AN: We're getting towards the end now guys! Thank you for all the support and continued views and reviews, I had no idea this thing would take off and become so read as it has been but thank you either way. Last chapter was super long but I felt it kinda had to be in order to pile on the love in a single day (by far the most difficult task taking it from the movie). I hope you guys enjoy these last few chapters and be sure to stay tuned for my next two Korra projects; one is my own 'Book Six' of the show and the second will be a Korrafied Treasure Planet much like this. As always I appreciate any and all feedback (even if it's negative but please be fair) and if anyone has any prompts or anything like that be sure to send them my way ;)

The Lost City of the South

Chapter 10 - The Legend of Korra

When Asami burst from inside the pond she was tired, exhausted even with the amount of swimming, and kissing the pair had down under the water. The darkness of night was beginning to fade into the neutral light of the fake dawn and the air was a little stale, or maybe it just tasted that way because she had had no sleep for going on twenty four hours straight due to her mishap in the cave. The entire team would be probably still getting in the precious hours of rest before they had to leave; although Asami wasn't leaving, not yet, she couldn't with the experience with Korra she'd just been through, she had to stay and he had to tell the team about it.

"Did you have a nice swim?" Telling them wouldn't take that long; Zaheer was standing over her as she gasped for air, and to her surprised he had his pistol drawn with the smuggest look on his face.

She looked around, spotting P'Li with a rifle in her hands, Kuvira with a different pistol to Zaheer, then Bolin with a devilish smile on his childlike face and finally Opal, even Opal with a gun in her hands and surrounded by a company of masked crew members that looked ready to raise hell.

"Hey guys, what's with all the guns?" She hardly needed to ask. It just only clicked with her at that moment what was going on. She felt like the most idiotic woman on the earth, a scholar among thieves and murderers, which is what she now saw them all as, especially Zaheer, the twisted Robin Hood of the entire group. "I am such an idiot" she cursed in a harsh breath, full of bile towards herself and the stocky bear looming over him with the smug grin that confirmed to her that he had already won. There would be only one reason why he was here, and not just by the pool with the least piece of the puzzle lying underneath, which he was certainly not going to swim for. Why would he? He had a perfectly good archaeologist who had just spent hours deciphering the entire thing for him, like a schmuck. "This is just another treasure hunt for you isn't it?" She knew his answer, it was so simple and so awful that she had only just figured out what he was and what the entire expedition had been for him. "You're after the Spirit" she stated again harshly.

He continued to smile, letting out an arrogant sigh. With a swift pull from his boot he revealed a cloth like piece of ancient parchment. "Oh you mean this?" He asked rhetorically. He was so smug, and of course he had reason to; he had played the young and beautiful archaeologist like a fool violin since the beginning of the entire trip,slowly feeding he what she needed and as soon as Korra took her eye in the throne room he was like a child in a candy shop. He had hit the jackpot. There was no way a woman so attractive to Asami Sato could possibly ruin his plans; and she needed Asami herself. Now she had the information and thus he had what he wanted, all that was left to do was for her to decide if she wanted to be the winner of the little game, or the loser.

"The Spirit of the South" Asami realised, seeing the same white and blue on the parchment as on the stone mural under the water. It was a kite shaped thing with glyphs all around it and the same man with the arrow on his forehead in the center of it.

Zaheer stood up, walking around with the parchment still in his stone like fist and waving his pistol around like it was made of plastic and shot rubber bullets. "I would have told you sooner Sato," he began to lie, Asami certainly not believing anything coming from his mouth anymore. It was still all a game to him. "But it was on a need to know basis and well, now you know." He smiled and therefore disgusted her, walking back to her in the water and extending an arm to help her out; to join him. "Welcome to the club kid" he smiled again, better to have her on side that force blood out of anyone, although she doubted he didn't want to.

She pushed off of the stones, being solitary in the water, waiting for Korra to return and single handedly murder each and every one of them for this. "I'm no mercenary" she scoffed in his face, refusing to lower herself to his level. It was vulgar, disgusting and she was still furious at herself for not seeing it any earlier. She was so fixated on finding the city and then on Korra and how beautiful she was; it had turned to be her complete downfall.

At that moment, Korra gasped her way out from under the water and into the hands of one of Zaheer's masked lackeys, pulling her by her hair out of the pond. Asami raced to her aid, only for Zaheer himself to restrain her by grabbing her hand while the lackey and the Princess struggled with each other. After a split second, Korra had a huge lump of solid stone from the ground in hovering over her open palm ready to slam onto the man's head and brutally murder him; and she would have done so too if not for Zaheer shooting the stone with a round form his pistol and distracting the fierce Korra enough for two more soldiers to take hold of her, noticing she was beaten by technology. Firearms were nothing next to bending, as much as Asami would like to think differently.

He released Asami and went right back to his dastardly monologue while pacing, Kuvira taking the position behind the archaeologist and moving her pistol to her left temple.

