...

The god mask was on her face and from behind her heart Ayika felt the burning fires of the Lower Ring. She felt the wound in the fabric between the worlds, a widening circle of corruption that spread steadily outward across a larger and larger area of the city. She saw the ghosts and spirits spilling across the border, swirling through the material world without rule or direction. She heard the screams and cries of ten times ten thousand people as conflict and anger and fear rose with the otherworldly pressure against their souls. Here and for fifty kilometers around her the city was thrashing in pain, but beyond that influence great Ba Sing Se still sprawled out even further. The endless rings curled out into the night and on the far side of the city no whisper of this chaos had even reached them. Out in the vast belt of cropland that fed the metropolis, farmers slept without even knowing Islanders had ever come to settle within the outer walls.

Ayika saw this all as her mind battled a living flame.

Burning power pushed against her and she stood firm like stone, her feet rooted to the earth. The force of worlds swirled around her and she swirled with it like water, carrying it and guiding it. Might came to challenge her and she submitted, then she turned and forced it to submit to her. An eternity passed and Ayika opened her eyes to the dark tunnel of the underground tunnel beside the water. She was alone among the damp stones. Then she opened another kind of eyes.

Ayika saw the dark glimmer of the flowing water and the dim brick walls. At the same time, with a sense beyond sight she also saw into another land past this one, a shadowy world of light behind the air. The impossible vision shimmered before her, a nearby distance where a new expanse grew. The spirit world was a reflection of the material world, just as the reverse was also true. A second city unfolded in the dark.

There were massive building-trees with window-spotted branches that reached the sky. The streets were made of wood and shadow, while drifting palaces of grey mist carried roofs of sparkling stone. The bridges were woven of stories and the lanterns hung from poles of spun intention. All around Ayika, wonders and phantasms swirled and changed in brilliant colors beyond any painter's pallet beneath a sky of melted motionless lightning.

This was the spirit world and there was a man sitting on the ground beside her in an impossible urban meadow. The mask was no longer on her face. There was no more blood on her hands. She was whole. And yet the truer pain still remained, deep and dull.

Ayika looked to her side and was not surprised to see the elderly man with a pointed white beard dressed in rich robes of red and gold. His wrinkled skin held the same golden blush as Mizumi's.

She knew him. "Hello, Ambassador Naruhama."

The soul of the old man looked up at her from his seated lotus position. He smiled. "Please, call me Aza. In such an intimate meeting as this I think we can dispense with formalities. I believe my ghost is imprisoned inside your body at the moment." He patted the ground beside him, offering Ayika a seat with casual courtesy.

She was exhausted and dizzy. Her thoughts weren't working right but she decided to comply and then suddenly, without any intervening motion she was sitting cross-legged on the dark earth. Here in this other world intent and action were blurred together. As she shifted her weight Ayika noticed that there was something buried under the top layer of dirt, a substrate of something that shifted. It clinked like metal or stone.

"What is...?"

Aza Naruhama waved one of his hands. "Do not worry about that yet. Someone is trying to get your attention in a very presumptuous manner. They think that if they spend decades setting up a sequence of events then that nullifies the choice of all involved. Spirits often forget what it means to be human. Even those who once were."

Ayika made an uncertain grunt that set the dead Islander chuckling quietly. Around them, a multitude of varied spirits were starting to gather, alighting in glades and alleys. Some were made of wood, others of water, still others of sunlight or fur. They'd come to watch the two people; one living, one dead.

She furrowed her brow at the growing shifting semicircle of a rainbow audience. It was hard to think here, and back in that dark stone tunnel there was something she could not bare to think of. Distantly she knew she was in terrible pain but she couldn't feel it. She wondered if this was what it felt like to be dead. This wasn't so bad.

Gesturing at the spirits that surrounded them, Ayika said, "What do they see that's so interesting? Is it just that we're humans?"

Naruhama tilted his head as he raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps. But we currently are both more interesting than even that. Try looking again."

"What..." Then Ayika's view flickered and she was sitting beside a giant, dark and burning, clad in paper manacles and obsidian. The monolith of fire towered over her. This was the Naruhama who's influence was feared. This was the burning ghost god that had ripped open the barrier in the world. This was the power she had come to stop. Beside something like that she was nothing.

