriarch. If it is what you want, then I can do something to end this."

I do not understand. I should not have endured as I have. Do you know a way to end this?

Sharif nodded. "I do... but it will be dangerous."

I have already died. There is no great terror in it for me. I simply wish things put as they were supposed to be. I wish an end.

"This doesn't have to be the end," Sharif said.

Yes, it does. It is the way. Beasts live until they don't. There is no eternal thereafter. I wish an end.

"If that's what you want, then please, follow me," Sharif said. Patriarch, though, turned and gave a glance toward Grey Voice. The ancient mare's head tilted slightly, somewhere between inquisition and affirmation. Whatever 'words' passed between dead stallion and geriatric bird were not for Sharif's ears, and he did not attempt to intercept them. Patriarch then turned back to the human, and gave a very human nod. Sharif took a deep breath, and reached up between them, as though taking hold of the fabric of reality. Then, with teasing fingers, he eased it apart, like separating two sheets which had stuck together while drying. The spot in the air where he did was far darker, now, a hanging hole in reality, and one which would not last long. "Go through," Sharif said.

Sharif followed after the bird, and released his teasing fingers, letting the hole in reality fade away. In truth, he personally hadn't needed to do that to reach this place. But Patriarch was an animal spirit, and precious few of them ever learned the weaving ways into the True Spirit from where they resided in the Outer Sphere. As Sharif was not the Avatar, and could not become The Bridge, he had to make due with the holes which already existed.

This place feels sickened.

Sharif nodded. "It is, Patriarch," he answered. He started walking, following the buzzing in his head, operating on an instinct that even his artificially restored mind could not conceive or contemplate. But he knew for a fact that this was the way. It was the only one which could be. He walked amidst the waters which flowed through this gully in the Spirit World, moving ever closer to the center of the realm. The waters became... livelier, though, as he walked. It was something which caused him to stop outright, feeling the minute shift of current against his calves. Patriarch paused, behind him.

Why do you stop, Scarred Child?

"The water is flowing," Sharif said. "It never flowed before."

Is it a threat?

"I don't know, Patriarch," Sharif answered somewhat uselessly. He furrowed his brow, and pressed on, against that tiny current, and into the heart of the Spirit World. The minutes of wending up the stream turned into hours, a heady distance covered in this strange and illogical place. But the water continued to burble softly, and Sharif's mind continued to ask 'why?', as though he could both come up with an answer, and then retain it so it could be useful. In truth, he was doubly damned in that regard. Once he dismissed his artificial brain, he wouldn't likely even notice the water, let alone have the faculties to wonder at it. Sharif shook his head with aggravation. Whatever gods there were obviously mocked him, giving him such a talent and such a mind, before cruelly snuffing both with one strike of a hatchet. Sharif rubbed at the scar on his head, the ever-present reminder of who he could have been. Would have been. Never was.

The grim ponderings of the youth with the false-brain bore him straight up out of the rivers, into the headlands surrounding the Black City. He paused for a moment, glancing back at Patriarch. "This is a dangerous place. Why am I coming here?"

You are the guide in this world, Scarred Child. I am as a chick from the egg.

Sharif sighed, and walked, but hitched himself, and glanced aside, at an overlook of the sunken mockery of a mortal cityscape which dropped away from them. "That doesn't look natural..." Sharif said to himself, crossing the distance to the tree quickly, running a hand up its glowing blue bark. It hummed electric at him as he did, and its leaves were living sparks. For all its vibrancy, it felt... weak. Not just weak, but quiet. Like it was hiding itself. And considering what it was, and where it was, not surprising. "'Nothing exists there you do not plant yourself'," he quoted the shaman who had given that tidbit of knowledge. Who, then, planted this? Sharif shook his head. "This cannot be the right place. I will try again."

Have haste, Scarred Child. The urge to flee comes strongly from this place. I will not be able to restrain myself much longer.

Sharif nodded, and teased apart the world once again, ushering the bird through before him. When he released the sheets of what was, and turned, he gave a gasp of shock.

It seems your instincts are proven and sound.

Sharif was standing in Sentinel Rock. He was spectral and blue, as was Patriarch, but the streets were much the same as they had been left. To a point, at least. There had been much unmade about the fortress blocking southerly passage to Si Wong in those last terrible minutes. The heart of the stone had mushroomed out to the north, rupturing like a popped corn kernel, revealing to the greenish-brown sky what was once buried deep under the sandstone. The metalled walls still stood, though, if bent drastically out of shape. Even the buildings held a mockery of their original appearance. He could remember this street. It was the walk between Mother's house and Darvesh al'Jalani, the highest priest of this settlement. Even so, Ashan's grandfather was the better respected of the two. "I know the way," he said. "I think."

Do not think. Know.

Sharif rolled his eyes, and began to walk the streets, wending around hazards which no mere mortal eye could behold, but would afflict Sharif's sleeping astral body as harmfully as it could strike flesh and bone. The streets bent out of the shapes they were intended to, and his path became muddled. Doubly so when he had to outright abandon a path because the hazards, those 'witches jelly' and 'fruit punches' that his sister had so amusingly named, became too thick to pass for anything larger than a mouse. But provenance guided Sharif's feet, and fate his path. While his sister staunchly disbelieved in all things spiritual and outside of science, Sharif's view was slightly more open. He had to. It was the only way he could live. He turned a corner, to a street which now sloped down starkly and to the south, despite how it had, in his youth, run east-west and been flat as a pool of molten tin.

"There you are," Sharif said, pointing down that street, to the carnage which still lay there, abandoned in the streets. The bodies did not rot nor truly mummify, and there were no animals to speak of to scavange them, but considering the blasphemy Sharif visited on their remains, there was despite all that little left to assault the senses. Once the Blood left their bodies, there was almost nothing left but ashes, vaguely in the shape of what the holder of the Blood once was. But one shape was unlike the others. Undrained, unashened, and undisturbed.

It is a strange thing to stand over one's own corpse.

Sharif nodded at Patriarch's observation, at the great and powerful Patriarch prodding at the mangy, abandoned refuse which was his own body for forty years. "You are sure this must be the way of things? I don't know if..."

All things must end, Scarred Child. That is the way of things, the great bird said somberly. This is how it must be, for all. I do not fear what comes, because I know it is right.

"But is it?" Sharif asked.

Don't second guess your elder, the bird replied with something like sarcasm in its dark eyes. I have seen much, and I have seen enough. I am not human. Let it end.

"As you wish, Patriarch of the Proudest Brood," Sharif said. He reached down, laying a hand upon the still and vacant corpse of Patriarch, and reached the other back up to where Patriarch was, but couldn't quite make the distance. With a grumble in its throat, the great bird lowered itself to the ground, bending down its head, its eyes pressed closed. "I will miss you."

Then let my memory be my immortality. I would want nothing more.

Sharif felt a tear in his eye, strange as it was that he had no tear-ducts in his spectral body. He took in a deep breath, and blew a gentle breath toward the glowing form of Patriarch. As though fine dust baked into place, struck by a breeze, Patriarch's corpus broke down, drifting away as smoke in the winds. Sharif opened his eyes, and beheld that the corpse of Patriarch was the only thing of the great bird left. His spirit had passed into whatever there was for spirits after death, itself a mystery that none could answer. "Goodbye, Patriarch."

Sharif rose, and resolved to look upon his homeland, and his birthplace, one final time. He would never come here again; of that, he was as certain as the dawn. He prepared to step through the folds as he could do as easily as thought, but paused. And turned. And saw something he didn't expect.

"Sharif?" the Avatar asked, dumbfounded.

"Avatar?" Sharif asked, baffled. "What are you doing here?

"Easy there, buddy," Aang said with some degree of nervousness, trying to calm the bison which now swung its great head to and fro, unable to keep its eyes from sliding along every ruined building and abnormal street as though the very structures were preparing to attack it. Sokka felt much the same way. Above them, almost centered over a rupturing point of this once-city, the alien clouds boiled, hurling lightning in any direction they damned well felt like, if lightning which emitted no thunderclap. In other words, crazy spirit lightning.

