Al heaved the section of pipework into place, the metal flowing like liquid as he sealed it with the sections next to it. He dusted himself off, leaning back into the cramped walkway as far as he could.
"Hit it!", he shouted up the hall in Common, and was rewarded by the gurgle of liquid flowed down the pipe. Almost instantly, the temperature in the corridor dropped by several degrees. A whoop of triumph echoed down the hall.
"Coolant pressure looks good! Finally!"
He leaned forwards and pulled a thick cloth pad over the coolant pipe, buckling it in place and standing as best he could. Only an hour more on his shift, judging by the last timekeeping whistle. It was oddly satisfying, being on repair duty. The Phoenix had made several brief stops at Fire Nation colonial outposts moving inland, where they'd had a chance to offload their wounded and take on fresh food, fresh water, and most importantly most of the materials needed to actually finish the airship. In four days of feverish work, he and his brother, along with every available spare hand, including Suki and Mai, had managed to stitch together the thin metal skin of the Phoenix's hull, repairing the impact craters that the Ember Group had made but also filling the gaps left by unfinished construction. The ship was just as cramped and uncomfortable as it had been, but at least now the crew quarters no longer opened on empty sky, and various cabins and passages made previously inaccessible by the heat radiating from the semi-finished Compressed-plasma Immolator (which was what the War Minister had apparently designated the Phoenix's monstrous thermal weapon) and its incomplete cooling system. It was progress. Al didn't know if it was enough progress, but it was satisfying to collapse into a hammock at the end of the day knowing that he had done good, honest work. Certainly better than being shot at, or pressure-pointed, or blown up.
Giving a wave to the crewman bent over the coolant control panel, he turned to move down the hall.
"If you need me, I'll be working in the observation deck."
"Thanks, Al. We've got things under control over here."
He left them to their work, half-crawling up the companionway that would take him to the ship's observation and spotting deck. It had been no more than a rough framework when the Phoenix was hastily launched, and each time the Immolator fired its waste gasses melted and ate away at the structural beams a little more. He knew Ed had spent a great deal of time there- the Fire Nation engineers could get the engines into better shape on their own, but if the observation deck failed completely it could lead to a total collapse of the airship's bow. It took him a few moments of weaving around pipes and scrambling up and down ladders to reach the heavy bow hatch, wedged between the outer hull of the airship and the huge tube that was the outer shell of the Immolator. He'd only been inside the weapon once, and never while it was active, but he shuddered to think of what it was like to man it. The score of Firebenders assigned to Immolator duty strapped themselves into huge coolant suits, confined in the tight space within the weapon's barrel. There, they confined and fed the initial flame the Crown Princess lit for them, turning a burst of heat and gas into a lance of ravening energy. They all bore burn scars of some description, the result of tiny faults in the huge network or insulators, heatsinks and radiators that kept the weapon's power from reducing hem to ashes. Entering the Immolator also meant passing through the Ignition Chamber- what some of the crew had taken to calling the Madhouse- where the Crown Princess was tended to by two hard-faced female orderlies. He shivered unconsciously. The look in Princess Azula's eyes...
Then he shivered again, from cold this time. Icy wind whistled through the gaps around the hatch, and he hastily untied the thick leather jacket from his waist and shucked it on over the heavy canvas of his Fire Nation Air Corps flightsuit. He fumbled in his pockets for his woolen cap and goggles, tying the former tightly over his chin and the latter even more tightly around his head. He left his hands bare- the work in the observation deck was too delicate for covered hands. Lastly, he donned the safety harness hung next to the door, double-checking the straps.
Then he opened the hatch, and stepped out into the nightmarish landscape that was the foothills of Omashu. They'd first seen it two days ago. A green-brown glow on the horizon, a colour that managed to look both warm and oddly sickly at the same time. Captain Erzuo claimed the wind currents were behaving oddly, and the fitful gusts that shook the Phoenix as they approached the first low lines of hills had done nothing to improve the dour officer's mood. The land below would have been wild but beautiful under any other circumstances, the scattered herdsmen's huts picturesque, but the light from the sky sapped the colour from the world, leaving the increasingly rocky foothills looking sickly and unearthly. All signs of habitation disappeared soon after; the steeper the hills, the more bizarre the terrain.
