"By the lord thunderin', what in the Name is that?" The portly man who Toph now found herself tagging along behind uttered as the first shudder rippled out through the streets, and made its way up her soles.
"What? Don't you people get earthquakes here?" Toph asked testily.
"Fair do's," he said, before flinching back and pulling Toph with him. Not strictly necessary because she could feel the baked clay tile dropping toward her head, and it would have cracked to sand long before she so much as broke a bruise. "There'll be a lot of spooked people soon, mark m'words," he uttered, pulling her along. She pulled free of his grasp with a grumble, but didn't slow. After all, he wasn't wrong. More and more people were entering the street with every passing moment, and what buildings had stone foundations were practically dancing to Toph's 'sight'.
"Hey, buddy... what the hell's your name, anyway?"
"Jegong," he answered quickly.
"Right. Since you can actually see, would you mind telling me what's about a mile that way?" Toph said, pointing to one side, which she was well aware was directly into a store-front.
"That? That'd be the Spider's very web, the Coordinator's palace," Jegong said. "I thought you knew that?"
Toph was about to start speaking when she caught an elbow to the back of the head. She stumbled a few steps, prepared to either lambast or level whoever thought they could ambush her, but her assailant turned out to be some guy who was pulling another, unconscious guy, and had lost his balance. After a moment to rub the back of her skull, she let a dire frown light onto her face.
"Remember how you said you were going to get Twinkletoes, Prince Pouty, and the rest out? Well, I'm pretty sure that's going to be a lot trickier now," Toph said.
"And for what possible reason?" Jegong asked.
"Because I'm pretty sure one of 'em is the reason the ground is shaking!" Toph spat. "Now how did you expect to get us out?"
"I've got a wagon," a long pause. "...one I never thought I'd be usin' again. Shows how that goes."
"Well, get it hooked, because we're going to need to run for the hills in a hell of a hurry."
The crashing of porcelain and crystal was forming something of a symphony as Zhao strode past the dining room, his footing only somewhat more sure than those who otherwise shared the Royal Palace with him. Years of seamanship had honed his balance to a great extent, but even so, it was almost nothing compared to the outright rancor of the ground shifting below.
"Fire Lord, you must get to safety," Qin pleaded, as he essentially fell his way forward, somewhat abreast of Zhao. "We haven't had an earthquake of this magnitude in generations!"
"I am not going to huddle in a cast-iron bunker simply because the ground twists and shakes," Zhao dismissed.
"No! The bunker would be the most dangerous place!" Qin exclaimed. Zhao stopped, and almost tipped aside, before sidestepping a portion of the ceiling which cracked and started to sag. Other cracks, reaching down the red-painted walls, were quite damp with the cold, cold rain that pounded down without mercy or relent. "The last time we had this kind of quake, we hadn't calmed the volcano! It could erupt!"
"Could? Or will?" Zhao asked, moving past the still creaking wood above.
"If we act quickly, we can evacuate the areas of the city that would be worst hit," Qin stressed. "And if the fail-safes still work, we might avert complete calamity, but..."
Zhao took a deep breath, and reminded himself of one, very clear fact. As much of a craven coward that Minister Qin was, he didn't fear things which didn't exist. And this was an earthquake on a scale Zhao had never met on this side of the ravenous ocean. When Zhao opened his eye, and turned the burned and blasted one toward Qin, it was with pride – for the moment – wrapped tightly and held aside. "Who will need evacuation?"
"Best case? Ashfall Ward. Worst case, everybody," Qin said.
"Then send out the word to evacuate Ashfall Ward. And whatever failsafe your predecessor spent so much of Azulon's money on, ensure that it works. I have spent too much, and fought too long, to give up this city because of the ground shaking."
"...and the volcano exploding," Qin continued. Zhao shot him a baleful glare. Qin let out a mildly terrified 'eep' and scurried away like the lizard-rat that he was. Zhao was left to grind his teeth. This might get in the way of his plans to thwart the Black Sun invasion; any change to his timetable would be problematic, and he wanted to utterly annihilate the Avatar and his rag-tag of troops when they arrived.
If the perks didn't make it so very, very worth it, Zhao would wonder who in their right mind would want to be Fire Lord.
"They're going to find us," Samo-e whispered, as the Tribesmen ducked through the arches of the city, which even now shook and wavered. Buildings in the distance, illuminated only by the torches and lamps that hung in their windows, bent and swayed under the quake which shifted the ground under their feet. Some of the buildings could accept only so much, and when the dance reached a fevered point for them, they snapped, and collapsed.
"If you keep blathering, of course they are," Jantuk countered. "At least, because of all the rain, they won't be able to smell you coming."
Yue gave a glance back to them, before sprinting the distance toward the next door, which lead into the great palace itself. She had made it only half way when there was a lurch that she felt in her very soul, one that overwhelmed the unsteady ground and sent her to her hands and knees with a mighty splash, dry-heaving as every sense of perception turned against her.
She half expected that somebody – probably Jantuk – would rush to her side, and ask her what was wrong. In that, she was sorely disappointed, because when the sensation not so much dimmed, as became familiar enough to surmount, she glanced aside to see that her entire host had been as crippled as she.
"Jantuk!" Yue called back.
"Yue... What is that?" he asked.
"Stop shouting across a courtyard!" Samo-e snapped, and began to usher the very nauseated shamans ahead of him, a great mass of sickened Tribesmen that followed Yue into the outermost chambers of what seemed to be a servant's entrance to the Palace, and fatefully, one that wasn't bustling with activity.
"What was that?" another shaman, who Yue had not yet learned the name of, asked.
Yue paused only long enough to look out the door, to the clouds which blanketed the sky, pressing their cold rain down onto the city. And a part of her could see, without her eyes; could smell, without her nose... that there was a thin red laceration along the heavens. As she watched, the clouds started to... change color. From leaden gray to sickly orange and green, and an infected red. She felt as though every step she took was two, and in different directions. Yue was a shaman, the likes of which was seldom seen in this day and age. So she knew on an instinctual level what was happening.
Somebody was breaking reality.
The clouds above the city of Azul pulsed with colors, throwing out lightning that defied logic and common sense, raking along buildings one moment and setting them ablaze – only for the rain which now pounded down to extinguish it a moment later – before surging up across the sky the next. Malu slowly pushed herself up the window where she observed the meteorological insanity, but it was not for the clouds that her gaze lingered. It was in the distance, closer than that red line which demarcated the Eye of Terror.
It ran through her nose like a stench of cold rot.
"The Shards are here... they're everywhere!" she whispered, her stomach falling into her boots.
"The what?" Kankoshi, the nurse, asked.
Malu turned to her. "Get your friends, your family, anybody you care about; get them out of the city! If you don't..."
"It's just an earthquake, isn't it?" the woman asked, even as she flinched to a cracking of stone nearby in the building which quivered under Malu's hands and feet.
"No. Not just," Malu said. "Please, do this. Run while you can. They won't follow you."
"I don't abandon my work and I don't turn away from the people who need me. And when the ground stops, they'll need me more than ever!" Kankoshi snapped. Malu looked at the blind firebender, the healer who saw with her martial art, and gave her a slow nod.
"Then be safe. And if you... oh, you wouldn't be able to see them anyway," Malu trailed off.
"See what?"
"That's not easy to explain," Malu said. And then, with deep breath, one that didn't exactly refill her with vitality for the blood that she'd lost and the strength that she'd not yet regained, before bounding out the window and into the streets, even as a glowing grey fog began to slowly mount up 'round her ankles.
And unnoticed, over all the commotion, the rain began to fall colder than ever, until it landed with kinetic force. Colder and colder, until it struck no longer.
Unnoticed by anybody for the calamity, it was snowing in the Fire Nation, in the height of summer, for the first time ever.
Chapter 10
The Cage, Part 2
The ground bucked up and hurled Azula from her feet, splitting the floor in a long rent to the cracking of wood and the shattering of glass as it fell from mirrored walls. The greatest mercy that Azula had was that she was already on the floor when that tide of razors reached her; she wouldn't have to land on it, and cut herself to ribbons. The sound that accompanied that twist in the ground wasn't the deep and rumbling crack of stone against stone, though. It was a roar of unspeakable rage. She shook out the moment of stun that worked its way through her at the sudden introduction to the floor, then swept away some of the mirror shards so that she would have a place to push off of the floor.
"What in the name of all the heavens was that?" Sato asked.
"Get up," Azula ordered, and hauled him to a stand when he didn't do it fast enough.
"He is not wrong. That was no shifting of earth," Nila noted, as she scooped up a shard of mirror, wrapping the blunter end of it in a strip of cloth from her sleeve. Say what you would about the girl, she had a way of exploiting every visible advantage which Azula respected.
"Of course not. Something has angered the Avatar," Azula said matter-of-factly. Nila's brows rose.
"The Avatar? I thought he was dead," Sato asked.
"Just keep moving," Azula said. She had barely turned back from him when she saw a number of soldiers, all of them wearing no armor but bearing the tilted hat of the Ghurka, turn a corner and run the direction that the others were heading. "And not that way."
Azula knew what it was like when the Avatar truly lost his temper, and gave himself over to rage. The sound of the voice of the legion, the fury, the wrath... that was something that she had never forgotten. All that it'd taken for Azula to hear that voice, to see those blazing eyes was to kill the woman he loved. And in exchange, he ripped her soul out; thus, it was something that she could never forget. So to hear it now, here, with the Avatar so young and naïve and hopeful and stupid... that didn't bode well.
"If that is the Avatar, then something has truly sparked him if he would ignore the Spider's threats," Nila noted. Azula nodded, and was about to lean out into a corner when the Si Wongi woman pulled her back. Azula shot her a look, and she shook her head. Azula waited, and a few moments later, a final soldier sprinted the same direction as those who'd passed before. Good ears on that one. Azula ducked around the corner, and the three began to pick their way more circuituously around the Red Garden.