"Whoa... This place feels damn strange," Toph noted as she slowly picked her way around the scree and rubble.

"What do you mean?" Katara asked, rubbing her arms as though with chill. Although, in her defense, Sokka felt like doing that exact same thing. Toph shook her head with something approaching nervous anger.

"It just doesn't feel right."

"Well, it looks like everything here's made of sandstone. Could that be doing it?" Aang asked, moving to the earthbender's side. Without glancing his direction, she reached out and flicked his ear.

"I've trained with sandstone. I'm not some sort of reverse-sandbender, helpless when the rocks aren't bigger than my toes. I might suck with sand, but I know what it feels like. And it doesn't feel like this."

"Then what does it feel like?" Sokka asked.

"...Remember the Mountain King's shack?" Toph asked.

"You mean this place feels bigger on the inside than it does on..." Aang began, but Sokka's eyes went wide, and in an instant, he dropped into a wary squat.

"What was that?" Sokka hissed, glancing about. All eyes turned to him.

"I didn't hear anything," Katara said carefully.

"It was like a scritching sound," Sokka said. He turned, and looked out behind him, to where the desert opened before them, one of the great metal panels laid out almost like a ramp. The vast majority of the city lay ahead of them, but this was the only place where Aang could convince Appa to land. The great beast still watched past them, stomping its legs in turn and growling deeply.

"That's not funny, Sokka. This place is spooky enough as it is," Aang said.

"Yeah. If something were there, I'd feel it," Toph pointed out.

"Unless it was flying," Aang amended, which didn't do any of them well for their peace of mind. "I mean... I haven't seen so much as a buzz-ard all day!"

"Not helping," Sokka said. "So this is obviously that thing we'd know when we saw it... what now?"

Aang scratched at his shaven pate for a moment, then pointed inward. "I think I'll have a better chance if I go toward the center of the town. Ruin. Thing."

"Well, move at 'er," Toph said. "I don't want to spend any more time amongst the grand and unnecessarily spooky place than I have to."

"And here I thought you considered yourself brave," Katara chided.

"Brave is standing up to a volcano when you figure there's a chance you can beat it. Stupid is... well..."

"Yeah, let's just get this place behind us as quickly as possible," Sokka affirmed. He walked, his eyes scanning the buildings around him. The signage was still for the most part intact, if deformed and warped. Still, he couldn't read them, because his understanding of Altuundili was limited to being able to understand it spoken, if spoken slowly. It was still a far sight better than Katara, who hadn't the first word of it. But there was something about this place which set his hairs a-tingle and his teeth to lock.

"Aang, do you feel that burning in the air?" Toph asked, her eyes turned to one side. Sokka diverted his glance to where Toph was looking. It didn't matter that his attention was diverted, because even had his eyes been front and center, he couldn't have avoided that which came next. With a crack of two great wooden boards slamming together, Sokka suddenly felt himself hurled into the air, an alarmed shriek loosing from his throat as he suddenly got much closer to that unnatural cloud than he ever wanted to. His descent was arrested a few yards short of the street, as he landed in a wad of air which had the cushioning characteristics of pudding. He sat up, and righted the lantern he'd been carrying so it didn't lose its oil and one of their two sources of light, more out of force of habit than an actual conscious choice.

"What happened, Sokka?" Katara asked, rushing toward him. Then, there was another crack of wood upon wood, and with a shriek of her own, Katara was launched airborne. Again, Aang bent his air into a cushion, and Sokka caught his sister, albeit upside down, preventing an unpleasant spill onto the pavers. She just sat there for a moment, swearing incoherently under her breath, before she shook her head and dispelled the shock from her system.

"Toph, don't move forward," Sokka ordered.

"Yeah, like you could pay me to, after what I just heard," she said with a smirk, arms crossed before her chest. "What's goin' on, Twinkletoes?"

"It's... air," Aang said, moving close to where they had been assaulted by the street. "It's a ball of elemental air, just sitting there. Doing nothing."

"I would not call that nothing," Toph pointed out, covering the two sibling's position both elegantly and quickly.

"Toph, I think I know why you feel acid in the sky," Aang said. "Katara, do you feel water nearby?"

"Yeah, lots of it, some right over there," she said, pointing down the street a bit further. Sokka experimentally picked up a chunk of the rubble and hurled it in that direction. As it flew, it passed through a section of the street which rippled with the rock's passage, before landing on the far side, but not with a clack, but a plop. The rock burst like a rotten tomato and oozed along the flagstones. Sokka stared at it for a moment.

"Uh-huh. We are not going that way," he said definitively.

"This whole place is trapped!" Toph exclaimed. "Why would somebody trap this place?"

"I don't know, Toph," Aang said. "But I'm pretty sure that the stories say that whatever a maze is hiding is usually at its center."

"But I don't think hugging the left hand wall is going to help us in this one. Because the wall might try to eat us," Sokka said.

"A wall will try to eat us?" Toph asked.

"The street just catapulted us a hundred feet into the air! I'm ready for anything at this point!" Sokka declared.

"Touche," Toph responded. "So how are we going to navigate this thing? I mean, I can sense earth where it shouldn't be... but it's not exactly precise. It's like trying to find the guy who's poking you with a stick exclusively by smell."

"Well, we're going to have to take it slow," Aang declared. "Maybe, we should tie a rope to each other, so nobody gets lost... Oh! And we can make lines so we don't lose our path, and..."

Sokka reached down and picked up another chunk of rock, throwing it down the alleyway off of Katara's Magical Death Field. It clattered through without incident. "Or, we can just follow the rocks."

"Or we could do that," Aang said, a little deflated that his intricate plans were already coming to naught. Toph, though, walked 'round that trap and gave Sokka a slug in the arm as she moved toward that alley.

"That's a good man. Thinking with rocks. Beautiful in its simplicity."

The silence returned, punctuated by the clattering of the rocks Sokka threw to mark their path. And it was not an easy path. Heading around the city would obviously be easy, but since they wanted to go inward, and soon, they had to press through fields of those damned traps. Some turned the rocks different colors. Some turned them into goop. At least twice, Sokka had to pick a new direction, because upon contact with the stone, the very air ahead of them exploded into flames or lightning, searing and scouring anything nearby. But no words were said. Besides the hammering of his heart, and the sound of their footfalls, there was silence. No wind. No thunder from the lightning over their heads, illuminating the darkness when the lanterns weren't enough. But Sokka held up short again.

"Stop!" he whispered harshly. "Do you hear that?"

There was silence, as all parties became still. Eyes flicked back and forth between the four teenagers who dared to enter this forbidden zone. Toph raised a finger, about to make a quip of some sort, when there was a slight rasping sound, which drove all the youths close together, huddling round their lanterns.

"I heard that..." Katara said, eyes flitting about. "It sounded like it was in that building."

"Hello! Is anybody there?" Aang asked, before Sokka, Katara, and Toph all three clapped a hand over his mouth.

"Shhh! We don't know what's making that sound!" Sokka hissed. They all waited in silence, but whatever there was, it was not through that wall any longer. Sokka leaned toward the earthbender. "Did you... you know..."

Toph shook her head, a worried expression on her face.

"We should keep going," Aang said, as Sokka's hand dropped away. "I don't like this place."

Of that, Sokka could not help but agree. They moved deeper, past a building which looked even more ruined than those around it. Sokka paused as he passed it, looking at the manor house, which was twisted as though stretched and moved. He glanced to the nearest comparable structure. That one looked like it was a bladder, filled with air from within until it burst, and then frozen in the process of bursting. This one looked like somebody set a bomb off inside it, and then abandoned it to the twisting fate which befell it.

"Stop looking at architecture and move, Brain," Toph said, walking backward. But she suddenly became pale, and with a hissing sound like wind struggling to inch through a closed door, she suddenly found herself drifting backward, pulled back by a force she couldn't surmount with mere friction. Then, there was a loud 'whoomp', and with that, the ground under Toph dropped away with a mighty crack, leaving a rough hemisphere in the side of the roadway. Aang ran to the side, as the others did, but Toph was staring up, sweating hard. "DON'T COME ANY CLOSER!"