But then Ayika looked down at herself and though she was a tiny figure beside the towering hulk, within her translucent human form there was a core of shining burning light, a pale blueish green like pure jade. It was like a jewel. That tiny point was still strong. Then her sight shifted back to what passed for normal in the spirit world.

She breathed out. Off in the distance, unconcerned with the intrusions and visitors, a monumental castle carved out of a mountain stretched its legs to go roaming across fields beneath clouds that bled rainbows like lightning. The spirit world was not for living human souls. Inside it, Ayika was just one more leaf bobbing in the storm. But now she felt the storm move around her as she stayed still.

She turned back to Naruhama, now a kindly faced old man once again. He nodded in recognition of the vision she'd seen. She tried to nod back but as she did so Ayika felt the weariness wash through her. She sagged and almost collapsed. She was so tired and her task was still before her. It was hard to remember why she even cared.

Her voice was almost a whisper. "Can I do it? Can I undo..."

Naruhama said, "At this moment, young lady, there is very little that is beyond your capability."

She remembered the words of other spirits. "But everything has a cost."

He sighed. "Yes, it does. In this world as in the other. For now, we are one. You have taken into yourself the power that Huitzlan and my deluded countrymen imparted to me. You can use that power for whatever purpose you wish. It is entirely in your hands. It is your choice."

Even separated from her flesh Ayika felt another wave of exhaustion from her distant body that told her that time was limited. She'd managed to bring Naruhama's soul and ghost together within herself, but no living human was meant to hold that much power. Whatever shaman gifts Ayika had were stretched to their limit. The strain was probably killing her.

"Right. I suppose I have to-"

"Honorable priest, I am compelled to convey a suggestion." A heavy, hissing voice called out from the growing crowd of spirits.

Ayika snapped her attention upwards to see rows of glowing foxes and shadowed wooden women parting to reveal the rich antique robes of Blind Dog Lord, his withered eyeless head rising above the throng. Ayika sighed, her voice tinged with bitter anger. "I thought I sent you away."

The ancient spirit bowed his head in uncharacteristic humility. "Yes. And I have been sent back to you. I am here under higher order."

"Ha!" Ayika laughed at the ridiculousness. She'd heard enough stories from Grandma Aka to know that excuse was absurd. "Don't lie to me! Even in the Spirit World this is still the City! We're well within of your court's domain. You're the chief city god here. Who could possibly order you?"

But Blind Dog Lord only bowed deeper. Suddenly Ayika felt an invisible power press down against her. It came from every angle and sent her trembling to the very border of existence. It was not pain, or force, but only mind-shattering attention. It was the sense that something saw her, and that something KNEW.

Then the pressure of terrible understanding withdrew as suddenly as it had arrived. Ayika was left with only the impression of a mind that stretched behind the horizon and was made of ten thousand units of ten thousand parts, each a universe of thought on their own. It was a mind of Brick and Stone and Humanity. In the spirit world the ground beneath Ayika flexed and distantly in the back of her awareness she could have sworn that it did the same in that dark tunnel of the material world.

Ayika recognized what that sensation of focus was. She knew that force. She'd loved it and marveled at it since she was a child. She knew what power had issued the order to Blind Dog Lord, who ranked above him. She whispered in disbelief of her own words;

"Ba Sing Se. The city. The city itself is a god." She laughed in sick humor. "Ha, a city god."

Blind Dog Lord cocked his eyeless head to the side. "Do not sound surprised. I told you that everyone has superiors. And mine has been working diligently to arrange an opportunity for one of their ancient allies. One you have been close to all your life."

Ayika's soul form was jostled again as once more the ground beneath her flexed and buckled. In the meadow before her a large expanse of dark soil bulged up under the scattering crowd of spirits and rose into a tall new hill before falling down again into fresh valley in the same undulation. There was something huge buried under the ground, something bound in chains with links of carved stone that were briefly revealed by a small landslide of dirt.

"How...?" she began to ask.

Then Ayika's awareness widened in a disorienting rush of reply to her unspoken question. The disturbance stretched out through the strange spirit landscape of melded city and forest. There were undulating coils chained beneath the ground for distance beyond comprehension. Then at the edge of the horizon a massive head rose up from the earth and in the space twisting properties of this world Ayika saw it clearly as if from two paces away.