"I prefer the term, 'adventure capitalist'," he began, still his ego remaining large than his entire body at his victory. Asami looked to Korra in the hands of two faceless men and all she was burning to do was shove Kuvira to the side, grab her pistol, shoot the two restraining the woman she was in love with and run away from this nightmare. But she would be dead, they both would, the moment she went for the pistol. "Besides, you're the one who got us here. You led us right to the treasure chest." He was still talking, and now holding the Fisherman's Account he had also stolen from her satchel she left in the dry.

She looked at him refusing, like a prisoner of war or a captured secret agent. "You don't know what you're tampering with Zaheer" she yelled in his face.

He stopped pacing. "What's to know? It's big. It's shiny and it's gonna make us all rich." He really emphasised the last word in his counter argument. Of course he was only in it for the money; people like Zaheer only ever were.

"But you can't Zaheer. It's not a diamond or a battery. It's their life force," Asami shouted, finally figuring out the riddle for herself. It was how the city had survived the calamity, how the King and Korra were alive, how everyone was. It wasn't that there was any mystery or stories were told. It was that Korra and everyone else were literally three or more thousand years old; they had lived the entire gap thanks to the water all around and the crystals and this Spirit of the South wherever it was. "You take this Spirit of the South away and these people will die" she pleaded, genuinely, to the man with the gun. She looked at Korra again and saw a different look in her sapphire eyes; a look of complete admiration and gratitude

Zaheer looked at the page of the Account, examining the letters and symbols he couldn't possibly understand. "Well that changes things. Kuvira what do you think?" He asked his second in command who had her slender arms around Asami like a coiled viper.

She moved her seductive mouth next to Asami's ear to really let her words cut deep. "Knowing that. I'd say double the price."

"I was thinking triple" Zaheer developed, looking into Asami's eyes an seeing the flame beginning to plume inside them. There was no way she'd be on board and he was beginning to realise it. He let out an earthly grunt. "Academics. Never want to get your hands dirty" he stated, reviled and frustrated that negotiations were not going as smoothly and quickly as he anticipated. He made another circle in front of her and waved the pistol around again as if it were nothing, he didn't care about anything except knowing where the prize money was.

"Think of it this way. If you gave back every stolen artifact from a museum… Why, you'd be left with an empty building" he put to her. Asami grunted again as Kuvira pressed the barrel of the pistol completely to her temple. Korra gasped. "God I hate it when negotiations go sour" he stated, nodding to Kuvira to cock her pistol back and load one into the chamber.

Korra scrambled. "Tell them Asami!"

Zaheer smiled, along with Kuvira however Opal and Bolin were both less than impressed in the back, on edge with the two in charge pressing a loaded gun to the poor archaeologist's head, prepared to actually splatter her brains out all over the stones in case she didn't give them the information. Of course, Korra had just revealed that she too knew all. Asami sighed.

Grabbing the book and paper Zaheer smiled as he pressed them both into Asami's face, knowing that her little protest had just been destroyed and that there was absolutely no point in dying for nothing. If she didn't follow him he'd just shoot her and have Korra tell him. She guessed he had more ways to make a tribal talk.

"Let's try this again Sato."

The doors to the throne room exploded in a fiery blaze with rocks and stones flying everywhere around, the shock-troopers marching in first followed by Zaheer, with Asami in his hands and his pistol out and Kuvira, with Korra in hers and pressing her pistol into the back of her neck, just at the tip of her back and collarbone.

"Drop your weapons! Now!" Kuvira spat into the room, pressing the barrel of her gun deeper into Korra's skin emphasising the fact that she could, and would annihilate the girl there and then.

King Tonraq called away the guards as soon as he stood up to see his daughter in the hands of the outsiders, of course furious but completely at their mercy, he wanted not for Korra to join his wife. The guards did as ordered and the rest of Zaheer's team of masked troopers made their way into and around the throne room in search of something. Zaheer himself made his way directly to the King himself.

"How about it Chief? Where's the Spirit Chamber?" The King wasn't even surprised that he overbearing beefcake had found out the legend and resolved the riddle; just by looking at Asami looking completely broken and devastated in the center of the pond he could see that Zaheer was a man who would do anything to get what he wanted, including beating women and taking them hostage. He looked to his daughter in the hands of Kuvira still with her pistol pressed to her spine making her squirm like an animal rather than a person. He could also see Asami looking too and seething in hate, wanting to do something, anything to help her. He could finally see that Asami was, and had fallen in love with his daughter, and thus she felt completely guilty for getting them all in this situation.

Tonraq rested his aching bones and sat down again, simply refusing, believing it to be complete foolery. "You will destroy yourselves" he stated, looking blind almost.

Zaheer shrugged, as if to walk away yet the way Asami looked up at him she knew he was just about through with failed cooperation. "Maybe I'm not being clear enough here Chief" he muttered before quickly, as if like lightning, whipping the pistol around and firing right on the King.

Asami, Korra, Suyin and Opal gasped as they looked up at the throne, seeing the King fall from his chair and down to the ground, on his knees before Zaheer with a small, nine millimeter hole in his lower abdomen, blood dripping from it as he coughed and wheezed along the floor while Zaheer took his place in the chair.

Suyin raced to the King, helping him up and moving him to the side with pressure on the wound, cursing under her breath. "This wasn't part of anything Zaheer" she spat at him, angered and completely against him now.