Someone in the Phoenix's cramped mess hall had said it was something like listening to two pieces of music at once- you could hear both in a disjointed fashion, but together they clashed and made for something unpleasant. That was the land around Omashu. The earth was rippled and distorted, rocky grass giving way randomly to sandy desert, gravel scree, or rotting marshes. The ruins of vast stone structures dotted the mountains, architectural monstrosities of an impossible scale, their cold alien geometries piercing the earth in a manner that was oddly uncomfortable. In the hazy organic glow of the sky, nothing looked like it fit with anything else. There was something in the air, too- a certain lassitude or stagnation, like some great living thing had lain down to moulder all about them. Crewmen heard strange sounds in the wind at night, and one day it had rained black, oily drops that left chemical burns on exposed skin. There was an unspoken agreement among the crew that not even the Ember Group could be responsible for something this bizarre and uncanny.
Al hooked himself onto one of the thick safety loops on the doorframe, leaning out over empty space as he gingerly put his weight on the skeletal support beams below. Across the empty deck, Ed was hanging from his own harness, blood dripping from a cut on his forehead, his eyes wide and frightened. He spun as Al entered, yelping.
"Al! Gott sei Dank! It just flew off again, but-"
Al blinked, uncomprehending. What in the hell-?
"Brother", he said, shouting over the growing hum of the wind, "What are you talking about?"
Ed scrabbled his way onto a support beam, his hands clenched white-knuckle tight around a broken length of pipe. Its surface was torn and deeply scratched, as if he'd fended off something with claws sharp enough to gouge metal.
"You didn't see it? Something landed and-"
He stopped, eyes bugging wide. When he spoke, his voice was soft and strained.
"Al, jump."
Had anyone other than his brother told him to jump off the front of an airship, Al would have ignored them. But he knew his brother's tone of voice. It took a great deal to truly frighten Ed, and this was the most frightened he'd seen him in a long time. Then Al had another realization. The humming sound, what he'd thought was the wind- it was coming from directly above him.
He threw his weight forwards and dropped off the beam, feeling something cut through the air directly behind him. His left shin cracked against something metallic, the impact spinning him around.
And then he saw it, leaning down from the structural beams above him, one limb-like protruberance outstretched. Its silhouette was an impossibility, its construction so obscene and incomprehensible that his mind recoiled at the task of understanding it. Only one portion of its deformed body was discernible- a naked human torso, arms broken off beneath the shoulders, topped by a gaunt head whose face had been replaced with a fist-sized ball of the same green-gray metal that formed the heart of the White Lotus war machines. Its whole structure vibrated and twitched spasmodically, making the air around it reverberate like a taut drum.
Ed dropped his pipe. They both clapped simultaneously. The structural beams around it curled in like claws as the air around it coalesced into a sheet of powerful acid at Al's command. The beast shuddered, let out an inhuman rattling croak, and vanished, leaving behind a receding hum and a few splashes of rust-red liquid.
Al hauled himself back to safety, breath ragged. He looked at Ed. There were no words. And then, over the wind, he heard the ship's alarm. Boarders.
It appeared as suddenly as a thunderclap, folding its way around the edge of the bridge windows, all fluid and nightmarish angles. Mai had put three darts into its bulk before she realized they were just passing straight through. Captain Erzuo died instantly when it touched him, his body violently exploding as a twisted tentacle-limb punched through the centre of his forehead. The helmsman made a dash for the exit, only to tumble to the floor screaming when a gently humming protruberance unfolded into a serrated edge and sawed his legs off below the knee with an elegant flick.
Abruptly, the creature paused, then slipped back through the glass and was gone, rippling through the sky like a deep-sea creature. It was joined by half a dozen more, their amputated torsos lolling and twitching as they flew. Mai drew a shuddering breath, only to be interrupted by the boarding alert klaxon, which blared for a few moments before being silenced. The man on the ground whimpered and passed out. There was the sound of stomping footsteps outside, and the Elrics barged in, accompanied by various crewmen in engineering outfits. Ed was bleeding heavily from a cut on his face, and Al looked white as a sheet.
"Did you-", he began, before noticing the carnage. "You did."
Mai nodded.
"It just-"
"Left.", Ed finished. "Flying towards the city."
There was more movement outside, and Ty Lee and Suki crammed into the bridge space, the former in pajamas, the latter hefting an anti-tank projector.
"What the hell just happened?", Suki demanded, looking confusedly at the state of the bridge. "Spirits, someone get a doctor!"