She saw the ancient beard of a forest of withered reeds, she saw the pointed teeth of water smoothed rocks the size of bridges, and the strength of mightily currents formed into undulating muscles beneath chains of stone and metal. She looked into the shimmering eye larger than an Islander ship and knew that she was looking face to face with the spirit of the Kuang River, chained and divided through the city. The spirit of a gift used and regulated to an extent that many city dwellers had forgotten it existed. Then that eye closed and the great spirit sank back into the deep sleep that had consumed centuries.

She whispered. "The river. The Kuang."

"Yes. The river, bound and chained. It is the true task, here at the heart of everything."

Then Blind Dog Lord raised his arms hidden deep in their voluminous sleeves and began to chant. "And now you near the end of the path. You hold the power." Breath hissed into his fanged mouth. "Daughter of Water. Heart of Jade. Priest of the City. Fulfill your purpose. Perform for us all the unbinding of the Kuang spirit. The people of the city have forgotten her and so killed her. We gods of the city rise and fall as one, and so we have fallen. But here and now you can complete the ritual of broken chains. All the pieces have been assembled and you can write the final stroke. That is your role, as it is my role to ask of you. Complete the ritual and let the spirit of the river once more touch the minds of humanity."

These words hung in the air like a choir of golden bells. The gathered spirits waited.

Silence stretched.

"My purpose? All the pieces have been assembled?" Ayika heard her own voice and was astonished by the chill. Beside her, Naruham's head slowly lowered in embarrassment or anger. Ayika slowly stood on shaking knees and confusion gave way to fire as she confronted the spirits which surrounded her. "What do you... No. Me, with Naruhama's ghost mask, that stream, and blood from...This is all part of a plan? Some abstract goal of a... of a metaphor?"

No expression could be read on the lord spirit's withered eyeless face. "Symbol and truth, cause and effect are one and the same. The human world forgot and so forged those chains, break them here and they will remember. Spirituality will slowly return and the humans will remember us again, one by one, the way they used to. They will return to the temples and in doing so will cause us to have never left. The importance might not be immediately obvious to you but-"

Fury rose within Ayika's chest like fire. "Are you saying that you gods planned that?" There was power and rage burning in her words. "This war was some sort of ritual to save your own hides? You planned the Masks?! You planned Huitzlan and Erliao and Tailang?! You planned for the murder of Naruhama, and of Lizhen, and of... You planned for...!" Her voice broke over the tragedy she could not name and so she screamed;

"All of this chaos and sorrow?! You spirits planned this?! ALL TO USE THIS POWER?!"

Above her, the clouds of the spirit world darkened and swirled. The ground trembled. Beside her, Aza Naruhama's form began to fade away as flames began to lick across Ayika's skin. Even the distant sense of the all-consuming spirit of Ba Sing Se was driven back. Ayika's body still wore the Ghost Mask and she held the power of the god within her. The crowd of spirits shuddered as the ground cracked beneath her feet. Her view shifted and warped, suddenly she was looking down on Blind Dog Lord and the other spirits barely reached up to her waist. And still Ayika rose taller and taller as the burning power of rage and anguish filled every particle of her being. Distantly she felt the waves of exhaustion from her physical body pass through her again but now they could not touch her fury or her strength. The absurdity of this story was her fuel.

She'd lost so much and now, for once in her life, she was strong.

The crown of spirits scattered and fled. Alone, Blind Dog Lord stood before her, whipped by wind and tossed by cracking ground. But he was not cowed, though he looked up at the giant form of a shaman raging with the power of a tortured god. There was a hiss of air as he opened those withered jaws once more.

"Yes, child, it was planned. And it was chance beyond our control. We spirits saw that you would be here, and so we set out to bring you here. The spirits of the masks feared you being here, and so in their rage they paved your path. You are part of the ritual of the river, which is cast by Ba Sing Se.

He spread his arms against the gale as fire and wind ripped at his spectral robe. "But this great city is part of the ritual of the world which is just one small component in the ritual that powers the grand cycle of existence. And that entire eternal cycle is a ritual cast by the tiny, limitless act of two young women holding hands on a roof by the light of fireworks. Even for those bound to the wheel, choice still matters. It is all that matters."