"I'm not sure I understand what's going on, here," Sato professed. "First my hosts electrocute me, then I'm abducted from the room they'd decided to imprison me in... This is a very confusing situation!"
"Was he always so hapless?" Nila asked.
"More," Azula answered. She flinched and turned to a door which opened into their midst, and the scarlet and purple armor of an Azuli Royal Guard nearly barreled into their midst. Azula didn't waste an instant of time hurling herself, feet and firebending first, into that man, blasting him back through the door he'd entered from, before crashing him through the window and out into the outer gardens which separated the palace from the sprawl of Azul City. He was but one of several, though, so Azula had to spin her way up, lashing with flames that they held at bay while trying to surge through that portal and grab her. One of them came damned close, only to have his hand slashed open by a shard of glass in tattooed hands.
She didn't have time for this. With a twist and a sweep, she hurled forth a cone of azure flames which knocked all close to her back, and set the floor, the walls, and the ceiling aflame. Against firebenders, that represented a brief, even momentary delay. Azula would take it.
"What are you doing?" Sato shouted, flinching back.
"Trying not to die!" Azula snapped. She then grabbed him by his collar and started to drag him behind her, until he'd picked up enough pace that he followed at a reasonable speed. She still ducked into a room as soon as possible. Escaping would be rather moot if she left Zuzu and the others to their fates.
Azula paused a moment at that thought.
Mostly at how she never really expected that she'd believe it.
"Why are these people trying to kill us?" Sato asked.
"Because you are their prisoner and are escaping. For such a genius, you truly are an abysmal fool," Nila shook her head.
"But... there must be something that we can do to stop this. There must be some kind of mistake," he offered, raking a hand through his hair.
Nila stared, agape at him. "This is absurd. Firebender, do you have anything that could sway this man?"
Azula offered him a punch in the stomach. Not enough to send him to the floor, but one he'd certainly feel. "That was for two things. One; don't second-guess me again. I'm going to save you from Azul whether you want to believe you're in danger or not. Second; your son is a jackass and I'll never get a chance to do that in person again."
"Well, I'll have to have words with him immediately," Sato said sternly. Then, a look of confusion flit across his gaze. "Wait a moment... I don't have a son..."
"You punch the father for the sins of the son?" Nila asked, even as she took a glance out the doors.
"Hiroshi swindled my husband out of every penny we'd saved, then left us in poverty while he went on to become spectacularly rich. If I had the chance, I'd spank him," Azula noted.
"My son sounds horrible!" Sato noted.
"Raise him better," Azula ordered. Sato swallowed nervously. Then she paused, and looked back at him. "You're not going to ask how I know about your son's future?"
"I have to assume that you have some means of seeing it that I'm not privy to. Is it a device? Does it run on electricity? If I were to hook it to a thunderstorm would I be able to see the path of humanity until the end of time?" he asked, growing more and more manic as he went.
Azula cuffed him upside the head.
"Ow... Right. I must apologize. Sometimes I do become... carried away."
"The path is for the moment clear," Nila said. Azula grabbed Sato's shirt and began to haul him out into the hall once more, with Nila keeping stride with her. "You have a greater degree of patience for this man than I would show."
"Try raising two willful children; you'll either learn patience or commit infanticide," Azula noted humorlessly. She leaned around a fresh corner right as the wall at the far end of that hall was smashed down. Dust and debris prevented her from being able to see what caused it, but a moment later, something was hurled out of that cloud, something that landed smashed and broken against a nearby wall. Nila, catching a glimpse of it, pushed back on Azula. Azula didn't let herself be displaced.
It wasn't often that one saw an Anomolokia so mangled.
"Somebody tried to lure the Avatar into the Red Garden," Azula summarized. "It didn't end how they assumed."
"The Avatar did this? That milquetoast coward?" Nila asked.
"You haven't seen him angry," Azula said quietly. If there was one thing that Aang, in the state he was currently in, was doing to their favor, it was that in smashing everything, he was exposing the path that they needed to take. They had to find Zuzu and the others. And then, somehow, they had to get Aang calm enough that he didn't crack the world apart, and run like hell.
The crash of stone rumbled before Sharif's face, as he stood at the edge of his cell. He didn't implore the spirits to do his bidding, not yet; they wouldn't be able to hear him within these bars. But he knew that with a bit of patience, there was a lot he could do. When the stone shifted the extra inch that he needed, so that he could slide himself out of that vile durance and into a place where the air danced with spirits once more, he breathed... not easier, but more sure. He had a job to do.
Bulwark of mankind, the hammer and the anvil, ferrous and sure;
Gear of the Construct.
What stands before the path of your humble messenger, bear aside.
What blocks the passage through the portals, bear aside.
What holds within, and saps the soul... bear aside.
There came a creaking in the heavy door that was set into the stone before Sharif. The door buckled, as though it were being pulled apart from within... which it was. The spirits of iron and steel, the spirits of industry themselves, working to unmake what they had made. The door crumbled to rust, a russet pile in the threshold. And every threshold. Sharif strode out of his cell, the scar on his brow shining with pale light, as his eyes flicked from the guard post nearby, to the window whose bars were starting to degrade every bit as much as the rest of the nearby iron was. Not all iron of course, only that which had been worked to contain. Every cell door, every bulkhead, and every window-bar, to be clear.
"Escape!" one of the guards declared. He reached for the bell and hammered it. The clangor of it reached through the prison quickly. Sharif didn't care. The alarms that he heard were much more dire, and much more important to deal with. He took a few steps toward that guard post when the other of the two guards, this one much more portly... no, not portly, but rather mesomorphic... tried to tackle Sharif down. With the veils in such a tattered state, Sharif didn't bother ducking the large man. Instead, he let one stride carry him out of the Inner Sphere and into the Outer. There was a shift, a sensation of mass passing through mass, as the guard's tackle caught only naked air, to his perception. He went crashing down to the stone. Sharif didn't look back. Another stride, and he passed from the Outer Sphere back to the Inner. To the other, who was watching, his hand still on that bell, he had seen a young man disappear from the world, only to reappear a moment later.
"Stop that," Sharif said, as he continued to move.
"Don't move, and I won't hurt you!" the guard said, nervousness clear in his tones. Sharif blinked at him, that light still wisping out of his eyes. Now that Sharif had a mind to think with, he could see and understand things. Such as that this 'guard' was not much older than Sharif was. Just an occupation, something to make money. Something to support a family. Sharif knew that there were spirits here, spirits of rage and wrath and violence and pain, of deprivation and madness; any would have been instantly useful to subdue anybody in Sharif's path. But, he knew, they didn't deserve such cruelty.
Sharif reached a hand back, and when he did, the other guard stopped at it. Sharif cast a glance to him.
The leaden eye and the heavy shield, its head bowing and its body in fatigue faltering;
Gear of sloth.
Sharif gave the larger man a tilt of his head.
...sleep.
The eyes of that guard, visible and wide in the eyes of his helm, rolled back, and his mass began to crumple down and to the side, landing in a pile at the edge of the hall. Sharif then turned to the other, who was starting to reach for a spear, a look of outright panic on his face. "What did you do to Wei? Wei! Can you hear me?"
Sharif shifted his hand, from where the larger of the two had fallen, toward the smaller. And he tilted his head once more.
Sleep.
The younger guard's knees came to a wobble, and he listed. He stopped himself from landing in a pile, at first, but he was losing a battle that he never had a faculty to win. As the spirits of lethargy set upon him, he slowly slipped into a dreamless slumber, spread out over a table, his legs locking him in place by the way they were wedged against a wall. Sharif let his hand fall. He turned his eyes to the windows once more. The Shards were nearby. And they would find him here. He had a choice.
Run. Try to evade the Shards, to lose them. Impossible for the way that they traveled and the paths that he had available to him.
Hide. Feasible, but difficult. And it would take only a slightest mistake of positioning, or timing, to spell his doom.
Fight.
Sharif blinked. That was an option which wouldn't have occurred to him. He wasn't sure why it came to him now of all times. Perhaps it was the spirit of Void that made up for the lack of half of his brain, a spirit frustrated at living in terror. At having its kind reaped, over and over. Fighting... impossible... yet intriguing.
Heads began to poke out of the cells. Heads that came with clouds of spirits, all of which had grown and distilled. Every cloud, a portrait of the man – or occasionally, woman – who dwelt within. Some, fear and pain; others, wrath so long bottled and fed upon itself that it turned into a monster. Some, murder. Others, far darker deeds. Sharif whispered into the cold wind, and let his spirits heed him. With a word, the population of the prison, on the very verge of a full-scale prison break, fell asleep.
Sharif then strode through the doors which were only a pile of rust, and across a path which looked down on a courtyard. Sharif blinked in surprise, as he beheld white fluff drifting down from the heavens. While in his early youth, Sharif had heard and even learned the nature of snow, he'd never seen it with his own eyes. Great fat flakes were dropping now, but as it grew colder, the flakes became smaller and crueler. It was not as cold as it would get, not yet.
As the world died, it would get worse.
"Where are the Shards?" Sharif asked. There was a chime in the air, something that rattled glass and vibrated through stone. Fear and pain and annihilation, of which he was on the outer rim. He would have to go inward. "I see. But somebody's got to burn the Megalopolis down."
Pausing only to pull a dark-red cloak off of a peg that he passed, Sharif began to storm his way out of Ashfall Prison, and toward the heart of Caldera City, while impossible snow drifted down around him.
The latest crash, the ground shifting under them, did a mighty job of trying to hurl Toph from her footing. But she was not so easily thrown. With a stomp of her own, the bucking-up of the ground was canceled with her downforce, allowing her to keep striding where so many others toppled. Fires were burning, even despite the snow that Toph could feel stinging at her face.
"Hey! Jegong!" she snapped. He offered a grunt for acknowledgment. "I'm not crazy in thinking this snow isn't something that Azul's used to, am I?"
"It ain't at that," the innkeeper noted. "This is evil weather. The Haunting Day is close enough that we don't need to add more ghosts to it."