"Toph! Are you alright? What happened?" Katara asked.

"It's fine... For now. I did that on purpose," she said, staring upward with useless eyes.

"...why?" Aang asked.

"It was going to throw you straight down, wasn't it?" Sokka asked.

"Felt that way. Didn't feel like being made a smear. Ducked," She said. She reached her fists up just a little bit, then pounded down. The entire bottom of the hemisphere dropped about another inch. A second pound, and that inch became roughly a foot. Then, inching like she dared not raise higher than where her belly already rested, she inched her way up that wall, until Sokka was able to carefully reach down its edge and extract her from the crater she'd made. "Damn, this place plays rough."

"What was that?" Aang asked. "I can't feel anything."

"It's earth, but I didn't feel it 'till it was too late," Toph said. She reached into the scree of the street and plucked up a tin plate. Then, with an easy toss, she hurled it into the heart of that crater. That hissing sound picked up again, and this time, Sokka could see the edges of the air seem to pull in, before the whoomp sounded again, and that plate shot straight down with stupendous speed. So fast, in fact, that it embedded itself half its diameter into the stone at the base of the crater. "Well? Are you gonna stand there or are you gonna chuck rocks?"

"Yes, ma'am." Sokka said. He retrieved his lantern again, and flicked its container. Still sounded more full than empty. Best continue, then.

"Guys... Call me crazy, but do you remember what happened on the last day of winter?" Toph asked.

"Yeah. We got our asses handed to us," Sokka said.

"No, I mean besides that," Toph said. "Do you remember 'the sky turning red'?"

"I thought that was because Zhao was torturing the Moon spirit," Katara said.

"I'm not so sure about that. Well, maybe," Toph gave a shrug. "But Zha Yu said that something was happening far to the southeast. You think maybe he was talking about... here?"

"A massive event of spiritual importance which didn't involve the Avatar?" Sokka asked. "Yeah, I'm going to file that under 'extremely unlikely'."

"Hey, I'm just spitballin' ideas. I don't hear you trying to come up with a reason for things bein' as messed up as they are," Toph said. Katara answered with a panicked shriek. Sokka immediately turned, and for just a fraction of a second, he could see something moving out of the street where the light fell.

"Yeah... I saw it," Sokka said.

"What are you guys talking about? I didn't feel anything out there," Toph said.

"Maybe it doesn't use legs," Sokka said with a worried glance to his sister.

Aang swallowed hard but glanced toward the mounting center of this place, which they had been steadily ascending, as if in a spiral. After all, they could only move as the streets allowed, since the buildings were just as teeming with those hateful traps as the street was, but the street had a lot more room to maneuver. "We should just keep going. The sooner we're out of this place which is actively trying to kill us, the better."

"You got that straight, Twinkletoes," Toph said uneasily. Her head turned to and fro, as though trying to 'spot' something right at the edge of her hearing. "This place is top-grade spooky."

There was a long stretch of silence, only punctuated by the clattering of Sokka's rocks showing them the path. They were nearing another corner, where only one of the streets led up and inward. The others sloped down and away. Thus, the path was obvious. Still, Sokka sent a proffered, sand-blasted shoe ahead of them. As it rolled to a stop, it didn't look quite as Sokka expected it to. No trembles in the air, and the others proceeded toward it heedless, but Sokka let out a clipped yelp. They all stopped at once.

"What is it, Sokka?" Aang asked.

"I think there's..."

Sokka was cut off by the sound of something shattering behind them. All turned as one, two lantern beams peering down the street. A sign waved squeaking on ill-oiled hinges, and a pot, which had been stable on its windowsill, now lay shattered in the street. They all looked to each other once more. "Move!" Katara whispered harshly, and the rest of them moved into the street Sokka had booted. He tried to halt them, but they disappeared around that corner fast as he could think. And since they weren't struck by lightning nor burst into flames, he had to give that odd glow a bye. So he followed.

And ran straight into the back of the others, who'd clumped up in a mass not a dozen steps past the corner. Sokka had to lean over Toph's head to see what was a head of them. And when he did, he was more than a little bit confused.

"Sharif?" Aang asked, as the glowing, spectral blue body of the Si Wongi shaman took them all in with a degree of confusion. He looked much as he had in Senlin, if a touch more ragged; one prominent difference here was that the wicked scar that ran vertically down his forehead was glowing brightly with silver light.

"Avatar?" he asked, his voice actually precise and clear, for a change. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm not even sure where here is," Aang admitted. "What is this place?"

"Who said that?" Toph asked, quite confused.

"Sharif," Katara said, indicating toward him.

"...there's nobody there," Toph said.

"This was my home," Sharif said, ignoring the earthbender. He looked past the Avatar, to where the others were gathered. "I could ask you what brings you to this deadly ruin, but I fair wager it has something to do with the Avatars."

"Yeah... How did you guess that? I thought you were..." Aang said, tapping at his head, until he paused. "Ohh..."

"Yes, you remember," Sharif said, tapping his scar.

"Yeah, well, I don't," Toph said. "Who's this guy?"

"We met him in Senlin, when Heibai had lost his name. I... thought he was simple-minded, though," Katara admitted.

"Can we cut this short? I'm pretty sure this place is trying to murder us!" Sokka stressed.

"So we're just going to trust the spooky voice coming out of nowhere?" Toph asked.

"It's not coming out of nowhere," Katara said. "I can see him clear as day... Wait. Why can I see you? Are you... dead?"

"No," Sharif shook his head, beckoning the others to follow him. They matched his path step for step. "My body is asleep, and I am projecting my astral form. This is an extension of my will, one I sent for a very specific purpose."

"Being?" Sokka asked, as he moved around a dead, but well preserved Ostrich Horse which was laying amidst a pool of ashes.

"Saying goodbye to an old friend," Sharif said sadly. He glanced back at them. "You are right to fear this place. Ever since Imbalance made itself known here, it tore holes through the veils of reality, making this place a spot where the mortal and Spirit worlds are almost one and the same. The worst of both realities manifest here."

"I heard things back there..."

Sharif shook his head with anger. "My hubris rivals my sister's, some days. I was a fool to invoke them. They are a dangerous spirit. Mainly because once they are invoked, they are almost impossible to be rid of."

"Spirits? I thought spirits were incorporeal," Katara prodded.

"Usually. I gave them form, in a bid to have revenge on the traitor who visited such death onto my people," he shook his head sadly. "And it was for naught. Imbalance escaped unharmed. The traitor likely does not even realize her crime. The family of my friend is dead, as are all the people I once knew. We have no home anymore."

"Sharif, stop," Aang said. "What happened? After Senlin?"

"We went home," Sharif said. "My sister thought to find Mother here. But she was nowhere to be found."

"Yeah, she was heading to Ba Sing Se as of couple months ago," Sokka piped up. Sharif rolled his eyes.

"Of course Mother would tell everybody but her children where she was heading. And doubly the joke that I cannot inform my sister that heading for Ba Sing Se was a proper decision."

"You're going to Ba Sing Se, too?"

"All roads lead there, it seems," he answered. "Pity I will not remember this conversation. It could have done my sister well."

"How is Nila doing?" Sokka asked.

"That is not her name," Sharif said idly, looking ahead of him. Sokka raised a brow, mildly confused. There was a lot which was going unsaid here, and he didn't understand it all. "Damn. We are blocked. Avatar, could you aid me?"

"With what?" he asked.

"Become the Bridge," he instructed.

"I... don't know how to do that," Aang admitted. Sharif glanced disbelieving at him. "It took all I had to even get into the Spirit world when I was in the Spirit Oasis, and that's got Spirit written all over it!"

"At least once, by the sound of it," Toph confirmed.

"This will not do. Alright. Do you feel the Fire before you?"

"It feels a bit warm..." Aang admitted.

"Push it," Sharif said.

"But... that'll set me on fire," Aang said with an understandable degree of trepidation.

"No, not with your body. With your will," he said. He made a shoving motion. "Push that fire away, out of our path."