Ayika held out her massive hand that was now more vast that a city block. Her soul burned in glorious pain and she knew that her material body would fail soon. But while this power lasted she could reach out and destroy even a spirit god. She could turn and do battle with the grand spirit of the Impenetrable City. She could rage and fight against anything in existence and she might even win. She could get vengeance for this cruelty and nonsensical, meaningless torture. She could exact any punishment she might desire, in this world or the other, against all those proud fools who'd toyed with all their lives. She could crush them for what they'd done to her and to everyone she loved.

But she would not.

Then Ayika was small and trembling once more, standing before the looming shadow of Blind Dog Lord. Tears ran down her brown cheeks and her hands were clutched into fists at her sides both here in her soul form and across the worlds in her body. She said quietly, "Will unbinding the river spirit or whatever you want stop all this? The trouble between the worlds? Give Naruhama and all the others peace? You're not going to flood the Bed or something? I don't even know what this means."

The spirit god bowed his eyeless canine head to her, rough grey fur shifting slightly in the gentle breeze. "No more destruction will come. It is a ritual of freedom. Water to sooth the fires, and a river to soften stone. Aza Naruhama of the Fire Nation will be released in the process and his power will fade, righting the disturbance between the worlds. To the human world the only change will be a measure of peace returning to unquiet minds. Anything left, we gods will deal with out of our own authority. Everything has a cost."

"Right. Whatever." Ayika felt dizzy and light, to her blurring vision the spirit world and the tunnel under the Lower Ring were starting to merge once more. That was where Mizumi lay and soon Ayika would be able to go back to her. She was so tired. But in the face of all these meaningless machinations beyond her control there was one last thing she still had to ask.

"Why me?" It was almost a sob. "Why some nothing water tribe girl far from her homeland? Why a foreigner? Why not one of your own people; someone who belongs?"

Blind Dog Lord looked down at her with an eyeless stare. "Because that is you. Born to the land of earth, raised between walls of stone, master of all the brick streets. Her waters are in your veins, your bed is in her grave, and now you stand, empowered, under stone at the banks of her flow as fire drips from your fingers. You are Ayika of Ba Sing Se, birthed in the river's bones. You are the daughter of this city. This is your home and we are all your people, from now until the reforging of the world." Those words were simple. And for once she knew they were true.

He stepped backwards and that lord of the shadowed courts bowed down to the child of immigrants and the Bed. The other spirits bowed still lower, feather, claw, and bone all reaching to touch the floor of this spectral land. They bowed before Ayika.

Blind Dog Lord whispered, "Now, make us in your debt."

Ayika closed her spiritual eyes. She could feel the soul and ghost of Naruhama contained together within her frail heart. It was shadow and fire and tortured power. She didn't know how to do any of this, but she knew what she intended. Hopefully, here that would be enough. Tonight, they said intent was ritual. She reached out with her exhausted will and seized the single touch of the divine in the heart of the inferno.

In the dark tunnel under the burning Lower Ring, slow drops of cooling blood seeped down to the smoothly flowing surface of the hidden aqueduct. That line of water reached out in both directions, forming a web across hundreds of overbuilt kilometers until finally the canals, sewers, and drains converged to deposit their abused contents together once more behind the river wall in the Harbor. At the foot of that wall, beneath the vaulted supports of those watercourses, beneath the maligned river, sat the house in which Ayika was born. The life of the river was also hers, in both imprisonment and in freedom. It was part of the life of the city. It was not the life she cared about, but it was one she could save.

Ayika looked out through the merging veil between worlds and saw all this. She didn't know what it meant but she decided that she didn't need to. She was so tired. Then she reached out with a burning hand and broke the stone chains.

The canals awoke in fire.

...

Nia Mua made her stand on the bank of the canal. She was breathing heavily, trying to disguise the way her hands now shook when she used her waterbending. Douli Ma'er had been fighting beside her with skill beyond that of any soldier but by now he was flagging too. That grey hair spreading from his temples had been earned naturally and it now showed though still he managed to keep up with Nia, a bender over ten years his junior. Nia swept her hand and a slicing jet of water whipped out at a golden-aura cloaked Mask who just barely dodged out of the way. Then it didn't dodge of the heavy paving stone that came plummeting down out of the sky a moment later.