Toph let that lay as it would. A crash of stone crumbling pulled only a portion of Toph's attention, and she raised a hand to send up a shelf of stone to shore the building so it wouldn't fall on her. After all, she had to have priorities, and right now, discretion was right out the window. "You know what? I'm not waiting on Twinkletoes any more. I'm going in there to get 'im," Toph declared.
"You're mad!" Jegong said.
"Probably," Toph agreed, and then she started toward the heart of those quakes, and the sound of explosions and lightning-bolts that managed to reach even above the protestation of the earth and the panic of the people.
Jegong, though, only watched her leave. He had his own problems to deal with. Keeping his mounts from spooking long enough to reach the countryside was going to be a problem all its own. But he had to take one problem at a time. Reaching his animals was the first hurdle.
He more barreled than picked his way through the throngs in the streets, even though a small number of them had already started orginizing into bucket-brigades against the industrial fires, and started to pull those lightly buried from already collapsed buildings. After all, time, at this point, was an enemy.
Jegong had almost run a woman down by accident, before he shifted his weight and made sure to do it deliberately. The woman gave a squawk of surprise and tumbled to the cobbles, only to find a very irate looking Westerner staring down at her. "Dara, y'traitorous little bitch," Jegong swore, allowing the accent he was born to, in his youth in the Azuli Hills, return.
"What are you talking about?" Dara asked, as she likewise seemed to allow her natural tones return. Although, for hers, it was a pointed and obvious emulation of the affectations of the upper class.
"I know what y'did to the Prince and his retinue. An' that ain't going to stand," her employer pointed out darkly.
"I did what I had to do to survive," Dara snapped up at him.
"Fei Hua! You did what you wanted to do to get rich!" Jegong loomed. "How much did Azul give ye' to turn in who done so much for us?"
"What does it matter to you?" Dara asked, slowly pushing herself to her feet. Jegong nevertheless continued to stare her down.
"'Cause you've sold your heritage to get it, and I hope it was worth it," Jegong said. He held up a hand, palm toward her. "Mightn't be that I've been home too often, but I have the pull to call you Oiharau. You have no place among us."
Dara stared at him in shock, unable to believe that she'd just been exiled from the people who'd given her birth. That shock didn't last long, though, before it turned to bristling anger. "Fine!" she shouted with a sneer. "All they've ever done is been backward embarrassments anyway! I don't need them!"
"Say that again in five years, girl. Or ten," Jegong promised, and started to walk past her. He gave his chance of her stabbing him 'twixt the ribs at around fifty-fifty. When he didn't feel her steel dig in, he knew that he'd struck her a lot harder than she was willing to show.
Ghorkalai were not a people who enjoyed being away from their Clan, no matter what they would try to tell you. Jegong had as much as written her death-warrant. Without glancing back, resolute in his decision, and his deed, he moved on. It might not be much, but no treason should fall unpunished. His Clan taught him better than to let that stand.
He never noticed as a girl all made of black walked out of his shadow, and began to prowl the streets.
Sokka winced as the cloth rubbed against burns that he'd rather not have rubbed at the moment. "Hey, Zuko, would you mind giving this thing your shoulder?"
The firebender looked over the door that Sokka had pointedly failed to open. "A shoulder isn't going to cut it," Zuko said. "Stand back."
"Wow. Somebody warning me before they do something drastic. I could get used to this," Sokka said, as he limped away from the door. Zuko, true to his word, began to sweep his arms through a motion that had lightning following his fingertips. Finally, he cast his fist forward, and the bolt blasted into the door, which collapsed in toward them, surprisingly enough. The dust flew, but the sight through it was little better than the dungeon they found themselves in. "...that isn't good."
The door was almost clogged with rubble. Zuko didn't say a word, he just started to ascend. Sokka didn't feel like spending any more time than strictly necessary down here, either. He followed.
"This isn't an earthquake. Not a natural one," Zuko said as he pulled Sokka past the worst of the collapse and into a place where snow began to drift toward the floor. No kidding.
"Do you think this might be Aang?" Sokka asked.
The roar, beyond words, but sounded from a thousand throats, answered that question pretty definitively. The explosion which followed a moment later, with a tail of screams of fear, drove the point home.
"We've got to do something," Sokka said. "If Aang's out of control..."
"Then Azul will make good on his promise," Zuko nodded, but the fear, controlled as it was, was clear on his face.
"That means we'll have to..." Sokka began, and trailed off, as a cadre of red-and-purple armored soldiers, running toward the Avatar, skidded to a halt at the end of a hallway, facing the two escaped prisoners. "...run?"
Zuko just shoved Sokka to get him started, but only made it about two paces before he had to hurl a wall of flame to prevent the second barbequing of Sokka, son of Hakoda. Contrary to what he would have said months ago, when the guy joined them in Ba Sing Se, having a firebender along could be really handy. It helped that Zuko knew exactly how to cook any kind of meet on legs. That was a talent that his sister didn't share. Sokka skidded to a halt, both in his back-burner contemplations on the relative cooking abilities of Zuko compared to Toph, Sokka, or Nila, and physically, as another soldier, this only a single, spotted him on his path of escape, and hurled a blast of fire toward him. With a heave, Sokka bore both he and Zuko out of its path. Zuko quickly spun and smashed forward a fist of flame toward the man who had them flanked.
"This isn't good," Sokka noted. Well, there was some good news. Notably, only three of the eight which had started the chance from behind were still following. The rest had obviously peeled off to deal with something distinctly more dangerous and glowy.
"I've had worse odds," Zuko said. "I've even trained against worse odds."
"I miss my boomerang," Sokka noted glumly. It was notable that he didn't think himself a coward for dodging a fight. A year ago, he'd have thrown himself to his almost inevitable death screaming like a demon, itself an act of machismo and stupidity. Now, he turned Zuko toward the inner wall. "We need a door!"
"Done," Zuko muttered, then cast a fist forward with a blast of flame which smashed into – and then through – the wall that had them penned. The gap that Zuko created was slender; only wide enough for them to squeeze through. Sokka was through first, as he had no way of protecting himself from magic fire. Pressing in hurt like all hell with his burned limbs, but better burned limbs than burned everythings. The sounds of flame flying behind him, as he stepped backwards into the resplendent – if scarlet – room, sounded with fury and wrath, before a great whoosh, followed by Zuko forcing himself into that gap. He didn't get far before his eyes bugged and his face showed sudden panic. Sokka didn't need to hear the words to know what to do.
The Tribesmen braced a foot against the wall, grabbed onto Zuko's armpits, and heaved. The sound of tearing shirt was the song that announced Zuko getting out of harm's way. Zuko blinked a few times, and glanced down to his now slightly tattered undershirt. "That could have gone worse," he noted.
"Don't jinx it. You'll just give the universe more ideas," Sokka said, slowly pulling the firebender up.
"I know all about that," he answered flatly, his eyes rolling as he did. They'd barely said a word by the time there was a cacophonous blast, one which sent the two young men stumbling away from the cleft. Debris pelted them, and acrid smoke rose up and stained the ceiling. And the hole behind them was now significantly wider.
"Right. They have bombs," Sokka noted.
"Run?"
"Yup," Sokka agreed. Then, the two of them fled once more.
"This is a fools errand, Yue. You're going to get me killed!" Samo-e grumbled, as the group flit from one shaking room to another. She wasn't exactly sure he wasn't right. After all, while Yue had never been personally present at an earthquake today, she'd heard enough about them from traders and travelers in the years before the Siege of the North to know that going into a building was the worst of all possible decisions to make. After all, outside,you had a lot less chance of something falling on you.
"I'm starting to wonder if you truly do have a wife," Jantuk jibed. "...because the way you whine and moan, I'd swear your groin folded in instead of out."
"Hey! That's not funny," Qylli protested, her arms crossed and eyes staring daggers at the older man.
"He's..."
"Shamans! Please!" Yue said over them. "We've come to far to fall to bickering! Now, where are Odalai and..."
"Right here, ma'am," Odalai said, rounding a corner and throwing a soldier into a pantry. "There's a lot more of them the deeper in you go. I hope this won't take too long."
Yue closed her eyes, breathed of the air that swirled through the Fire Lord's house. There was a stink on it, not the note of sulphur which pervaded everything in the dry. Not the acrid tang of lamp oil smoke. This smelled like the death and putrefaction of something inherently wrong and unnatural. And a chill ran through her. "Jantuk? Samo-e? Do you feel that?"
"Yes... I do," Samo-e noted, beginning to look around him. He took another sniff, closed his eyes, then quickly turned. "There!"
"What?" Qylli, at the back of the pack, asked.
"...It's not... I don't get it. I knew there was something there," Samo-e muttered.
"Your paranoia is getting the better of you," Jantuk shook his head. "Mistress Yue, do you know which way Tui and La are?"
Yue had just started to point, when a figure, its body so black that darkness would have paled before it, stepped out of an open doorway, perhaps five paces away from Qylli. Most notably, it didn't exit the room; it appeared, walking through the threshold. It turned to them all, its burning scarlet eyes pulsing with what seemed like black veins. Then, the jaws opened, and a shriek that drove every shaman back a step for its intensity filled the corridor, where it did not peel the paint from the walls and cause the gilding to crumble and fall away from its decorations. "RUN! NOW!" Yue screamed. Qylli was already taking her advice, powering through the group which was for the most part men, and causing a stampede as the black-thing's first step was matched by four from everybody else.
"What is that thing?"
"Bad!" Yue answered Odalai's question. Every iota of that thing sent shards of terror hurtling into Yue's brain, pure and undiluted and brutal. She imagined this was what it must feel like to be something small, weak, and delicious in... say... Azul. The fear was in part her own, but in part, the fear of something far larger, and yet every bit as vulnerable.
Yue turned forward just as it backed into a door, and appeared standing in front of them. Yue skidded to a stop, and looked past it. Tui and La were only a few hundred feet away, but through the maze of the palace, and past this thing, they might as well be on the far side of the planet. The black thing stalked out of that threshold, pushing the shamans back.