Aang looked quite askance at the whole thing, which Sokka could sympathize with, but stood his ground, widening his stance, closing his eyes. Then, with a deep inhale and a grunt of effort, pushed. The air shimmered in the street ahead of them all, and a portion of it seemed to pull in on itself, wrapping against something else invisible, and pulling tighter, until with a loud snap, the shimmering ended, and something dropped onto the street. They all glanced at each other, then moved in to the object, finding what appeared to be a nail, but was extremely cold to the touch, and even seemed to be covering itself in hoarfrost as Sokka watched.

"Astounding," Sharif said. "I knew that such things sometimes manifested, but I never understood how. Pure elemental interaction!"

"What is it?" Katara asked.

"A nail," Sokka answered.

"An artifact," Sharif clarified. "Its purpose eludes me, but you would do well to hold it. These things all but impossible to find, and their use makes them practically beyond any price. You should..." he trailed off, glancing down the darkened streets. "We are not alone."

All lanterns turned, and filled that street at their backs with light. And they showed... something. They were bodies, perhaps a few inches shorter than Toph at their highest. But they had no real features. All that they were was a homunculus of rusty reds and browns, their misshapen arms ending with black claws. And they walked in the street, on the walls, and upon the roofs. They had no eyes, but that didn't stop Sokka from feeling watched. And their mouths, filled with black teeth, were just an opening which exposed raw, red blood.

"Are those..." Katara asked.

"Blood spirits," Sharif confirmed. "We must flee!"

The others didn't need two prompts to heed the shaman, and took off at a sprint, with the Si Wongi and the Avatar leading the way. The latter moved flailing as though trying to knock away vines trying to snare him. Sokka knew well enough that it was probably something much worse that he was batting aside. And as they ran, those mouths opened wide, and let out the most terrible shriek.

"Yeah, I'm all for running away from that!" Toph put in her two bits, ushering them all before her as she continued to run. She turned, slamming her fists together, and the walls of the buildings behind them slammed together, blocking their path. But insidious and unnatural was this thing, and it slipped right between the cracks of the barricade Toph formed, barely losing a step. On masse, they extended one clawed hand toward the group, shrieking their terrible song, and advancing faster, loping into a horrible sprint, impossible by any anatomy which Sokka could think of. "Did it work?" Toph asked.

"What'd'ya think?" Sokka shouted. Katara was next up, turning and lashing out with the water from her flask, a frozen blade of ice which slashed through the closest of those things. The blade passed through it with barely a ripple to its form, and they continued to advance.

"Water doesn't work either!" Katara said with obvious alarm in her voice.

"That's what I told you! I don't know how to kill these things!" Sharif said. "Once they have a form, they're almost unstoppable!"

Sokka turned, seeing one of them moving ahead of the pack, its loping gate overtaking the others which swarmed toward them, and bunched back on its 'legs', before hurling itself, shrieking, at Toph's back. In an instant, Sokka's hand went back to his case, and the boomerang was taking flight on instinct and instant mathematics. It slashed through the air, its sharpened and un-dulled edge tearing through the homunculus roughly at shoulder level. When it did, the weapon spun back up and around to Sokka once more, but the thing fell apart, landing in one great splat of fetid blood, followed by a second a yard or so away from it. That stain, once deposited, did not rise. Sharif paused in his flight, staring back.

"Oh..." Sharif said.

"See, that's what you spooky types get for overthinking things," Sokka said, running again, and keeping Toph up with the others. She might have stamina, but she was the shortest of them all, and had the shortest legs. "Seriously, you didn't think of simple violence?"

"That's not how I tend to solve things!" Sharif shouted.

"Well... shouldn't we just smash them, then?" Toph asked.

"Too many. Keep running," Aang said. The Avatar was right in that. Darkness had set in, illuminated by silent lightning, as they pushed into the heart of the city that once was.

Ahead of them, something blue was glowing.

"I've got a question for you," Omo said in the darkness, which caused Kori to turn over on his bedroll. The waterbender distinctly hoped that would provide a sufficient answer for his fellow Child, but Omo was not to be put off, and with a strong-legged nudge, rolled Kori right out onto the ground. "I said, I have a question for you."

"It can wait until morning," Kori said. "I've still got a watch, which I'm likely to snooze through, now that you've disrupted my sleep."

"Your sleep can wait," Omo said. Kori rolled his eyes, but sat up. Omo squatted down, his green eyes flicking toward where Yoji was asleep in her own bedroll, turned in to face the fire. Omo's bedding was further out, while Kori's was furthest of all. After all, while he was quite used to heat, he didn't have any particular love for it. Omo watched the firebender with a puzzled look on his face.

"Well, what is this great question?" Kori asked quietly.

"I've known her for a long time. Longer than most. But that's a sliver compared to how long you two have been together," he said. "She is not very open. I don't understand her."

"Well, I'd say your days of not understanding women are certainly coming to a middle," Kori pointed out, which drew a baleful glare from the large, robust Easterner. "You need to develop that sense of humor. There is much in this world that can only be laughed at, else cried over."

"The makeup," Omo said carefully. "Her skin is fine enough, even if it is almost as dark as yours. She has no pocks or acne, but she takes such pains to hide it, and under that ghastly shade."

"Her skin color is a source of great shame to her, as are her eyes – which is why she always hides them," Kori said seriously. He cracked only a momentary smirk. "I fail to see why; my own have people mistaking me for a Gurkha often enough to... well... maybe when you're older, I'll tell you about that."

"Shame?" Omo asked.

"Yes," Kori said, beckoning Omo to follow him. They moved away from the fire, where there would be no chance of their being overheard. "At the beginning of our lives, we were together. As is said in the Children, every Child is a Brother, every Child is a Sister. But there's a fairly significant chance that she is in fact my biological sister. And that shames her."

"I can see why," Omo muttered. Kori glared at him for a moment.

"No, you oaf. Think of what that means," he said. "In our infancy, we were cast out by our parents and left to die. Had we not been saved by the Fire Nation, we definitely would have. It shames her that she was cast out, even though she never says it."

"Then, why the makeup?" Omo asked.

"Because as much as she is, as proud as she is as a firebender for our adoptive homeland, she knows that she is not one of them, and will never be one of them. She hates what she is, the cast-off of another people, enough that she feels compelled to hide it. And she chooses that 'ghastly shade' because she believes she doesn't deserve to look like a National. There is a word for that sort of thinking, but it'd take more time than it's worth to explain what it means," Kori said.

"Sister," he said, shaking his head. "It certainly explains why she puts up with you."

"That is what family is for," Kori said. He glanced into the darkness of night. "Some days... I can almost remember what that place was like. So much blue and white. But the memories are like trying to remember a dream. I think Yoji remembers less of it, but that's probably for the best. She used to have nightmares. That somebody was trying to take her away from where she belonged."

"I can understand that," Omo said. "She must have struggled so hard to become a part of something, that her greatest fear would be losing it."

Kori nodded, but tucked his doubts into the back of his mind. They were not best aired here. Not yet. Not until he had some time in the Dragon Bone Catacombs to check something. And that eventuality was probably years off. "Of the Children, you will find none more loyal, more strident, nor more eager than Yoji. She stands at the Fire Lord's left hand, and by right. Every commendation she has, she earned not by overcoming the curse of her birthright, but by her skill and perseverance. But even now, she is alone."

"What do you mean?" Omo asked.

"Look at her," Kori said, casting a glance back toward the fire. Yoji slept as she often did, curled up as though trying to keep warm. "A brother as I am isn't enough. She needs more, and to gain a place where her birth is overlooked, she's had to push people away. She will never say it in words, but she is lonely. Dreadfully so."

Omo stared at him for a moment. "You're having me on, aren't you?"

Kori shook his head, face dead serious. "I have never been more plain and serious than I am now. Yoji is depending on us, and more than you think possible. I can only shoulder so much..."

"She's stronger than you think."

"So is a tower, but if the foundation crumbles..." Omo sighed, and nodded. "If we are strong for her, she will be all the stronger."

"You know, you're not such an ass, after all," Omo said.

Kori smirked. "I'm every bit the ass you think I am. I just have certain pockets of expertise that most would overlook."

"Go to sleep, Kori. I'm taking the watch," Omo said. He walked back to where he waited, but paused before mounting the boulder which he used as a look-out. "Why would anybody abandon her?"