Ty Lee took a shuddering breath, hugging herself tightly.
"M-mai, what did this?"
Mai shrugged, shivering as the adrenaline worked its way out of her system.
"I have no idea. But we need to find out. I don't know if this is Ember Group work, but the fact remains that something from Omashu just attacked us."
She raised her voice to address the confused mass of crewmen, several of whom were attending to the legless man.
"From this moment, I want everyone on alert. Be prepared to repel boarders at all times. This is not a fact-finding mission anymore."
Someone in the back of the crowd snorted.
"No kidding, lady."
Mai rolled her eyes.
"Get someone on the helm. I want us at full cruising speed as soon as possible. And wake up the Crown Princess. We may need her."
"Gosh, this place is deader than one of Zuko's jokes!"
Oddly enough, Mai was the only one who came even close to laughing. Al smiled politely, but kept his eyes roaming. Ed was beside him, covering wherever he wasn't looking. Or so he hoped. From a little ways ahead of them, Suki let out a disgusted groan.
"Would you keep quiet?", she hissed, "We're in unknown territory here."
There was a rustle of cloth and the soft tapping of feet against masonry as Ty Lee kicked off the facade of the building above them, landing lightly at Suki's side and giving the girl a hearty slap on her power-armoured shoulder.
"Why so glum, chum?", she said with no little venom. "Smile a little! It's only a dead city full of horribly mutated half-human monsters currently being investigated by a small army of heavily-armed thugs! And the best part is, we might not even be the heavily-armed thugs! Just think! It could be the other guys!"
Suki rounded on her, trying to shove her back. Naturally, the acrobat danced out of the way, but the intent was still there. Al winced, and then sighed.
"L-ladies, p-"
Ed cut him off before he could finish, keeping his voice low.
"Let them."
He gave his shorter sibling a confused glance.
"Brother?"
Ed's face was grim and set, and his eyes were filled with an odd weariness.
"Al, remember when we watched someone kill God?"
Al frowned.
"What does that-"
"Remember when we watched a man use living people as organic explosives?"
"B-brother, what-?"
"Remember when our mother came back?"
Al felt something clench in his gut, and a wave of cold fury washed over him. Suki and Ty Lee were engaged in a full-on shouting match, one which Mai and her spearhead of Firebenders was doing nothing to prevent.
"Brother, what the hell-"
Ed grabbed the front of his shirt, and pulled him close. The gesture was so unexpected that Al actually lost his balance, and he was forced to step into an awkward half-lean. Ed glared straight into his eyes.
"We have both seen things. Incredible and terrible things. We've seen the Homunculi. We've seen Father. We've seen the Truth. These girls- because that's what they are- they're still playing at being soldiers. They've killed people, true. They've watched people die, true. But they've never seen what they thought of as a law of nature be torn to shreds before their eyes. For what it's worth, they still have some measure of- call it naivete- about them. They're stressed. They're scared as hell. Less than a month ago they thought they'd saved the world. This arguing will help them. It's catharsis, plain and simple. So zip it."
Al rocked backwards, blinking. He knew his brother had hidden depths, but he'd never expected something like this.
"Ed, I- I didn't know you cared. I'm sorry."
Ed sighed, his shoulders drooping.
"Honestly, they kind of remind me of us. Let them work things out. If they're feeling less frightened, it might make me feel a bit better myself."
Al wrapped an arm around Ed's shoulders, giving him a tight hug.
"We're all scared, Brother. It's only natural."
Ed pulled away.
"It's more than scared. It's- you're getting that feeling from the air here too, right? Like nothing here really belongs?"
Al paused, pondering. He had a point.
"Like- like every time you look away from something and look back, you feel like it's moved slightly? How every time you take a step, even if you're looking where your feet are going to fall-"
Ed nodded, smiling grimly.
"You still find yourself hesitating when you touch the ground. Like it might not really be there. There's something wrong about this place. It doesn't fit."
"It's like the entire city got hit with something that knocked it out of alignment with- with everything."
"Mmmhm."
There was a muffled crunch from ahead of them as Ty Lee hit a pressure-point on Suki's forehead just as the warrior's armoured fist smashed into her exposed stomach. They both collapsed, limp. There was a moment of silence. Mai frowned, ever so slightly. Ty Lee's gurgled something incoherent, and Suki flopped like a drowning fish, most of her lower body apparently immobilized. And then they started laughing. Hysterically, but good-hysterically. Al breathed a sigh of relief.