"Mistress, I'll slow it down," Jantuk said. "Just find Tui and La and get them out of here!"
"That is suicide and I don't think it would work," Yue pointed out the two obvious shortcomings of Jantuk's offer. She continued to shuffle back with them, as a beyond-black hand raised up, as though to beckon them toward it. Yue blinked and breathed hard, but she couldn't retreat forever. Sooner or later, they'd have to pass through an arch, or a doorway... and then that thing would be in the middle of them. Which meant she had to do something drastic. "Get ready to run past it. I'll hold it down for... maybe a few seconds."
"What? How?" Jantuk said.
"Don't tell me you're going to throw yourself at that thing!" Samo-e shouted.
"If you touch it, it'll..." Odalai began.
"I have no intention of letting it touch me," Yue said. She closed her eyes for a moment, and reached out with a sense far older than bending. Water, which now dribbled down from the ceiling through cracks that ran down into the heart of the palace, began to tremble as she began to invoke the water. She knew that, for most, to invoke required the words. Shamans after all weren't the spirits they dealt with, so they had to bridge the context with their ideas, to implore the spirits to their cause.
Yue didn't need to use the words, to implore. She called to the spirits of flood, deluge, and above all others water, as easily as a man or woman would draw breath. She clenched a fist tight, her World Eye showing the great flood of the spirits beginning to pour down through the nearby crevasse in the room. They didn't manifest as a physical flood, but the air did became almost soupy as it was overtaken by the spirits submersible. "Go now!" Yue shouted, and then she held that hand forward. A great bolus of them recoiled for a moment, before hearing the desperation in Yue's heart, seeing it in her eyes, feeling it in her soul. They were small, numerous, and simple, but they understood sacrifice. So they crashed into the black thing, and bowled it aside. Even as the spirits impacted, they were being unmade to their utmost, but the shamans of the Water Tribe took that opportunity to its utmost, and surged past in a great and rampaging mass. Yue was the last to follow, holding that storm of water spirits toward the thing which unmade them without effort or thought, but could not but check their surge.
Finally, Yue let the water spirits falter, and she started to run. Her nose told her, how the thing kept bouncing closer to her, between doorways and hallway transitions, or even the pools of shadow. But after what felt an eternity, but was only seconds, the smell began to fade. She staggered to a stop, and saw the black thing staring after her, before it swung its head to one side. The northeast, it seemed. The swirling maw of madness opened, but not for a scream. Without a sound being offered, it walked into a room, and vanished completely from the Palace.
"Whatever that was, it's probably a sign that we'd better move fast," Qylli said, pulling Yue out of her shock and confusion.
"You're right. It's this way!"
The crash of a wall falling out behind them gave Sokka and Zuko a moment of hope; after all, they'd been trapped inside this room and under siege for quite long enough; Sokka had run out of things to hurl at the guys trying to burn them to death.
"Great, now we have a way to..." Sokka trailed off, when he beheld what had knocked over said wall. Not a shift of stone or a force of nature. Well, kinda a force of nature. Hovering just above the floor, in a sphere of wind so hard that Sokka could see it, Aang held his hands, glowing with brilliant white light, over the ground. Every twitch of his fingers was answered by a shift in the stone. The Avatar turned burning white eyes toward Sokka, just for a moment, and the look of them drove Sokka back a step, into Zuko as luck would have it. Sokka was the last person to think he could ever be afraid of Aang... but looking at him right now...
It was like looking at a demon that lived inside the skin of a brother. Such hate and rage could never exist within the airbender kid. At least, Sokka hoped it couldn't.
"Oh, that isn't good," Zuko said, a glance over his shoulder. Aang turned his gaze forward again, and offered a wordless roar that sounded with thunder, before a bolt of purple lightning slammed into a tree in the courtyard, and turned it into salt. Sokka blinked at that absurdity, but it was followed a moment later when an orange bolt struck that same tree, and set the salt on fire.
"Aang!" Sokka said, finally regaining his senses and rushing toward the exit that the Avatar had made for them. "Calm down! You're going to – gurk!"
Sokka was pulled back, and thankfully so, at the edge between the room and the courtyard, because even as he did, another purple bolt slammed into the greenery, and as it did, the whole plant and area around and under it instantly transformed into ice, even as snow began to fall down over top of it. Then, another bolt, turning the ice into blood. Still frozen, thankfully.
"If we go out there right now, that's going to happen to us!" Zuko pointed out the obvious.
"Well I don't have any other options right now," Sokka said. Then he looked down, and rolled his eyes. A chunk of wall might not be the most aerodynamic of weapons, but it was a damned sight better than nothing.
At the door to this room, the two firebenders who had been pressuring the increasingly exhausted Zuko and the effectively unarmed Sokka back stared in fear, but didn't lower their guards or shift their stances. Which was unfortunate, because Sokka wanted to brain one of 'em. "This is insane..." one said.
"Keep your eyes on the target in front of you, junior. We can deal with the font of insanity that is the Avatar, later," the other answered. The slightly younger looking one – in his late twenties to the others early thirties, perhaps – gave a nod, then thrust forward with shouts of wrath and fiery devastation. Zuko released Sokka, and swept his own fire to smash the assaults aside, but there was only so much that he had left in him. After all, Zuko hadn't been treated kindly since his appearance in this palace. Sokka doubted anybody was.
Zuko was being pressed back. And by that token, so was Sokka. He kept glancing over his shoulder, even as he tried to see between flares of light. He knew that if they backed up another couple of yards, they'd be in prime lightning-bolting territory. That wasn't something that Sokka relished the notion of. Regular lightning was pretty terrible to get struck by. But lightning which turns you into frozen blood? Ew and no in equal measure.
One particularly forceful assault struck Zuko's guard and sent him jolting back into Sokka, such that the Tribesman had to dig in his toes and lean to keep the firebender rooted, and to keep himself from sliding into harms way. Zuko was shaking his head, trying to clear it. Sokka finally let Zuko stand on his own, and he took his defensive stance once more... only to find that the fire had stopped coming in at them.
The fact that Nila was garotting one with a curtain-draw and Azula was delivering a kick to the face of the other where he'd come to rest against the vanity told Sokka exactly why.
"Oh... I'm given to believe that this is usually a situation reversed," Nila said with a smirk, even as she finally let the firebender – who'd stopped struggling – flop to the floor. "Although I for one and content not to be imperiled for another's pleasure, given a choice."
"Nila, thank the gods," Sokka said. "Aang's losing it!"
"I'm aware," Azula said, pulling something off of her back and hurling it at Sokka. He caught it, easily enough, and his eyes widened.
"SPACE SWORD!" he cried.
"You are more excited to see your weapon than your girlfriend," Nila noted with a raised brow.
"That's because I didn't know if I'd ever see this again. You were pretty much a certainty," Sokka said. Zuko gave a wince, as though he expected Nila to take that badly. Fortunately for Sokka, if he'd learned anything, it was that Nila didn't react the way that people thought she should. She just smirked and shrugged at what ought have been a back-handed compliment. "What do we do about Aang?"
"Let him kill Azul?" Azula offered.
"Yeah... that's not the way we roll in Team Avatar," Sokka said with a bit of a shrug.
"It would certainly solve our problem with him," Azula nevertheless pointed out.
Sokka, though, stopped. He turned behind him, and saw that the lightning had stopped falling into the Red Garden with all of its entropic effects. "Why do I not like this?" Sokka asked.
He was answered when the shadows oozed out a female form, one with red and virulent eyes. Instantly, a fairly bleak and terrified profanity began to slip out of the Tribesman's lips, and when the others saw what he did, they couldn't help but join him. The twin dao, tossed to Zuko by his sister, were out in a flash and a ring of steel, but they would do very little good against something which had no blood to spill, nor limbs to sunder. "It's..."
"The Shard," Nila muttered. And for a wonder, she inched closer to Sokka and behind him, her eyes wide. Insanely brave she might be, but when it came to things that could neither be shot nor hit in the eyes with pepper-grease, she found herself at a loss.
"Is it safe to come in, now?" a voice came from the doorway.
"No, but it's more dangerous out there," Azula shouted. The eep that sounded was followed by a man of slender build and withdrawing of nature slipping in with the girls. From the way he was described, it was most likely Nomura Sato. He took one look at the Shard, which swung those hellish eyes along in a great arc that sped past all in the room before it, and froze solid. Whatever the Shard was looking for was not one of their number, luckily. Its gaze hinged, until it locked on something out of sight. There was a terrible wail of fire burning in that direction, and they could see the profile of the Shard's mouth opening. Then, It started to stride, evenly but steadily, toward the source of the sound.
Likely toward Aang.
"What was that thing?" Sato asked.
"A problem," Sokka answered.
"We need to get your Avatar out of here," Azula prompted. Nila took a moment to nervously swallow, before she let her expression turn from fear to her usual annoyed resolve.
"She is correct. I have little doubt that in his current state, he would think himself able to defeat the beast, and would find himself wrong to the world's peril," Nila noted.
"How can we outrun something that can teleport?" Zuko asked.
"...seriously, what was that thing?" Sato pressed.
"Keep up or we let It eat you," Azula summarized. That drew a pallid look from the inventor, and commanded obedience. Lucky that he gave it. But worryingly, there was no plan given to help Aang. Because nobody knew what they could do to help.
The rumbling in the heart of Caldera City brought every bit of the terror that the insane lightning had in Azul. The ground shifted and cracked, jets of sulfurous gasses leaking up as the very ground began to betray those who lived on and around the cone. Some of the palaces of the rich and noble had already collapsed, the twisting of the earth unmaking their foundations. But a few collapsed buildings would be nothing to what would come if the entire crater collapsed in, or worse, if the eruption to come struck with the explosiveness of the one which unmade the previous Avatar's home. That had been a blast which, purportedly, could have been heard as far away as Senlin or the city of Azul.
"Your 'back-up' plan had better work," Zhao swore.