Kori shrugged, and got back into his bedroll. He had his own ideas in that... but like other thoughts, they were better left unaired.

The blue glow was a sight to his eyes, one which was welcome and would have been comforting but for two things. One, they were being chased by an army of fetid, animated blood demons. Second, the source of that glow was much the same as came from Aang's tattoos. Which were starting to glow as well, and he started to feel a tearing right in the seat of his soul.

But seeing Korra again was a miracle. She turned toward the youths moving toward her, her eyes burning with the power of the Avatar, draining away from Aang and into her through a process which he couldn't even think to explain.

"Oh my..." Sharif began.

"Get down!" the Avatar-yet-to-be roared, and her arms began to take sweeping motions. The party threw themselves away from the horde which was pursuing them, and when they were huddled against the buildings, Korra launched herself forward. From her hands, lightning danced. It lanced out in blasts which sounded with thunder to mock the silent bolts above, tearing through the legion which assembled hungry for more blood to add to their own. Every bolt left Aang feeling more drained, more torn, more brutalized, but every single one scythed through ranks of those foul monsters. Sharif, who had backed away from the maelstrom, looked on agape, utter disbelief in his eyes.

"Impossible," the Si Wongi shaman whispered into the slaughter. And it was that, because Korra obviously held no compunctions toward such niceties as 'fighting fair' or 'aversion to brutality'. She moved through their massed bodies, even as they tried to slash and rend at her, and every kick and slash of her hand snapped with lightning, tearing the blood-things to bits, dashing their foul corpus across the walls, the streets, into the buildings. One of them actually managed to bite the spectral Avatar on her shoulder, which prompted Korra to tear the goblin off of her, slam it into the pavers, and follow it with a thunderbolt empowered fist, which sent its blood flying all the way until it coated Sokka liberally. She glared up at the others, and the legion stopped its advance. While they had no eyes to glance nervously to each other with, even Aang could tell that the switch in their primitive minds had flipped from fight to flight. And with one last trailing shriek, they did exactly that, melting away from the blood-spattered battleground, owned whole and complete by the Avatar who would not even be born until the day of Aang's death. As the last of them vanished, the light fade from Korra's eyes, and Aang could feel his heart settle back into a more steady beat, no longer under that terrible suction, that vice-like pressure.

"Seems like I showed up in the nick of time, huh?" Korra asked brightly, flashing a grin at her previous life. The smile dropped away for a moment. "Although, I'm a little confused as to where 'here' is. Or where I just was. Doesn't look like the Spirit world I'm used to."

"This shouldn't be possible," Sharif said. "You were bending lightning!"

"Where does it say that a dead woman can't bend?" Korra asked, crossing her arms before her chest.

"It's rule one," Sharif said simply.

"Oh... well... it's a stupid rule," Korra said dismissively. "I'm glad you managed to get my message. I didn't know if you were in a condition to remember it. What with the whole 'almost getting eaten in your sleep' thing."

"Who is this?" Katara asked.

"Why does this crap always end up covering me?" Sokka whined. Toph handed him a towel. He gave her a raised brow.

"You can just keep it," Toph said.

"Wait... is that who I think it is?" Korra asked. She slipped past Aang, and when she looked upon Toph, her entire face brightened up almost as luminous as when the Avatar State had ignited in her eyes. "Holy ships it is! She's so little! And she's adorable!"

"WHAT?" Toph snapped at her savior. "Who are you callin' adorable?"

Korra, though, was in full fan-girl mode. "Let me just say that it's an honor to meet the woman herself. Astounding; the woman who changed the East Continent forever! She's right here!"

"Oh... Well," Toph began, somewhat confused.

"Who is this?" Sokka finally asked, having wiped the worst of the blood from his face, and now was in the process of abandoning his hopelessly fouled clothes. Sharif glanced his way, then let out a gack.

"What is he doing?" Sharif demanded.

"I could catch a disease wearing those," Sokka said, standing in his underwear. "I don't know how long that blood's been there."

"...You're naked..."

"No, I've still got my gotch on," Sokka said, mildly baffled. "And you didn't answer my question."

"Korra's an Avatar," Aang began, and Katara leaned in toward where Sharif's spectral body and Toph were standing side by side.

"She's one of his past lives," Katara explained.

"I know how the Avatar works, Tribesman," Sharif said testily.

"And she's not exactly right about that," Aang said. "Korra here... she's my next life."

"WHAT?" it was Sharif's turn to now shriek. He palmed his face. "This must be some sort of ruse. A future Avatar can not interact with their past! The Ban was put in place to prevent this thing from occurring!"

"The what?" Korra asked.

"I'm not sure," Aang admitted.

"The Ban!" Sharif shouted. "The mystic law which holds each procession of Avatars, one to the next, moving only forward in time, and never withershins! This cannot be! It would be like... Roku warning Yangchen of the South Water Tribe, or Vajrapata preventing the rise of The Monolith! It is impossible."

They all stared at him for a moment, then turned to Korra once more. Korra looked down at herself, and shrugged. "Yeah, that doesn't seem to be doing much to me," Korra said. "Gotta say, you look different without the beard, Aang."

"I grow a beard?" Aang asked.

"Yup," Korra said. "Manliest beard ever bearded. Anyway. I did some poking around and... wait," she paused, leaning down toward Katara. She stared at her fellow Tribesman for a moment, and reached out, as though to touch Katara's hair-loopies. Katara flinched back, which was somewhat moot, since it was unlikely that a spirit body could interact with the physical. Korra started to grin, though.

"I thought I recognized you! You must be Katara!" Korra said. She then leaned down and scooped Katara into a bearhug which Aang was pretty sure shouldn't be possible. "You're just how he described you! I always wanted a chance to meet you in person! Man, it's like the whole gang's here. Well, no Zuko, but he was a late addition anyway."

"WHAT?" Katara shrieked.

"Five gold Weight says Sokka's the next one to do that," Toph wagered.

"You said this was important," Aang said, trying to get the diverted future Avatar back onto track. Korra nodded, then beckoned the others to follow her, into what was obviously the highest point of this bursting, mutated city on the edge of oblivion.

"Right, right," She glanced toward Katara again and smiled, but turned her attention back to the Avatar. "I had some words with Wan Shi Tong. That guy's jacked-up. I mean, seriously; spirits are spooky as hell at the best of times, but that old fossil is rotting where he drones. As I can figure it, there's some sort of tunnel which got formed by a soul being torn out of my time, or thereabouts. He didn't make a whole lot of sense. The fact is, though, things aren't looking too hot here. Makes me wish I actually paid attention to Tenzin about that spirit-y stuff," She shrugged. "Well, that's the past. Or your future, depending."

"Sense, please, make some," Sokka said.

"Right, right," Korra said. "You know what you're fighting here?"

"The Fire Nation, Fire Lord Ozai," Toph answered.

"Small beans. The imbalance in the world has apparently 'bootstrapped itself to a level of sentience', which as I understand it, is a bad thing. Imbalance is going to eat everything unless you stop it."

"So... we're fighting... imbalance?" Sokka asked. "How is that possible?"

"Ask an expert. I'm just recalling the facts," Korra said, shoving an erupting sphere of fire out of her way to clear a path.

"Imbalance is a spirit entity, one which shouldn't have been able to exist," Sharif clarified. "I cannot believe this situation arises, but thus it is. Every ideal, animal, and even some events have their own spirits. Questions do, Ostrich Horses do, blood does, war does. But imbalance shouldn't. It isn't an event, or an ideal. It is the lack of one. It is like having..." he shook his head, and that scar burned a bit brighter for a moment, "a physical object without mass."

"I see," Sokka said, rubbing his chin.

"All spirits naturally find a state of balance in their environment. But Imbalance is the antithesis of that, like a bottomless hole in the world. No matter how much is thrown down it, it will never become full," Sharif explained. "Eventually, the hole is all that will be left."

Korra gave a shrug toward Sharif. "This kid knows his stuff. Who is he?"

"Wait, you don't know him?"