Duoli Ma'er trusted her in a fight. Nia liked that. She just wished this all didn't feel hopeless. The ghosts and the wild spirits might be driven away but Masks never stopped and they only grew stronger. Nia had tried to trace the center of the disturbance in the city like Ayika had shown capable of doing but the shaman instead found herself drawn into fight after useless fight.

Protecting the populace like this was a fools errand, the constant influence of the hungry ghosts and untied spirits influenced people's minds and turned them against each other. Any group of citizens she and Ma'er saved was just another potential mob or stampede. They were all going to be torn apart. No, the only hope here was to exact bloody revenge on those who ruined this city. As soon as she stopped panting.

Nia held out her hand to briefly lean against the building wall by this canal and regain her breath. Then she coughed on the smoke that hung thick in the air and remembered that they all might burn to death instead. She smiled, it was nice to have some uncertainty in life.

Ma'er was suddenly standing beside her again. Nia silently cursed at her own surprise. That man could move quietly when he wanted to. He could also punch in a way to bring an entire apartment building crumbling down with magical power which was nice too. He looked over at Nia and said:

"We should get back to the barricades. It's about time for another attempt to advance them, and I believe we've pushed this group of Masks back. Or at least re-aimed them in another direction away from the bulk of civilians here. It's like herding beasts."

She waved her hand and gave him a sarcastically flirting wink as she breathed heavily to regain her energy. "Yeah, yeah, I'll hurry up, mister business. I just-"

"Nia!"

She abruptly seized up and collapsed at the waist in a spasm. It felt like she'd just been slammed by an incredible wave crashing into her. Nia ignored Ma'er's attempts to help as best she could as she searched wide-eyed for some explanation for this. As far as she could tell an unstoppable curtain of spiritual energy had just washed over the entire city. It was terrifying and exhilarating. It was fire and shadow beyond this world, now put to focused use.

Ma'er was on guard too, fearing some attack that the shaman's collapse might signal, until he suddenly froze at an unexpected sound. Nia Mua was laughing.

"Ha ha ha!" There were tears in the corners of her red eyes, irritated by the smoke.

Ma'er growled at her as he looked around, checking the dark corners and secret ways. "What? What did you sense?"

Nia continued to laugh, so hard that she was almost out of breath to speak. "I've got no idea! With power like that we're either saved or we're all going to die!"

To a shaman's senses the world was painted on a sheet of fabric and now that curtain had been shaken. Something was changed. Nia looked up and saw an ancient specter nearby, nearly inhuman in form. It suddenly straightened up as if it felt a pleasant breeze on what had once been its face. Those wavering appendages ceased their grasping and were instead held outstretched in welcome as the ghost began to fade and dissolve into the night air. It might have even smiled.

Nia grinned at the confused and concerned Ma'er. "It looks like the brat managed it! I'll be damned if Ah know how, but she..."

Then Nia could see past Ma'er to the dark canal that intersected the terminus of this dead-end street. A massive spectral shape rose out of the black water, forming a bulging wave while at the same not disturbing the still surface of the canal at all. The curtain of phantasmal water parted and it ran down a bulge of muscle and scale to reveal a huge shimmering eye that looked straight into Nia's heart. The breath caught in her throat and then the unimaginable spirit sank down again into the canal, leaving only black smooth water reflecting the low-hanging clouds, orange with the light of the fires across the ring. A faint sensation, like a gentle calming sound, hung in the cool air.

A rough hand grasped hers. "Nia!" Ma'er shook her out of her daze.

Nia blinked and looked back up at him. "Ok, I have absolutely no idea what that's about." Then she just laughed again. She couldn't help it.

Light drops of rain began to sprinkle down onto her cheeks. Then a screeching, savage roar echoes out over the endless forest of rooftops.

Ma'er, still very unnerved, said, "It sounds like the Masks are still out there."

"Yes. But now they'll be weak. That's one hell of an exorcism and it'll have hit them too." Nia's lips curled back in a predatory grin. She'd found within herself another well of energy to draw from. She actually had hope. "So now we hunt us some Masks. I believe ya said that was your specialty. So, mister man, lead the way. I think they'll bleed now."

They ran forward together. Gentle curtains of rain came to fall as in the air above the city an apparition of fire bloomed into existence, flitting across the wide rings of roads, buildings, and towers as it danced.

...