"Told you so," Ed said.
And then a man stepped out of the alleyway ahead of them, and Al shot him in the foot.
Aang jumped when Katara snuggled up next to him, and then kicked himself for it.
"Hey."
"Hey."
They continued in silence for a few minutes. Appa, having been given a fairly straight course to follow, had drifted into his usual in-flight semi-doze, snoring softly as he cut through the air at deceptive speed. He'd balked and shuddered when the sky had changed colour, but Aang kept him going. He knew that colour. That was the colour of the Spirit World. The Ember Group had been right; something very wrong was happening at Omashu.
"She's taking it really well," Katara said, resting her head on his shoulder. He snuggled back, throwing an arm around her. This was going well. He cleared his throat.
"Who, Toph?"
The girl in question was napping in her usual hunch over the side of Appa's saddle, the little uniform tassles on her Ember Group suit ruffling in the wind. She had the same brutal buzz-cut they'd all received, only she'd had a month for it to grow back a little.
"Yeah," Katara responded, "I mean she suddenly learned that her parents- who she spent her entire life thinking were repressive jerks- are super-spies or secret agents or something like that? I was expecting more of a reaction, I guess."
Aang gave a slight shrug, keeping his eyes on the horizon.
"She's had some time to come to terms with it. And this is Toph we're talking about; wouldn't it just stroke her ego to learn she's got parents who are actually kind of cool?"
Katara giggled, and the sound sent shivers up his spine.
"Can you imagine," she said, fighting back laughter, "if she had kids? If Toph's parents are spies, and their kid is- well- herself, imagine what their granddaughter'd be like?"
"Badass."
"Bad. Ass."
Their shadows grew stark and well-defined as a searchlight beam passed over them from behind. Further back in the saddle, Sokka gave an exasperated yelp.
"You philistines," he shouted, "do you have nothing better to do but disturb the-"
There was a sound like someone being hit through a sleeping bag.
"Sokka, shut up," Zuko grumbled. "Put a blanket over your head and go back to sleep. You're worse than they are."
Both men receded into tired mumbling, followed soon after by blessed snore-punctuated silence. Aang glanced back over his shoulder at the armada of airships that was tailing them. They'd all had their Bending returned- though he was limited to air- but he had no doubt that on one of those ships someone had a weapon trained at them at all times.
"It's a loose leash they've got us on, but it's still a leash," he muttered to himself. Katara gave him a sharp look.
"You're still worried that they're going to stab us in the back?"
He sighed, giving Appa a gentle prod with his foot as the great beast began to veer slightly.
"I know that if they wanted us dead we'd be long dead, but-"
Katara nodded.
"The last time we were at the head of an army, it was an army of our friends. People we knew and could trust. We all knew we were fighting for the same goal. This time 'round-", she said, trailing off.
"Exactly."
Katara manhandled him around until they were face to face. And then she kissed him, and things went a little fuzzy for a while. When Aang surfaced from the sea of hormones they'd been swimming in, Katara was giving him an intense look. And- oh spirits, oh spirits she was tearing up.
"If they try to hurt you," she said, a catch in her voice, "I will tear them to bits, you understand me? I won't let them."
Aang felt tears spring to his eyes. And then, of course, his big stupid mouth went and said something big and stupid.
"Y-you too."
She paused. And then she laughed, fully and loudly this time. He was adrift again, this time in a sea of awkward confusion. And then she kissed him once more, which didn't help matters.
"My boyfriend the Avatar," she chuckled, "the greatest sage on the planet."
She mock-bowed to him.
"Bless me with more of your wisdom, Avatar. Enlighten me."
He was prevented from making a witty comeback by a rather more literal form of enlightenment, as the spotlights on most of the lead airships lit up. The underbellies of the fleet came alive with the twinkling of their optigraphs, and he heard, faintly over the rush of the wind, the hooting of alarms and klaxons.
Behind them, someone sat up suddenly. When he spoke, Zuko's voice was full of a deep horror and loathing.
"They're going to blow the whistles, aren't they."
"Yup," came Sokka's voice, "And they're speeding up. Definitely. They sure do like to toot their own horns, don't they?"
"I HATE YOUR PUNS SO MUUUUUu-", Toph began to scream, but then
UUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
"-uch. I hate your puns so much. Ow.", she finished.