"Should I?" Korra asked, pausing to look the boy over, before shrugging.

"I am Sharif Badesh bin Seema din Nassar," Sharif said with annoyance.

"Doesn't ring a bell," Korra said.

"But... you know the rest of us," Katara said.

"Yeah, I couldn't not. You guys were famous," Korra pondered. "Even Haru lived large after your adventures."

Aang glanced back at his friends. "Who's Haru?"

"I don't know. Did we meet a Haru at some point?" Sokka asked.

Katara shrugged, and Toph shook her head. Korra looked baffled. "Earthbender, Katara here broke him out of prison while you were heading toward the North Pole?"

Katara's eyes flicked aside. "...nothing like that happened," she said.

Korra stared at Katara for a moment. "But... How does that work?" She shook her head. "You know what? Hell with it. Back to business. Whoever you are, Sharif bin whatever, you should give Aang some lessons. I could sure use them myself."

"Is anybody else here going to point out that time-travel violates several laws of physics?" Sokka asked drolly.

"Since you're behind the ball, and Wan Shi Tong obviously isn't going to be in any condition to tell you, you're going to have an opportunity to deal with the Fire Nation soon," she said. She pulled a scroll from her parka, and handed it toward Aang. He stared at it. "Don't just stand there, take it!"

"It's not real," Aang said. Korra rolled her eyes and pressed it into his hand. Despite its bluish glow, it felt as real as the sweat on Aang's brow. "Or maybe it is. What is this?"

"It's a history book," she said. "It talks about some disastrous defeat in some battle between the Fire Nation and some airbenders in some war I'd never heard of. Long story short; there's something called a Day of Black Sun. Solar Eclipse, naturally," she said, cutting off Sokka, who obviously came to that conclusion an instant too late to get credit for it. "If you're up in their faces when the moon's getting in the way of the sun, they won't have any fire to bend with. They won't be able to so much as heat a kettle of tea amongst them."

As Aang looked over the tale of valiant soldiers of the faltering Fire Nations being routed by the Storm Kings, the glow faded, until it was a scroll as ordinary as any in Sokka's pack, if illuminated beautifully and of outstanding quality. For almost ten minutes, the world had become dark, and the Storm Kings scythed through the Fire Nations' armies, ending in the death of the then Fire Lord. He could help but shake his head. The symbols were exactly the same, but their meanings couldn't be any more perfectly flipped. He looked up. "Thank you. This may have saved a lot of lives," Aang said.

"You're welcome," she said. "You're gonna need to find somebody good at predicting eclipses, though; at some point, Wan Shi Tong's planetarium filled up with sand."

"Sand?" Sokka asked.

"Hold on a second... Wan Shi Tong's Library is real?" Toph asked.

"Very," Sharif nodded. He then turned upon the middle aged dead woman before him. "I cannot conceive how you do this! The Ban..."

"Obviously is on vacation," Korra interrupted him. She turned, grinning, back to Aang. "As I see it, I'm just making sure history takes its proper course. I mean, if you don't live to a ripe old age and make all kinds of airbender babies with your little lady, then I get born a waterbender. Which ain't bad, don't get me wrong, but it's hard to go back when you're scaring the pants off of old guys with fire from the time you're six."

"This is madness. I must be going mad!" Sharif complained. "This must be what madness feels like."

"Oh, stop whining," Korra said. "Would you rather lose the War?"

"If it means that reality stops unraveling, then yes!" Sharif shouted, causing all eyes to turn to him. His expression was deadly serious. "I would happily live every day until the one I die in the chains of most abject slavery, if I had the knowledge that it stopped what is happening here. Your brutish successor, Avatar Aang, obviously is not the thinking sort, so I will tell you what she overlooks."

"Brutish?" Katara asked. Korra shrugged.

"I've been called worse," the dead woman answered.

"The very presence of this... Korra... indicates that The Ban, itself a fact bound into the fabric of reality by the greatest of spirits at the beginning of the Avatar Cycle, is if not broken, then so worn thin that great holes gape in its body. It is as if gravity stopped functioning, or inhaling no longer provided breath to the body. It is so outside any understanding of how reality works that I cannot understand how we are not already unmade," Sharif said with grim tones and darkened eyes. He pointed at her. "You might think this a joy and a lark, but I promise you, this is the most grave of all events. It is not your fault, but you are a symbol of a deadly breach in what is."

"How so?" Aang asked.

"Imbalance. Did your Avatar Aang face this threat in his time?" Sharif demanded of her. Korra shook her head. He pointed to Aang. "Imbalance seems to be if not unique to this world, then somehow tied to it. It violates the flow of time. How, I cannot say, but whatever manifested it came from the Spirit, the Hub Of The Wheel. It should have spread to all times, to all worlds. That means it needs something here, and only here can it be slain."

"How do you kill something which doesn't exist, though?" Sokka asked. Sharif nodded sagely.

"A wise question, and one I cannot yet answer," he turned back to Aang. "Deal with the Fire Nation as you can, but remember always that Imbalance is the true and greater threat."

"It's not that simple. I have to deal with both," Aang said. "I've got it on good authority that if I don't beat the Fire Nation by the time Sozin's Comet comes, then the world ends."

"That would... Oh... Oh, I see," Sharif said, the light of his body dimming as though growing pale. He affixed Aang with a steely gaze which he obviously could never muster in waking life. "Korra will be no teacher for you in what you need. You need to know the Void if you wish to..."

He trailed off, when the path that they had been following opened out, showing a great pit in its heart, edged by what looked like cliffs. But Aang's eyes were not looking around, but across. On the far side of the great, gaping maw, he could see a very familiar tree, its limbs and leaves glowing with blue, crackling light. He then looked down, and his eyes widened further, as he was staring down into the heart of the Black City. "How didn't I see this?" he asked.

"See what?" Korra asked.

"This town, it's not just twisted up," Aang said. "It's... been bent into looking like the Black City."

"You're almost right," Sharif nodded. "When Imbalance connected back to this world through its Host, it tore the fabric of reality apart here. In a very real way, the Black City and Sentinel Rock are now one and the same."

"Then that's the heart of the Spirit World?" Aang said. Sharif nodded. "Is this going to happen again?"

"Almost definitely," Sharif said. "It is only a matter of time and chance. Once Imbalance pushes its Host far enough, she will bridge the worlds again, and another part of your world will turn into its world. This is the shape of the future, if we cannot stop Imbalance from its course."

There was silence, as each thought about what that meant. Obviously nobody thought that was a good thing.

And their pondering was cut short by a horrible shriek from their backs. They all turned, Sokka with his boomerang in hand, Korra smirking. "Oh, well, this is a nice break in the doldrum," the Avatar pointed out.

But she fell slightly silent when she saw what exactly was coming up the streets toward them. Sharif scowled. "Did you really think they were so easily intimidated? Blood Spirits are rapacious, hungering for their like. And they are adaptive. They know that the Horde will not stop you, so..."

"So they send the Brute," Aang answered, beholding the massive, distended but powerful form of the blood spirits, half-a-hundred screaming faces clumped together between its shoulders. It was the size of Appa easily, and the black claws which had been as long as knives were now clicked together, rotating in a sickening drill, tearing apart sandstone wherever they fell in the plodding advance of the dozen behemoths.

"Oh, hell..." Toph said. "I can feel that... Would this be a good time to run away?"

Aang answered her by tearing the bison whistle from the loop 'round his neck and pounding air through it, letting out the signal, before he paused. "Wait... how's Appa going to get here?"

"It's clear straight up and down," Sharif said. He looked down to the south. "I'll warn the beast. Korra; do you see that bunker in the center?"

"The ugly black thing between the ugly black things?" she asked.

"Indeed. Lightning is a form of purified energy, and the spirits can consume such power. Use it upon the skin of the Spirit World's heart! And be prepared to flee swiftly once you do. Wait as long as you dare before you do: You will have precious little time to escape once the Blowout begins."

"Wait," Toph began, but with a shimmering, Sharif vanished from their midst. Korra glanced to the brutes, which opened their half-hundred mouths each, and each let out that terrible shriek, tearing at the air even as their bodies decimated the buildings that flanked them. Korra looked like if she'd been alive, she might be sweating. "Oh, this isn't good. Hell with it. It's blood, blood can go squish!"