"It was all hypothetical and experimental! We have no idea what this will do!" Qin tried to absolve himself of the consequences, but Zhao was having none of it. Even as he walked out of the snow, ignoring how it stung against his face, he was trying to rationalize why this was happening. Azula had foretold no eruption. Of course, that might have been because the vision she beheld told of an eruption which was of so small an effect as to not bear mentioning. But still, he was certain that this unnatural, hellish weather would have warranted a passing sentence.
Snow did not belong upon the equator.
"If it doesn't work, you will bear the consequences of its failure," Zhao promised.
"If the plan doesn't work, then everybody is going to bear the consequences of its failure," Qin corrected.
"Just do your work, scientist!"
Qin gave a nod, and hurried forward. Zhao kept pace with him by lengthening his stride, but truth told, he was nervous. This was a situation that he was entering blind, unlike all of what had happened in the last year. He looked to the Child who was following at his heel like a cur. "The garrison is to stay in the port and the switchback roads; I will not have anybody taking military advantage of this disaster."
"Of course, Fire Lord," the Child offered with a nod, before splitting off. Zhao didn't doubt that another would take his place soon enough. Turning the weapon of your enemy against your enemy was a skill not to be overlooked or undersold. Finally, Qin reached a building which was built so that it clung to the side of the rim of the crater, the highest point of Caldera City. The structure was all in iron, but built as though to prevent it from pitching or snapping, many beams of metal plunging into the stone. Even still, the whole structure was canted ever so slightly to the left, and groaned with every cracking of the ground.
"Activate it now!" Qin said without any preamble to the others who were trying to evacuate paperwork out of the building.
"But it might cause even more harm than good!" one of Qin's underlings denied. Zhao took a stride forward.
"Your Fire Lord demands it. So do it."
The underling flicked a nervous eye between his immediate superior, and his superior's superior. Then, he nodded, and began barking orders in some sort of academic lingo that Zhao had neither time nor tolerance to figure out. It had a few of the others blanching, though. Obviously, these high-thinking fools were every bit as cowardly as their director. Thankfully, while they'd inherited his cowardice full-cloth, his hesitancy was something that they didn't bear to fruit.
"Even as we do this... I must express my concern," Qin said. "For all we know, we're going to cause the very disaster this system was put in place to prevent!"
"Does anybody live on that side of the mountain?" Zhao asked, looking out the window to the blasted and volcanic plains. It was telling that this portion of Shinzo was so volcanically active that it wasn't possible to farm here – representing a thing unique in the Fire Nation. Even the rain couldn't cool the blood of the earth. There was another great groan in the ground, and Zhao looked back. As he did, he could see the palace of one of his political allies lean perilously aside, before collapsing entirely. Well, that was his problem.
"No, admittedly, but it could cause a chain reaction which annihilates the volcano itself, and anybody within hundreds of miles of it!"
"This will be my city, intact, or no city at all!" Zhao snapped at him. He then took a breath. "How is this supposed to work?"
"Explosives," Qin said. He pulled an old and yellowed looking schematic from a place on the floor where it'd fallen off of a high shelf. He pointed a form that had been inked into the plan. "We use a series of charges set in place years ago to blast a vent into the magma-tube. It might release the pressure, the gasses, and the molten rock in a safe direction. Or it might start a blast which will decapitate this part of the island. I don't know which!"
"How well will the explosives work if they're that old?"
"About as well as the plan in general will – I have no idea!" Qin said, his eyes still wide with alarm. "All of this was started under the rule of Azulon!"
It was an audacious, risky, and dangerous plan. But Zhao was not going to lose this city, and would not do worse than the terrible predictions that Azula had foreseen. He had more pride than that. "Why haven't you started yet?"
"We need to..." Qin began.
He was cut off by the first bang. Zhao hurried to the edge, looking over the overhang to the region which was due to be blasted. But the lines of explosives were not in evidence. Only a single charge detonated, and that, only producing a spot for grey-green gasses to jet up and out into the sky. "That was unimpressive."
"They didn't detonate," Qin said with dawning horror.
"Do something about that," Zhao ordered. "This city is not going to burn today, is that clear?"
Flying while lightheaded was not a good idea in the classic sense. Or in fact, any sense. However, with the ground shifting perilously underfoot and Malu's balance already compromised enough by her relative lack of blood, she was going to have to cover ground as quickly as possible without touching it. It was only lucky that the destruction of the earthquake, which still rumbled and twisted the buildings, to the screaming of metal tearing in the city, kept peoples eyes down instead of up.
She landed hard, flopping onto her chest when her feet didn't catch her properly, and starting to slide forward, down the slope of ceramic shingles toward a long drop into a street. While her blood might have been somewhat lacking, that just meant that what adrenaline pulsed through her was more concentrated, she figured. Thus, as she scrabbled and scrambled, she finally managed to jam her hand into a cleft opened between where the shaking of the terrain had already consigned some tiles to the cobbles well below.
"Alright. That could have hurt," Malu noted. She looked out across the other rooftops of the rich and mighty; she could see Montoya Azul's palace behind its wrought-iron fence. Splendor didn't make it any less of a prison, though. She pulled her feet under her, after that long moment spent just getting her vision to lighten up and her limbs to lose the tingling sensation that began to afflict her when she tried to stay moving for any length of time. It was better than the numbness that came with honest cold, though.
Heh. Honest cold, in the Fire Nation, during summer.
Malu blinked away the pellets of snow that struck the tiles and made them all the more slick, looking toward the Spider's metaphorical web. That there wasn't much left of it that looked intact was probably the surest sign that Malu had to move faster. "Come on, Aang. You're better than this," Malu muttered. She pulled herself up, even blasting away the water from the tiles with a swing of her hand so that she could get a proper footing. As she prepared to launch herself, though, she caught a whiff of something foul, and her heart started to sink.
"You've got to be kidding me," Malu said. Sadly the universe wasn't, because a Shard stepped into existence, standing in defiance of gravity and balance, at the edge of the roof. Malu pulled herself up and away from it, as it walked casually up that slope toward her, red eyes pulsing. There was a shiver that ran not through her skin but her soul, and she flicked her eyes in every direction, trying to find the one which would see her clear and free.
Because of her paranoia, she was able to see the second Shard which walked onto the roof. This one was more brutish of posture, back hunched and hands formed into long-fingered claws. Imbalance was a non-entity of many facets, it seemed, and all of them would be expressed. The more bestial of the shards raised a jagged finger toward Malu, and opened it's hellish maw wide, to a shriek that tore through the city with every bit of the destructive promise as the earthquake below.
"Yuh-bye!" Malu offered, before taking off at a sprint along the spine of the roof, running perpendicular to both. Not the ideal path, but it was what she had available to her. She felt tired – well, exhausted, really – but fear had a way of giving the weary wings. She hurled herself off the end of the roof with a bound that would have caused onlookers to gawk in disbelief, had any bothered to look. She had not even reached her apex, though, when the bestial Shard turned and stepped off of one roof, and reappeared on the one that Malu was bound toward. It turned toward her, its head rotating clear around on what was a mockery of Malu's neck.
Malu tore at the air, forming it into a solid knot a few feet ahead of her, then twisted her body up so that she was tucked into a ball. Then, when her path intercepted that knot, she exploded her legs downward, powering off of the surface she'd provided for herself, and turning a flat trajectory into an acute one. She streaked away from the roof she'd initially aimed for, and now bore down on one mildly closer to Azul. She landed at a roll, and kept running. Out of sheer instinct, she bounded high through the door into the noble estate. For that reason alone, the sweeping claw of the first Shard passed underneath her. Malu's feet found the walls, and she ran along them until gravity finally demanded its due and returned her to the floor. Then, it was the center of the hall.
Mostly because every door that she past had a black claw swiping at her from it.
A footman of the house, truncheon at one hip and sword at the other, could only stare in terrified shock at the maelstrom approaching him. Malu dropped low, sliding practically on her back, her wet clothing giving her just enough slip to pass 'twixt his legs before she scrambled forward like a polarbear-dog, before she eventually got her feet under her again. She then had to haul herself to a stop, just before a window, giving the Shard which was waiting to ambush her traveling through it to overextend Itself, and flop into the room, claws raking along the marble tiles.
Malu gave herself a punt in the back, lifting her above the thing which was already everting itself to grasp her, no speed lost comparable to her initial sprint, and smash through that window, feet first to an explosion of wood and the cracking of glass panes being thrown into the garden beyond them. Malu rolled to a stop in the grasses which did little to hold back the mud, trying to stop the spinning of the world around her. Given the shakiness of her landing place, it was astounding that she made any headway at all. After a few blinks, she unsteadily pushed herself up. Then, looked down.
She was at the center of a flower-bed. And as she panned her gaze out, she could see the bestial and the perceptive Shards, standing on either end of it, right where the path met the soil. Malu breathed deep, trying to get precious air into her lungs. Another downside of anemia; she might as well be missing a lung for how hard it was to breathe. She had to summon her will, her strength, and her resolve. There was a crash from Azul's palace as a tower came crumbling down, before it ceased its downward collapse, dug in, and began to tip outward. The remnants of the tower then slammed through the fence, finally tearing down the wall of a building opposite the street of it. A way in... if she could get out.
The Shards both stared at her, their mouths open and bleak. From both, came a scream, the same scream as before. Anger, hunger, and madness. But as the bestial Shard was about to take Its first first step onto the soil, it paused, the foot hanging. Two heads swiveled, and the scream descended into a gutteral sound. The rasping of a rusty bell with a rusty axe. The eyes turned in again, but Malu somehow knew that they weren't looking at her. Each, by turn, stepped forward, but when they crossed the threshold from one form of being into another, they vanished, and the stink of them receded. It didn't vanish, but it felt simultaneously hundreds of miles away and three streets out of sight. It was probably the best that Malu was going to get, too.