Aang winced at the ringing in his ears. The stupid screeching 'intimidation whistle' was beginning to get on his nerves, not in the least because (of course) someone had gone and planted a subconscious response to it in his brain. Now, in addition to being deafened by the piercing wail, he was also instilled with an odd feeling of bloodlust and alertness. He wouldn't have minded the latter nearly as much if it came in some form other than an incredibly loud steam whistle.
"What's happening?," Zuko inquired, shuffling forward in the saddle. He'd taken off the bandages the day before, and the stitches around where they'd mucked about in his skull were a sight to behold. Katara climbed past him, heading to grab a waterskin no doubt, and they were left alone on Appa's head. The sky bison had been jolted awake by the whistle, and Aang gave him a firm pat, searching the half-light ahead of them.
"I have no idea. They haven't told us anything."
As the first of the airships began to overtake them a few short moments later, someone finally got on a bullhorn.
"Unknown airborne contacts ahead, Avatar! Presume hostile!"
"Screw you too!," Sokka responded. "I really hope they didn't hear that."
Aang turned around to face back at the motley crew.
"All right, gang! We're gonna drop Toph onto one of the airships-"
"Thanks, chief," she said sarcastically, giving a jaunty wave.
"-And then I'm gonna get on my glider and run interference. I'll try and guide Appa close to the airships so we don't get caught in too much crossfire. I have no idea what we're dealing with, so be careful, okay?"
They all gave affirmatives. Aang turned forward.
"Yip yip, buddy! Let's go!"
Appa lowed, and they banked towards the nearest airship, accelerating rapidly to match the thundering pace of the machine's engines. They pulled up next to the narrow deck that extended from the top of the huge gasbag, greeted by a small group of Ember Group air personnel who helped Toph onto the deck.
"Good hunting," she shouted up at them as they pulled away. "I'll see what I can do from here!"
Aang unstrapped his glider- the glider, rather- from the side of the saddle, flicking it open. He wasn't entirely sure when he'd first noticed that his glider- the one the Mechanist had made him- had vanished. An Ember Group airbender had supplied him with one, its light metal frame fitted with all manner of complicated springs and clockwork, and though it flew well he still found it profoundly untrustworthy. Still, prisoners of war couldn't be choosers, as the saying went, and so he leaped into the slipstream, rising rapidly in the thermals coming off the airship's engines. Appa followed closely, and they rose above the main body of the fleet, which was rapidly redeploying from a wide column into a sort of blunted cone-shape. He still couldn't see what they were fighting- there was a flock of birds far below them, their outlines distorted by the rising heat haze, but-
They weren't birds. And they were moving fast. He rolled to one side as a large airborne something rose past him, humming like a cicada gone wrong. He caught a brief glimpse of a desiccated human torso, skin gleaming in the spirit light, a face that was a ruined sphere of metal, and then-
"Do you like my little Masks, Avatar Kuruk? Aren't they delightful?"
"Koh, you monster. What have you done to these people? What did anyone ever do to you to deserve such-"
The vast insect, its face that of a plump, smiling infant, laughed in sibilant tones.
"What did I do to them? Wrong question, Kuruk old pal. It's what I did for them. That one wanted to forget the death of his children in an avalanche. Which you failed to stop. This one lost everything he owned after your little adventure in Ba Sing Se. And this one here- well, you really should have let her keep the baby. You can't blame her for wanting to get away from it all, can't you?"
Kuruk collapsed to his knees as his body failed him.
"You- what-"
The insect writhed closer, giving him a pat on the shoulder with one twisted foreleg.
"There there. You've made mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, Avatar. Even me. It was a few years ago, wasn't it- when you said that for all my power, nothing I could do amounted to more than smoke and mirrors? I thought about that long and hard about that, you know. And so I found people who you'd wronged, people who wanted to forget, to move on, to be happy again, and I helped them. They gave themselves to me and let me use their bodies. No more smoke and mirrors, Kuruk. No more."
"What have you done!?"
"They're part of me now, and I'm decent enough to let them remain unmolested. Their existence is... somewhat diminished, but they no longer have to worry or feel fear. I made a deal with them, and I, unlike some people, uphold my end of a bargain."
Koh hauled him to his feet and dusted him off. The humming abominations moved closer.
"Now," the spirit whispered, "It's time to collect on an old debt."