Toph launched forward, and when she landed, it was with a sweeping kick to her side, her bare toes dragging along the storefront, a ripple moving through the walls between she and the closest of those brutes, prompting the wall which was over it to sheer free of its foundations and tip onto the back of the blood demon. But rather than splat the thing as she had optimistically assumed, the brute caught the wall, its mad-drill hands digging into the stone, which it twisted and hurled back at the source of the assault.

To Toph's credit, she reacted instantly, bringing up a defensive bulwark which the wall burst across, but when she hurled the resulting bulwark forward, that beast and the one nearest it slammed that bulwark into sand with a coordinated slam of their 'fists'. Another shriek, and a third overtook the two, hurling itself bodily ahead of the pack, which still advanced in a more or less orderly and patient fashion. That one came closer though, and got a boomerang in one of its faces for its trouble. That made it flinch, only for an instant, and the gory boomerang returned to its source, which was caught with a quite understandably disgusted 'Ewwww!'

"Is that as long as you dare?" Aang asked.

"Just about," Korra answered. The Avatar of this day moved forward into the melee, slamming forward a blast of air which he'd constructed to hit like a battering-ram. It tore straight through the soupy body of the brute, sending foul blood splattering behind it, but not checking its advance. With another scream, this one of nearing triumph, it raised its 'fist', and began to bring it down, to smash Toph into more of its ilk.

Even as Aang tried to bend a vacuum to heave Toph out of the way, Katara was already skating past him on an ever refreshing skim of water from her pouch. Then, as she reached Toph's side, she hurled the remnants straight up with a great crash, sharpening the water and snapping it into a great blade of ice, which intercepted that dropping fist and sliced it clean off of the body it extended from. Toph managed to dodge aside before the 'fist' could otherwise crush her, but could not avoid the splatter of dead blood, and the clatter of tarnished iron claws sounded as a grim counterpart to the roar of anger from the brute before them. With a heave of its remaining arm, it smashed through that icy barricade, causing the two girls to scatter before its overwhelming might. The others were still well back, but this one was far too close.

Aang grit his teeth, his feet grinding into the sandy pavers under him, as he bent a great gale into his hands, and then demanded more. With the same technique he'd been trying to save Toph, he pulled the air into a tube of wind, ferocious and insistent as any hurricane or tornado, but heeding only the direction of the airbender at its mouth. With a last twist of his arms, that tube exploded into being, tearing at his kavi and the girls' clothes, but slamming whole into that brute which had outstripped its ilk. At first, it pushed through, but every step it took toward smashing the airbender, more and more of itself was blown out its own back. It's body reduced. It's mass decreased. A screaming head was blown out of the body, then another. The madman-fist raised, to smash Aang to bits, but he stood his ground, his grey eyes hard and unrelenting. It was only going to advance one more step if it did through him; it was not going to reach his family, his friends.

It was exhausting. It was exhilarating. Most importantly, it was working. The beast no longer advanced, its 'fist' faltering. It could only hold its ground, as more and more of it was being dashed into a stain. Then, it could not even do that. Aang began to step forward, until he was making broad paces, and launching himself forward, imbued with a battle-lust he could not understand. He wanted this fight. He wanted to show he was stronger. And he had no idea why. But when he landed from that bound, he twisted up again, as though to direct the wind in one final bludgeoning assault. But it was not air which leapt to his command.

It was stone.

The block of sandstone bounded out of the street with an ease which beggared Aang's imagination, barreling through the body of that brute, and dashing it to congealed oblivion. Aang paused, and looked down at his hands. The marks upon them were still as blue as the sky was supposed to be.

He'd just earthbent.

Aang. Just earthbent. Without the Avatars' help.

The bellow of an air bison sounded, bringing Aang back to reality, and drawing his attention first back, to where the people alive and dead, present and not, all retreated toward the descending escape plan. Aang, though, looked ahead. While he had been giving every effort to slay one of those abominations, the other dozen and more had advanced. They were already passing the fallen form of their crushed brother. The battle-lust drained away, and it was replaced with quite understandable terror, as Aang let out a scream of his own, which the blood answered in chorus, and beat the hastiest of retreats, actually making it to Appa first, despite the distance, and everybody else having a sizable head start.

"Aang, what were you thinking? You could have been killed!" Katara shouted as she clambered up Appa's flank. Aang could only shake his head, having no real answer to give her.

Then, there came a clunk, metal against metal, which sounded as though something in the heart of the Black City below them was trying to lurch to life. Korra wilted slightly, as though she'd spent a great deal of herself into that thing, and had to forceably heave herself up the bison, sprawling out in the howdah. "What is that?" Aang asked.

"Blowout," Sharif said. It will give us the time to leave, and conceal our presence here from Imbalance. Its nose is quite keen. If it were to track you down... That would be bad."

Aang could only nod at that, as the adrenaline began to pour out of him, leaving him tired and numb, shivering against the heat. "Come on, buddy, yip yip!" he ordered, and the bison was all too willing to obey. The thudding of metal against metal continued as they ascended, lit by flashes of white light, searing upward through those unnatural clouds, burning them away, showing the stars beyond them. But the thudding was coming to an end, and a hissing sound started, a rattling which started in Aang's very bones as he pulled out of his ascent and began to scream away from the lost fortress. And good that they did, because the groaning mounted, and an evil wind started behind them, searing up and away, into the heavens and vanishing behind them. Only then, vanished into the Spirit world, did the noise of the Blowout recede somewhat. Aang could understand why so many treated that thing with fear; it was a fearsome beast.

"That... was unpleasant," Korra declared. She looked out to the sands. "And I'm pretty sure this is where I have to get off. I'll do some more poking around. See if I can break reality a bit more to help you, you know how it goes?"

"Thank you, Avatar Korra," Aang said, turning to bow to her.

"Don't thank me yet," Korra said with a smirk. "After all, I ain't done till I'm born again... or something. Anyway; stay safe, and watch your ass if you're going to Ba Sing Se. That place is seriously not safe back in your day."

She stepped to the edge of the howdah, and tipping easily, fell away from the bison, dwindling into the distance over the ocean of sand, until her glow vanished. Sharif nodded, looking quite transparent, as though drained as much as Aang was.

"She is right, in that it is here we must part company for the time being," Sharif said.

"Wait," Aang said, bounding up to Sharif's side. He pulled the second trinket from his neck, the thong which held the Jade Toe. "This belonged to you, and it was of great help to me. You should have it back."

"Please, I cannot accept this back. A gift is a gift."

"But a gift used is a gift spent. Now, it must return to where it is useful," Aang pointed out.

"I gave this to you in your time of need. I have no such need," Sharif once again pushed the stone back.

"Sharif... you know what this is. You probably know what it does. And you know it's useless to me. Take it. Maybe it can help you, someday," Aang said, finishing his observation of Si Wongi etiquette. Sharif nodded, taking the stone from Aang's hand. When it passed form mortal to spectral hands, it changed from green to blue, and vanished into the spectral stuff of Sharif's body. "I'd be honored if you could teach me again."

"And you shall have that opportunity. But not today. The dawn will come, and I must awaken," Sharif said. "Until we can meet again, Avatar. Be safe, and heal the wounds of the world. I could have no less."

With another shimmer, Sharif was gone, leaving the living and the awake upon the beast's flying back. They all looked amongst each other, for a long, silent moment.

"... and it was all just a dream," Toph said.

"Damn it, I was gonna say that," Sokka complained.

But Aang's attention returned to the scroll which rattled in his kavi. Momo crawled into his lap, muttering its chatterings up at him. He patted its head, and thought about future, and how he was going to use an eclipse to end the war. And to be honest, he was kinda coming up empty on that.

Ashan let out a great yawn, stretching with the first light of dawn creeping down into the Divide. Nila was already long up, though; her long company of Tzu Zi had seen the two coming to rise at the same time, so that they could be on Sharif's trail all the faster. She half wanted to chide her fellow Si Wongi for laziness. She also half wanted to still be asleep, so she held no moral high ground. "Finally, he rises. I thought we would have no sign of your movement until the sun hung high in the sky."