She started to stumble, then walk. Walking turned to jogging, to running at last. She slipped sideways between the bars of this man's garden to the street beyond it, into the crowd of terrified servants and liveried workers trying to avoid the crashing of buildings onto their heads. Malu didn't have time to be discrete. So she pounded a leg down, and bore herself up in a vaulting bound that hurled her up and onto the near-top of Azul's fence. From there, she needed only throw herself a bit higher, and vault it completely, landing with a soft 'paff' in the cold mud that melted the flakes of snow that landed upon it.
"Aang! You have to stop this!" Malu shouted.
The crash of fire and lightning was her answer, as was the rumbling of the angry earth.
This was bad.
"Tell me you know what this thing is," Hai asked, as the two of them backed away from the creature which stalked them, through the streets of Caldera City. Hisui swallowed, but didn't answer. She knew the look on that things lack-of-face. The eyes, burning hate and fire, the maw into utmost oblivion; they were the stuff of nightmares, and right now had the look of starvation nearing an end. The looked at the two shamans, and beheld food.
"Just keep backing away," Hisui offered. She shook her head, and took a guess. "Earth?"
"Unflinching earth, the unbending backbone, the dragon's scale and the unbreaking chain, heed the call of the voice of the Inner Sphere..." Hai began after the shortest of nods.
"Rise up from the bounds of surly gravity, dance the stone and raise the hand against the abomination, wicked and insane, that stands upon you!" Hisui finished.
The beast continued to follow them, mouth wide, and despite a complete lack of features that would make Koh himself jealous, she could tell that the mouth was filled with something akin to fangs. It didn't pay any attention to the swirls of green-tinged earth-spirits at its feet. "Constrict and constrain! What has no place upon black sands, bind! Under your undeniable and unfathomable weight, crush!" Hai expounded. As he did, the green hurled itself up, mounting over the black, trying to slow it down, to follow his request and crush the thing before them. Even as they did, though, there came a keening, one which only those as trained and sensitive as Hai or Hisui could hear. The sound of spirits crying out in terror and in pain. The beast paused, looking away from them and down to the green upon its ebon form. Then, the mouth opened wider. What had been a coating, a leaden cloak, now began to swirl up and into that maw, sweeping away from its 'flesh' until every spirit which Hai had sent into attack was now vanished utterly, not a single mote of their corpus remaining. That was impossible by any rule that Hisui knew; even destroyed spirits still left 'remnants', bits and pieces of spirit-fluff that would eventually give rise to others, even if not the same variety.
These were utterly gone, as though they never were.
"Thaaaat's not good," Hai noted the obvious.
"Run?"
"Can we even?" Hai asked.
"Not successfully," a third voice entered the fray. Hisui turned, and saw what she truly didn't expect; the prisoner from Ashfall Prison, the Si Wongi with the head-wound and the defective brain, was striding toward them, his face tight with purpose and anger. She could see a glowing in his head, pumping out through the furrowed cleft and even leaking out in wisps from the pupils of his eyes. "Back away, or it will unmake you," he said, clearly and in their own language.
"What the hell? How did you get out?"
"Destiny can be a funny thing. Leave or die, make your choice," The Si Wongi declared, green eyes locked on the blazing red of the beast before them.
"I am no coward," Hisui said.
"And I'm not going to be upstaged by my sister," Hai agreed with a smirk. "How do we kill this thing?"
"You don't," He cast out a hand to it. "Shard of Imbalance, bleak and black and beyond all that is or was or ever shall be, this is your end. I am Sharif Badesh bin Seema din Nassar! And in me is the light that shall unmake your darkness!"
The Shard, as Sharif declared it, let out a wail at them, one that made the two shamans – and possibly Sharif as well – feel a sense of physical sickness until it passed them by. When it struck Sharif, though, there was a pulse that seemed to seep out of his eyes. For a fractional, panicked second, Hisui was terrified that he'd somehow made himself into another avatar. That second faded quickly, as did the light. It wasn't an all-powerful and all-consuming blaze of white. This was more mellow and wafting... and it smelled of a spirit-kind the likes of which Hisui had never before sensed. The light seemed to flow around him, parting an unseen wave, and the Si Wongi stood resolute. Hisui pulled her feet under her, her hands out and opened, ready to invoke.
"You do not flee? Then be it at your own peril," Sharif said, as he held a hand skyward, even as the Shard began to mimic him.
"It can't be worse than that place with the cat-bird-men," Hai noted. Hisui had to agree. And as one, three voices rose against the dark, and the spirits shouted with them.
The shifting of the ground began to birth a stink of rotting eggs, as jets of sulphur began to spring up, disgorging generations' worth of pressure in a noxious stoicheometry, itself a threat of what was to come. The faintly grey substance drifted in wisps throughout the halls of the Palace that Yue was trying to navigate, burning at her lungs and searing at her mouth. If there was an upshot, it was that her sense of smell was quickly disappearing. If there was a downshot, it was that she needed her sense of smell to get a strong sense of the spirits around her.
"We're running out of time, Mistress," Jantuk said, as he tied a ripped bedsheet into a bind around the shallow wound that a Fire Nation spear had caused him. Samo-e had repayed that scratch with something a lot more... well... lethal. "If we don't leave soon, Tui and La aren't going to be the only ones in dire peril."
"As long as they're in this city, I am not leaving," Yue swore. "Please. Help me."
"We weren't saying we were leaving, just pointing out the obvious," Qylli said with an uneven smile. Mostly because she looked to be developing a swollen lip from catching a stray elbow a few minutes ago during a brawl that appeared out of nowhere, seemingly. Yue knew what it was like to take a blow; the Spikerim wasn't the safest place to be, and she'd been out there almost as much as any of the soldiers guarding Summavut. Thus, she was able to bear with her own bruised stomach and bleeding ear, and keep moving.
"Do we even know where we're going?" Odalai asked.
While Yue was not exactly versed in Fire Nation architecture, unlike most of those with her, she knew what splendor looked like. There were different kinds of it. Some splendors were to impress the lower classes. Some splendors were meant to impress the upper classes. And some splendors, like the ones that she'd increasingly seen, were there simply because whoever held the purse-strings wanted something there. This was a living-area, a place where the Fire Lord rested his head, and all of the privileges that came with that. "Tui La... He's keeping them in his rooms," Yue muttered.
She had to duck inside a threshold as the sound of shouting appeared down the hallway; there were a few soldiers, carrying a woman who looked like she'd been struck in the head. There were many that they'd seen in passing. She didn't doubt that somebody, some servant or maid or valet, had noticed their party. But chaos was on their side at the moment. Yue closed her eyes, and reached out with her soul.
Blue eyes snapped open. "They're this way, and they're close," Yue said. She leaned out again, and found the hallway empty of armed men. Her legs were burning with the pace they set. She didn't doubt that the others' were as well, but at the moment, her sympathy was muted by her purpose. Her gods needed her. She flattened herself to a corner, and peeked around it. The doors which stood into the hallway were tall, gilded, and looked to have worth outstripping the entire Water Tribe... in money at least. Another glance. There were people running, but away from the Tribesmen, and away from the room. It would have to do.
Yue motioned for her wounded and beleaguered host of shamans to follow, as she scrabbled around the corner at a spring and made for those doors. She skidded to a stop, though, when she found them closed. She tried to push, pull, or even slide them open, but they were locked and barred. She gave a glance to Samo-e, who reached her side, and he tapped his pack with a shake of his head. No luck in burning away the lock, then. "What now?" Qylli asked, trying to keep her eyes in every direction at once.
"I'm thinking there's a reason so many of us came here at once," Jantuk offered. Odalai the others were silent, then prompted him to continue. Yue, though, took the hands of the two closest shamans.
"Everybody, clear your mind, and focus on the Outer Sphere," Yue began.
"There's no rifts close enough..." a bald-headed and grey eyebrowed shaman pointed out.
"Please, just do it," Yue exhorted. "Focus on the Spirit World. See its vagueries and its solidities, know its rules and its taboos. Feel the veil between this world and that one."
"I... I think I feel it," Samo-e said, his eyes down and his brow knit in concentration. She nodded, and took a deep breath. When she forced it out, the world around them twisted slightly, gravity not working quite right. Everybody stumbled, but held their footing, albeit now in the Outer Sphere. As one, they turned to the door, and found it open.
Yue knew that that trick was going to come in useful, someday.
She released the hands of those with her, and stepped past the threshold that stood as thin as air where once their passage was blocked utterly. Beyond was a sitting room, one whole wall lined with bookshelves, while the opposite held a fireplace – odd a thing to have in the Fire Nation as it was. Between sat a chair, windows beyond it that looked only down onto the streets of a city which was in the process of crumbling apart, if not outright exploding. But what drew and held Yue's gaze was the glass-sided tank which sat before the fire, just close enough that the water would be perpetually uncomfortably warm for those that lived within it.
Two koi-fish, one black with white, the other white with black, were floating still in the water.
"No, please don't be dead," Yue said, rushing across the rugs and pressing her hand against the glass. The fish turned to her, its eyes starting to glow and flicker.
I am not dead, yet should be.
Yue pulled back as she felt the voice of La ripple through her. "I don't understand. We're here to rescue you!"
I should not require rescue. I should be gone. This was not meant to be.
"Please, we need your strength, your guidance. We're afraid," Yue said to the fish. The other affixed its gaze on her.
The moon was not meant to live, yet does. Much lies in chaos. But we shall adapt.
The world is dying. Will you stand against the darkness in the end?
Yue nodded solemnly. "I will. Absolutely, and without hesitation."
And will you live with the sacrifices which must be made?
Yue's eyes dropped. "I will have to."
"Yue, we've got problems," Jantuk said, as the windows shattered even as they remained intact. A great rent was torn in the fabric of reality, here in the Outer Sphere, as something black and fanged and clawed pushed its way from wherever it had come, and burst into being at the other end of the room. "Major problems!"
You always had such courage, Yue. I see my decision to give you breath was, in so many ways, the right one.
She smiled. "Thank you," she whispered. Then, the glass burst, sending the water spilling out, in both of the Spheres. But in the Outer, the water didn't simply fall and wash across the floor. There, amidst the shamans with that beast bearing down on them, it mounted and grew, a creation of glowing water with the face of the koi it had spawned from. Flippered arms opened wide and beckoned in.