-he was on the abomination like a pouncing orca-wolf, tattoos flickering. He wanted to waterbend, to slice the creature to ribbons, but somehow he knew air would have to do. He kicked away from the glider, lashing out with a sweeping gust of wind. The sudden change in airflow caught the thing's fluid body, whipping it into an uncontrollable spin. Good. He had it exactly where he wanted it. The Masks- yes, that was what they were called, the Masks of Koh- they were fluid and amorphous, able to assume many forms, but when outside the Spirit World they were highly unstable. With enough outside force you could make them take on shapes that were difficult to fight in. Shapes that made it easy to break them. The Mask tumbled end-on-end as he fell towards it, maintaining a constant whirlwind gust. Its body was stretching, more and more matter being forced away from its human half as it spun faster and faster. He had to time it just right... A voice in his head screamed Now, and he kicked forwards on a bubble of air pressure, his fingers latching on the to thing's face. It writhed and wriggled beneath him, trying to shake him off even as its incredible momentum made his vision dance and blur. He grabbed hard at the unpleasantly warm, slightly oil-slick metal of its face, and leaned in close. He spoke without meaning to, the words coming from somewhere deep within the Avatar State.
"KOH, YOU SON OF A BITCH. I AM THE AVATAR, AND I AM COMING FOR YOU!"
He wrenched the sphere free from the thing's head, the effort throwing him free from its still-spinning corpse. Through some incredible turn of fate, he stuck out a hand only to have it encounter the still-drifting glider, his momentum forcing it into a tight banked turn. He looked up at the sound of an unearthly wail as the Mask writhed in its death throes, dissolving away into thin air. He caught another thermal, looping upwards to where he'd last seen Appa.
The sky bison was twisting and shimmying through the air, skeins of water and fire jetting off his back as Katara and Zuko tried to hold off the three Masks pursuing them. Aang willed the air around him into motion, just in time to see Sokka swing off Appa's saddle with a sword in one hand and a rope tied around his waist. For a brief instant, he hung in space, and then the cord went taught and he was snapped into a tight spin, whipping just close enough to one of the Masks to neatly cut its head off. Katara, apparently going by her brother's example, cut another one to pieces with a sheet of ice, while Zuko settled for merely setting one on fire and forcing it out of the air with repeated whips of red flame. Aang dropped out of the sky amongst them, the unfamiliar glider refusing to fold properly and almost yanking him off his feet. He stumbled upright, only to find Katara, Sokka and Zuko all looking to him. He held up a hand, and they waited patiently for him to catch his breath.
"A-avatar Kuruk", he began, "He knows what these things are- They're servants of Koh, or something. He thought he destroyed them all. Their human parts are weak, especially the faces, but the rest of them is some kind of spirit-matter. They can change shapes, become almost anything-"
Sokka, astoundingly, raised a hand.
"When you say become almost anything, d'you mean like become a knife so sharp it can cut an airship's hull-?"
Aang nodded.
"Yes, but-"
Sokka pointed down and to their left. For the first time Aang actually saw what was going on around them. The armada was holding together, powering towards the city, but they were suffering for every meter of sky gained. Hundreds of Masks swarmed about them, silhouetted against the brilliant clouds of anti-air weapons fire the airships were pouring fourth. Several of the ships were damaged, their hulls pierced and torn in dozens of places. Worst-hit was the one closest to them. It seemed to have thrown off its attackers, but its gasbag was sliced open from stem to stern. Repair teams were crawling all over the hull, trying to fix the leaks, but it was still slowly, inexorably falling out of the sky. And he'd left Toph onboard, assuming she'd be safer on an airship than on Appa. Koh's mocking tones rang through his head once more.
"Everyone makes mistakes, Avatar."
-~0X0~-
Awwwww yiiiiisssss. We Koh now.
I wasn't really sure when or how I wanted to bring Koh onto the scene in HtE, but it seems he picked a lovely time to creep his way in. There'll be more Koh/Kuruk interplay coming up eventually; I think the dynamic between them (that the show just hinted at) has the potential to be reaaaaaally interesting. Also, this chapter has probably spent more time sitting incomplete on my hard drive than any other- for reasons yet unclear to me it just didn't seem to work, and then something went click and things happened. Anyhoo, thanks for reading, subscribing and favoriting, oh my best beloved captive audience.
As is usually the case for the summer, there may not be another chapter 'til August/September. Life has a way of interfering.