"What? I had a good night's sleep," Ashan said testily. "It's remarkable how warm it is at night."

"The desert is a twice-cursed hellhole," Nila said with a roll of her eyes, before turning to Tzu Zi. "No offense intended."

"Oh, that's alright," she said.

"Come. We can be out of the Divide by dinner time, unless you'd prefer to keep the company of the canyon crawlers," Nila said. Ashan sighed, in a world-weary and put-upon way, and rose up, setting himself for the walk ahead of him. Nila shook her head sardonically, and looked around them. Aki, and the two ancient specimens of her species, all took to sleeping together off to one side. As Tzu Zi had put it 'girls have got to stick together', and the saying knew no species. She finished slinging the pack containing all of her remaining worldly possessions onto her back, and slung her firearm so that it was not caught against anything, before turning back into the camp. She scowled for a moment.

"What is it?" Ashan asked.

Nila didn't answer, instead walking past the embers of the fire to where Sharif was still curled up in his bedroll, quite unlike his usual behavior of being awake not much later than Nila herself, if even to no useful effect since he would usually just pick a direction and stare until somebody gave him something better to do or a direction in which to walk. Now, though, he was as good as comatose.

"Awaken, you great, slumbering oaf," she said, nudging Sharif with her foot. He grumbled something, and looked bleary-eyed at her. "We leave the Divide. Rise so we can beat the sun to civilized lands."

"I'm still tired," he complained, rising slowly and begrudgingly from his bedroll.

"Well, that is your problem. Come. We depart," she said, turning away from her twin. She rolled her eyes as she rejoined the others in her party. "Poor poor Sharif; you'd think he hadn't gotten a moment's sleep," she said sarcastically. Ashan chuckled at that. If only Nila knew.

If only Sharif could tell her.

Azula watched him, where he lay sleeping. The sun would be rising soon, and with it, she would have to suffer another day in the presence of traitors. Oh, how that chafed. It burned. It seared her as the sufferance of traitors ought. No matter what he said, he was the enemy of the Fire Nation, and he proved it time and time again. Every fight she had against him, from that trap which ended in idiocy, to his betrayal under Ba Sing Se, it all lashed at her like whips.

And she'd had enough of it. He had only one thing right, of all the drivel he'd spewed. She needed a plan. And now, she had one. She wasn't going to let the Fire Nation fall. Not this time. And to make sure that happened, she was going to have to eliminate its enemies, and better her already remarkable achievements. Revenge was a fine dish, but it was a paltry meal to subsist the rest of her existence in. After all, she was not even fifteen years old again. She had an entire lifetime ahead of her. A life time stolen from somebody who was going to waste it, who was going to fail.

With her lips pulling into a grim smirk, she silently took the long bladed knife which she'd kept to this day, a final defense for when all else failed. Losing her fire was the most agonizing and horrible thing she had ever endured, but it had taught her valuable lessons, chief amongst them, never be unarmed. While a firebender was herself a weapon, one should always bear many weapons. And now, Azula had many. She crept up to the snoring mass which was the Dragon of the West, and pulled that blade from its sheath. A single thrust, right into the liver, and he'd be dead in moments. The neck might be quicker, but from this angle, an almost impossible reach, and she needed him incapacitated instantly. After all, she had not come so far to underestimate her opponents. Not again. Never again.

She raised that blade up, preparing to plunge it 'twixt the old man's ribs.

And she was interrupted by a small fist hitting her very hard in the throat.

Azula's eyes bugged, and she made a strangled noise as her body forgot how to breathe, and she could see furious golden eyes staring at her as she scrabbled back. The girl Azula stomped over to her, and wrapped her fist around one of the elder Azula's bangs, and began to drag, causing Azula to have to scramble all the more inelegantly in order to keep her hair from being ripped out by the roots. Finally, with a heave which held much more strength than the girl should have been capable of, Azula was cast against a nearby tree. Azula took a sputtering, coughing moment to get her throat working again, and favored her younger self with a strangled sound of outrage.

"ENOUGH!" the girl shrieked, her usually cherubic expression replaced by a cold mask of rage. "I thought that you might be sensible. That we might be able to pool our resources for the good of the people important to us, and for our nation. Obviously, you are incapable of that."

"Iroh is a traitor."

"He is a kook and an airhead, but I will not believe him a traitor," the girl answered, her voice as flat as death. "And he is important to me. I didn't remember much, before. But... I remember now. He was there for me. That's more than I can say about most people. And you think you can take him away from me?"

"He's a..."

"And Zuko?" the girl's voice became louder, her mask slipping into demonic outrage. "You are really so debase that you would hurt your own brother? MY BROTHER?"

"He is the Avatar's lackey and a cancer on my nation."

"No. I thought you might be useful to me. You're proving pretty conclusively that you can't be trusted," the girl said. "Whatever you think you're going to do, forget it. Whatever you plan, consider it destroyed. Every person you hurt will be repayed on you a thousand fold, I swear it!"

"You can't be serious," Azula said, rising to her feet. The girl tracked her rise.

"I don't have the luxury of sarcasm," the girl answered. "If you try to hurt my family again, I will hurt you. I don't know how, yet, but I promise you, I will. I will find things that can twist the knife into your heart and rend it to bits. I will take everything which you hold dear and set them aflame. And if you think I'm not capable, then just look at yourself. What couldn't you do, with the proper reasons?"

She stepped a bit closer, and stared up under her brows at Azula. "And now, you've given me all the reason I'll ever need. This is war, old woman. And it's a war I know for a fact that I'm going to win."

Iroh paused, still affecting his snore, as he glanced in the reflection of the open blade he held under his blankets. He could see her coming closer, her own knife rising. Even now, he pondered how he would explain Azula's death to Prince Zuko. Because he foresaw it coming very, very soon.

Only it didn't. She recoiled back, but not out of horror. She clutched at her neck, and then staggered away from Iroh, slumping against a tree. Iroh's golden eyes narrowed slightly at that, not sure what to make of it. While she had, indeed, just saved her own life the only way she possibly could have, he didn't understand why, or why in this way. He turned the blade over, and read the symbols etched into the flat.

Everything In Its Proper Time.

Qiao had given him this knife years ago, and he used it to shave. It hadn't seen much use lately, considering his growing beard. The words seemed to be a snippet of prophecy, in retrospect. While there might not be as much time as Iroh would have wanted, he was going to have to trust that the time for illusions' end would come, and all would be revealed. And when that day came, he would not have an excuse, a commiseration to give to Zuko.

He'd have a sister, instead.

A bit of history and a lot of violence. The dynamic between Team Desert and Team Avatar takes a bit of time to set up, and the most interesting linchpin is actually Sharif. Because, in the waking world, he is meek and quiet, tending to stay out of peoples' way. But when he gets his brain back, he's actually a little bit arrogant, short tempered, and vain. Hubris passes through the house of Badesh in detail, after all. Why else would he possibly think that it would be a good idea to invoke Blood? In the actual writing of this, I've reached the point where everybody's in Ba Sing Se. The hardest part now is making sure that the cluster#### is as glorious as possible. And having Long Feng play everybody like a harp from hell is turning that into a fit of giggles.

A bit more spiritual metaphysics, including some of the more fundamental rules of reality. Understandably, one of the most important ones is, if you're dead, you can't bend. That the rules have degraded enough to allow Korra to do as she has is telling. Also telling is that I've managed to predict Korra's attitude enough that, even though I wrote this chapter right around when the first episode came out, it still jives fairly well with what I've seen of her. Especially her performance in When Extremes Meet. But to explain something which will probably be asked; this is a Korra who did not study under Katara, because Katara was two years dead by the time Korra was born. Instead, she got up-close training with a very, very aged but skilled Toph Beifong. There are probably other questions I could answer, but since I can't predict them - yet - I'll just wait for them to get pointed out.

And for one final caveat, I'm the goddamned Nietzsche of my age - minus the writing style which was akin to having somebody screaming in your face. See if you can spot what I changed from the last version...

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