Come to me my children; we have lingered here long enough.
The shamans all hurled themselves toward Tui Manifested, erupting splashes with each that entered its body. Yue was the last to stand outside, as the spirit stared down the abomination, which paused at the far edge of the rug. The abomination stared at the twinned gods, its head twisting as though trapped in a decision. It continued to twist until it had made a full circuit of its neck. Then, Yue stepped backward, into the embrace of her diety.
The water collapsed in on itself with the crash of a great wave against the rocks. White spray blasted outward, soaking the books in a spray of brine. The tumult grew smaller and smaller, crushing down and into itself, until there fell a single droplet of salt water, straight onto the floor. The Shard watched on, but turned away. It had not been given the task to eat the gods. Had It, It would have, and the shamans would not have been able to stop It. Instead, It stepped to the threshold, and disappeared, back into the rumbling city.
When the Ghurka spotted Azula rounding the corner, the two of them reacted with almost perfect simultaneity. He launched forward with a barrage of discreet if powerful firebolts. Azula smashed the whole assault aside with a wave of azure flame, before twisting closer. She hurled herself toward him with a blast of rocketed fire, before colliding – fist first – into his face, and sending him stumbling back. It was impressive that he kept his footing after the blow, but Azula wasn't willing to let him recover, just as they'd wisely not let her recover after dealing similar injury to her days ago. She rushed forward, driving a knee into his ribs, then heaving down on his overcoat and smashing his face into the wall. Due to the compromised nature of the wall, it didn't land as solidly as she might have hoped, but she wasn't in this to kill her own people. She just wanted to survive the day.
"Nila! Get Sato and..." Azula shouted back.
"Already doing it!" Sokka shouted from well down the hall, at the back of the pack leading Sato toward an exit. Fitting, she guessed. She gave a bounce back when a wall was torn away, and part of the roof crumbled to compensate for it. The Red Garden was now laid bare before her, and most of it was on fire.
It was distantly, but Azula could see the glowing of the Avatar, as he laid waste to the palace, and anything near it. He probably had no idea the sheer scale of damage he'd done. There was a time that she would have relished the chance to show it to him, to rub his nose in his own hypocrisy. Now, she needed him alive. And she wanted him alive, as well; the two were distinct, after all.
She gave a glance toward the lightning. It was falling with devastating effect, yes, but she could feel something to it. It was like the heartbeat of the universe, echoing the substance of her soul. More true than she could realize, it turned out. But still, she could see a room across the garden, and somebody lying on the floor. Somebody she recognized.
With a breath for concentration, for power, she hurled herself forward. A pause, as a bolt of lightning sent sand flying into the air in a spray of literal diamonds. Then, she was moving forward again, ducking aside a bolt which turned a flaming tree into meat. Her feet pumped and her body sprang forward, dodging other bolts which resulted in she knew not what, until a final bound carried her over the detritus and brought her to a roll in the room, amongst the dust.
"Well, well, well, Tribesman," Azula said, dusting herself off even as she looked at the carnage around her – the walls which were not rubbled were melted – before returning her attention to the waterbender. "The universe must be splitting its sides laughing."
It had to be. Because why else would Azula hoist the woman, whom until very recently she would have spent her soul to kill, upon her shoulder and start to run toward the enraged Avatar?
It was both a function of Azula's honed physique and the waterbender's meager mass that Azula was able to outright run with the torpid young woman flopped over her shoulder. There was very little left of what had once been a testament to Azuli arrogance and pride, more so even than the actual seat of power which was half a mile to the north. The outermost walls bowed inward, as their innards had been smashed to pulp. Towers lay in crumpled piles. Gardens lay ablaze. That wasn't even taking into account the damage that was happening throughout the rest of the city. The only great wonder was that Aang hadn't lost all sense and started floating above the ground.
One could almost blame this on a wholly natural disaster. Well, until one reached the inside of the Red Garden, at any rate. At that point, it became a wholly supernatural disaster, and people would probably be okay with that, considering the snow.
The shimmer of white light drew Azula away from a false turn, and she started to move again, but this time, she grit her teeth as she heard the crunching of a wall getting ready to fall in on her. She pounded her legs, trying to get out of its way, but she had little doubt that something was going to land on her, and it was going to hurt. When something did strike, though, it did so horizontally, and with enough force to lift the firebender with her waterbending cargo out of the way of the worst of the devastation. Azula almost face-planted, but got her feet under her at the last instant, and skidded to a halt on the loose scree that lay across the floor.
"What the f..." Azula began.
"Uuuwhao... Yeah, that probably wasn't the best thing to do right now..." Malu said, from where she was lying on the floor. She glanced up, showing that her face was a pallid gray, her eyes slightly sunken. "Hey, Azula. Hey, Katara. Could you help me up? I can't figure out which way is down."
"I suspected that you weren't dead," Azula said, giving the airbender a hand. Agni's blood, there was no end to dramatic irony today, was there? She was carrying the woman who killed her daughter out of a certain death, and helping an airbender to her feet. Madness. "Where is Toph?"
"I have no idea," Malu shook her head a few times, trying to get her bearings. Finally, her eyes snapped onto Azula. "You've got to get Aang out of here! The Shards are everywhere!"
"Oh. Those," Azula said. She started to stride, following the sounds of wrathful screaming, the voice of the legion, and the blazing white light. "If we don't calm the Avatar down, they'll probably be the least of our worries."
"Yikes."
Azula gave the airbender's summation of their prognosis a nod. She peered around a corner to find the one that they had been seeking. He was floating, as she might have expected, but his feet drifted never more than a foot off of the floor. The dust and debris flew around him in a tornado that scoured everything that came close to it. Montoya Azul was lying, breathing, but beaten to within an inch of his life. And Aang looked like he did in that penultimate fight, the one where he'd ripped out her soul. There was no mercy in those glowing eyes. Only vengeance that would brook no other alternative.
And Azula, Princess of the Fire Nation, enemy of the Storm Kings and the Air Nomads which followed them, daughter of the Fire Lord himself, was going to have to step up and stop him... without killing him. That was the tricky part, actually. The first part was actually rather simple.
"Aang! ENOUGH!" Azula screamed into the whirlwind. He slowly turned his head over his shoulder, glaring at her. "Look at what you're doing. You claim to be an agent of peace, and you lay waste to a city! Out of simple spite! This is what keeps you from being able to have the strength to defeat the enemies that matter. You have no perspective!"
"Umm, Azula? Is it a good idea to go this direction?" Malu asked.
"HE KILLED HER."
Azula shifted the weight which was Katara to show that, while she was no doubt in a terrible state, she still drew breath. "No. But you almost did. You almost brought the roof down on her. And why? Because you wanted revenge? No. Because you got angry. So angry that the only thing that mattered was the satiation of your own bloodlus..."
"Azula, please,shut the hell up!" Malu shouted over her. Azula leaned back, honestly a little surprised that Malu had that in her. Then again, she hadn't seen the Malu which tried to eat Aang. "Aang! You have to stop this. I know how much it hurts to lose somebody that you care about, to lose your family! But you can't take it out on him... any more than you already have!" she conceded, seeing the battered form of Montoya Azul with his back to a corner. "Katara wouldn't want to see you like this. You don't need to lose yourself. Not to him. He's not worth it."
The flare that shone out of Aang's eyes began to dim, and his feet slowly settled back to the rubble. He slowly stumbled, and then fell to a knee. Malu limped to him, offering an arm and a steady, even though honestly she looked like she was in desperate need of both herself. "I..." Aang began, but he obviously didn't have words to tell. "Is she alright?"
"For now," Azula answered. She took a step toward Azul, and leaned down toward him. "This is what you get when you make an enemy that you can't control. Fear can't win every battle. Because when it runs out – and it always does – you'll find a flood of hate behind it. Enjoy your castle of ruin, Azul. You've earned it."
"Wow. You are really mean," Malu noted.
"He was a better man when I knew him," Azula said simply. She gave a glance to the beaten old man. "Pity you never got a chance to meet him."
While the universe existed mostly to make Azula suffer, it also didn't lack for dramatic timing. As soon as the last word came from her mouth, a section of the wall nearby exploded outward, raining more detritus around the feet of those standing, and revealed a short, milky-eyed earthbender on its other side. "Told ya they were here," Toph said through the dust.
"Azula?" Zuko asked.
"Malu?" Nila crowded in at the edge of the cleft.
"KATARA!" Sokka shouted.
"We don't have time for this. We have to leave, now," Azula said. "Do you have a way out?"
"Yeah, but it's not big on comfort," Toph said.
"It'll have to do," Azula said. She stepped out of the room, bearing the water and airbenders with her, into the outer rim of the cage which had held them so securely and so unkindly. Behind her, there was a final rumble, as the last aftershocks of Avatar Aang's wrath sounded, and the earth slowly returned to rest.
The ground continued to shudder and split, the streets of Caldera City slowly giving way entirely to the mounting pressure from below. Geysers of hot gas had the occasion to spray up. Those that sprayed too close to lamps or braziers, had a tendency to ignite. But even as the volcano made it's dismay known, there was another shifting, sliding, creeping of the world, one that could be felt by the three shamans that stood on one of the street deserted by all but the desperate and the dead. The skin of the world was slipping free of its moorings, and there was precious little for it to hold to.
But they all knew their parts, in their souls if not their minds.
"Shine of the bubble, and sheen of the mirror, the skin of the apple and the scale of the beast; heed the call of your chosen voice. Come to our call! Aid in our vengeance!" Hai shouted, one hand up and clawed in the sky, both metaphorically and spiritually grabbing onto the fabric of the Outer Sphere itself.
"Reflection in the still water, bones of the world, and heart of the fire; as stands the bridge, so stands your might – Heed the call of your chosen voice! Come to our call! Aid in our vengeance!" Hisui offered on top of him. But together, they spoke as one. "As cuts the flesh, so shall it mend! As breaks the bone, so shall it heal! The traveler lays down his rest, and drives a spike into the ground to mark his passage! As things are so shall they be! And let no other alter the paths of your chosen messengers!"
There was a fresh lurch, this time with the air bunching and mounding around the hands of Hisui and Hai, while the world itself became locked in a metaphysical way in place. There was a crunching sound that uttered to very few mortal ears, while they slammed the Outer Sphere into the Inner, and held the two together. Sharif, though, focused his gaze on the Shard, which had paused its advance on them, staggering as though it had lost its balance despite having never had such trouble before. And then, the Si Wongi with the glowing scar spoke.
"Penetrating void, the darkness between the stars, the sword that cuts god, the arrow that seeks the heart;
Gear of Paradox.
So stands the impossibility, the fissure in the sphere. The stone in the flow of time.
So stands the abomination, twisted and insane, that lays outside of existence and reality itself.
When it raises up a hateful claw to strike at your warrior messenger, to the depths of pain, and the vortex's edge; cast!
While you torture it – tear it from within – be slow!
When it cries out in anguish at the answer to the enigma that is its flesh... be silent!"
Even as Hisui held the fabric of all that was in place, and kept the world, and the city around them from falling into entropy and arising as something completely else, she could sense something. It was almost a smell, at first, but as the Si Wongi shaman continued to implore and invoke, it began to appear before her World Eye as well. White light. Shining white light, gathering around his fingers. Now that there were so many, Hisui could see them... and she knew what they were.
It was a spirit the likes of which she and her brother had never seen. A spirit that was somehow all things, and yet none. A diametric opposite of the thing that stood before them. The instant that Hisui knew of its existence, that Void had a spirit all its own, her soul already knew the words to invoke it.
"The light of the soul, burning bright in the unending night, a beacon against the darkness. The void that stands between and bridges, the line that binds and emancipates. Gear of the soul and spirit, heed the call of your mortal messenger!"
Hai gave a nod, and joined her in the instant that her cry ended. "Dawn, burning through the fog, library of forsaken wisdom, key to the arcane and eldritch lock, and gate against the rising tide; reach down from the lands outside of sight or sense, and heed the call of your mortal messengers!" he shouted. But together, they continued. "Come to my call! Aid in my vengeance! What stands as the maw into the infinite and unspeakable, shut! What eyes burn through the secrets of life, blind! What heart beats, wicked and cruel, strike through!"
It was a strange sensation, feeling how the light now began to pool around the siblings' heads and bodies, a nimbus that seemed to press even as it lifted them in their boots. But still, the limning nimbus that surrounded the two Fire National shamans was nothing compared to the outright aura that blazed from the shaman of the eastern desert. The Shard, which had been halted in its advance, now started to back-peddle, its maw closing. It's eyes, red and pulsating even now, narrowing. And Sharif spoke yet.
"Arise! Become a banner of your warrior messenger; become a wrathful blade and strike with all of my destructive might upon the foe which seeks the end of all things!
I name you Imbalance, the Unmaking! Arbiter of Scales look down upon the judgment of your warrior messenger and bear it true!
Body false and twisted, anatomy mad, harden! Blood and bone and sinews, manifest!
A beating heart in a crazed and inhospitable breast, form!
As can bleed, so can die! And the Answer to all things demands death against the unliving!"
The great pulse of light that came from Sharif pulled the nimbus from the two siblings, and twisted it 'round his own mandala, forming what could be best described as a wheel, rotating of silvery light. It wafted ever into Sharif's palm, which he held above his head, his eyes wafting light, his scar glowing. The Shard had shrunk back, almost recoiling from what it saw before it. As though, for the first time in its blasphemous existence, it knew fear. Sharif slowly lowered his hand toward the thing, his fingers flexed and quivering. Hisui could feel her control being usurped by him, but at this point, she didn't care. She just wanted to know that this thing could die. At first, she thought that he was threatening the creature. But not so – the truth was, he was barely holding onto the power in his hand. Sharif spoke just once more.
"You don't belong here. You never did."
With those final words, Sharif opened his hand. The light that had formed the mandala around the Eastern shaman snapped forward, passing through his body and into that sphere that sat upon his palm. It hung there, floating, for a second that stretched into eternity. Then, a line burst from it, launching directly into where a heart would have been on a human, in that black and featureless form. The creature's maw opened once more, but this time, it did not open into a mind-shattering abyss, with nothing but despair and hunger past ravening teeth. This time, there was light inside that mouth, pounding outward. A hole started to burn from the pinprick that the Void had sent through the Shard's skin. The hole grew larger, wider, as the Shard let out a wail that made Hisui's ears bleed a little. But the shriek was forced out of place by the light mounting up inside it.
Unnoticed by the three shamans, every other Shard, in Azul or Caldera City, stopped their blasphemous ritual, and turned to face what had never happened before. Red eyes blinked, confusion and something like alarm settling into alien minds, something like fear settling into alien hearts. In the street, the light began to press against the black flesh, until light began to shine through it. Tearing it. Hewing it to pieces. Until there was no blackness left... only the light.
With a thud, the light fell inward, and vanished completely. But so too had the Shard, annihilated completely. The other shards immediately turned away from their task, and walked to the transitions. Open doors, for some. Shadows for others. As one, they fled from the Mortal World, having no thought of opportunity or vengeance. Only the animal fear, that something had found a way to kill one of them. Fortunate then, that they didn't understand that killing the single Shard had unmade every spirit of Void within a hundred miles of both Azul and Caldera City.
With the Shards no longer heaving harshly on the fabric of what was, the ground in Caldera City stopped shaking, although the jets continued to flare and burn. Hisui released her grasp on the world, and let it free. It no longer seemed to tear simply by being... but the damage was visible to her on a level she hadn't thought possible. Caldera City and Azul were no longer separate, to her eyes, in the Outer Sphere. In a way, the two now shared the same space, the same time. They were a continent apart, and yet, together.
"That was unexpected," Hai said. He took a step toward the Si Wongi shaman, whose eyes had stopped wafting light, and whose scar was starting to dim. "You did a better job than I'd thought. It probably would have killed us."
"That almost sounds like praise, coming from you," Hisui noted. Hai shot his sister a look, but didn't answer her.
"Maybe... we might have a place for you that's a bit less disgusting than a warded cell, hm?" he asked.
Sharif took that opportunity to pitch forward, stone unconscious, onto the street.
"What about now?" Qin asked.
One of the men with the lens looked down onto the cliff, where the Gork was already springing and scrabbling up the rock, with a positive gesture. "I think he's done it! The explosives are rigged back up!"
"Detonate them," Zhao ordered.
"But the worker..." Qin noted.
"A lamentable sacrifice for the safety of a half-million of his people," Zhao pointed out. Qin sighed, and nodded, because he probably knew that Zhao had a point. There was a time to be kind – rarely and sporadically – and a time to be decisive. To spend one to save so many? That wasn't even a question.
Qin took a breath, probably to steady his nerve or summon what scraps of courage he had to him, and gave the blaster a nod. The dark eyed, pale-complected man nodded once, then heaved down on a great brass lever, until it locked low. For an instant, there was nothing. And after that moment of pristine anticipation, a blast that made it sound like the world was ending.
Whatever had been set into place was obviously only a key to something larger. The pressure that had built up in the volcano with the shifting of the earth took the opportunity that the weakened section offered, and blasted out with a shockwave that uprooted trees for miles, even as the unspeakable heat of the pyroclastic flow set them aflame. Magma was hurled into the air, landing in great globs in the valley below. And a great section of the cone wall began to break and slide, descending into that molten rock and bearing with it houses and palaces. If they were evacuated, they would survive. If not, they surely wouldn't. But the consequence of not sacrificing them, Zhao figured, was that same loss, levied upon everybody.
Qin slowly made a religious gesture, to the rolling of Zhao's eyes. "May Agni have mercy on us."
"Obviously He hasn't, or we wouldn't have to break one of His mountains," Zhao said. As the Fire Lord turned away from the outpost, the ground finally ceased in its shuddering and groaning. The jets of noxious fumes died down, now that there was a far easier place for them to vent. He walked through streets of ruin... but the people of the Fire Nation survived. He looked at them, staring back as he strode the rubble-filled streets. They would survive, and they would rebuild, and they would be great again. And without fools and idiots like the line of Ozai to muck up the works, they would do so quickly.
Maybe in time to put a ruthless stop to the Black Sun Invasion? But that was something to think about later.
If the upper class had anything to say about their Fire Lord brazenly striding through his city, without any of the pomp-and-circumstance usually afforded him, they didn't mention it. In fact, but for the sounds of people putting out fires and the creaking of buildings trying to decide whether to finish collapsing or not, he returned to the cracked and wounded Royal Palace with relative silence.
The snow concerned him, though.
"Fire Lord Zhao," one of the stewards was at his side, meek and servile, within a single hallway of his entrance into the palace. "Something strange has happened."
"Yes, the volcano almost erupted. I would call that strange," Zhao said, favoring the toady with a glare from his burnt eye.
"No, it is far stranger than that," he said. "The aquarium in your sitting room was damaged in the earthquake... but the fish are outright gone."
"WHAT?" Zhao roared. The toady looked like he was trying to retract into himself. "Show me."
He followed the servant through the cracked and damaged halls of what was now his home, until he found the room that he had so frequently taken to spending his evenings in. He claimed it was to have a quiet moment to read. Actually, it was because he could never stop gloating to those would-be gods. Those deities that now sweltered in their tank at his leisure.
Gone.
The floor was wet, and glass lay at random, but there wasn't so much as a single scale of the symbol of Zhao's dominance of the North. His lips pulled into a scowl that darkened any positive mood that his victory over the volcano had bestowed. It was with a snarl and a flick of his hand that lit with fire that Zhao turned away. Tui and La were gone. And he had no idea where they had vanished.
...Aang's not going to be too happy with himself, tomorrow.