"Put a bandage on that bleeding heart of yours Su, it doesn't suit you" he countered, less bitter and more of a spiteful jab at her mothering nature. He crossed his legs and turned his pistol at Korra, thus signalling Kuvira to do the same. "Well it look as though diplomacy has failed up Miss Sato," he slithered at Asami as she came up closer to the steps looking through the pages of the Fisherman's Account for anything she could have missed, feeling the pressure with two pistols aimed at Korra. "So you've got until ten to tell me where the spirit chamber is" he put to her, cocking his pistol.

"But I told you. The Spirit of the South, lies in the eyes of her Chief" Asami told him frantically. He ignored her.

"One… Two…"

Still nothing new as Asami looked through the Account and the added page to find absolute zilch. Zaheer looked at her nervous and shaking body, seeing the flame in her eyes to have turned to a nervous white fear and the sweat budding at her fingers. He looked at the symbol on the front cover of the book, then to the pool and the swirling water and stones. They looked similar.

"Nine."

They looked very similar, almost exactly alike. He leaned forward and looked again back and forth. It was the same pattern. "Spirits" he breathed, lowering his pistol gradually and walking to Asami, grabbing the book from her hands an signalling Kuvira to lower her own firearm.

He look from the front of the book to the floor and too the book again. "The Spirit of the South lies in the eyes of her Chief" he repeated; the riddle had opened itself before him. From where Tonraq was sitting, he would be the only one in the whole of the South to spot that the pattern on the face of the book and the pattern the stepping stones had formed were the exact same, the same spiral swirl. He made his way into the water, gesturing for Kuvira to join him in the center with Korra. Looking back he did the same with his gun to tell Asami to do the same. "We're in" he stated joyously as they all went into the center. Asami said nothing.

"You people have no idea what you're dealing with" Korra stated resistively in Kuvira grasp. The seductive and terribly dangerous viper smiled.

"True, but I can think of a few Nations that would pay anything to find out" she stated. She was hardly wrong Asami thought. With that kind of power any one of them could easily start a new Hundred Year War and simply annihilate the rest, or create a sprawling empire, or worse.

As soon as Zaheer's ape like foot stepped into the middle of the pond a large and circular cross section of the earth below jerked and rattled, suddenly sinking through the floor and taking the four of them with it, down into the depths of the City of the South.

The cavern itself was dark and damp, completely under the water and earth and dried lava that had solidified on the surface to form the plateau. Looking around Asami could see almost no light, save one as the long and cylindrical pillar brought her and the party down to the base of of the cavern. There was a large, white and blue tinted wisp high in the rafters surrounded by large stones with faces on them. Quickly as she could Asami scanned them while they continued to circle around the white fleeting light inside the circle.

She could see that one of the stones was a face, a man's as she guessed with a rather butch and wolf like aesthetic that made him seem certainly Water Tribe, although more ancient Northern from pictures the young scholar had viewed in university. Next there came an earthen looking face and from the lines that were analogous to cheekbones Asami again presumed it was a woman. Then to follow her came another man, an elderly one from the way his eyes had been etched into the stone and then the same man with the arrow on his forehead, and the arrow had been carved into the stone. There were more, two or three but they were too ambiguous for Asami to determine if they were men or women. What do they mean? It was all so confusing. She looked over at Korra and saw how the girl's sapphire eyes were filled with an awe and also a state of understanding. It seemed to strike a bell with her somewhere in her old and yet still beautiful body. Asami took a single step towards her, to hopefully take her in her arms now that Kuvira had eased off; Zaheer held her back with a firm grip on her arm that made her want to cry.

The pillar fully retracted into the ground and the four of them were free to step off and marvel at the floating wonder that was, as Asami could guess, the Spirit of the South. It was impossible and wondrous to Asami as she stepped forward to get another, closer look as to what was inside of it; she still could not make out what it was but she could take a well educated guess. It was white and by the look of it as the stones circled it Asami could vaguely make out the same kite shape as on the missing page Zaheer had handed her.

It was a Spirit.

"Alright let's hurry this up," Kuvira complained, walking completely away from Korra and taking Zaheer's notice, allowing Asami to sneak in and wrap her arms around Korra in a warm and extremely concerned embrace.

Her voice was choked, strained because she was trying to hold back her tears. She may not have looked it but she was absolutely terrified, not because of the guns or because of how desperate Zaheer was looking, but because she was in an environment where she knew absolutely nothing; and with Zaheer at the wheel of the situation, it may just get herself and Korra killed. "I'm so sorry Korra" she edged out into Korra's shoulder. She expected the tribal Princess to slap her, stab her, hate her but pulling away she could see tears in her sapphire eyes too.

She looked at Asami with her jewels of eyes, glistening with the sparkle of tears and a smile on her face. "Asami," she whispered, almost sobbing. "You found her."

"Found who?" Asami asked, drying her eyes concerned and confused. Who? The Spirit?

Korra brought Asami in for another, long and drawn out kiss amidst the archaeologist's confusion and the Princess's awe. It was sweet and soft, Korra's full lips taking the archaeologist away and to safety but there was something else, something scary about it. It felt as if this would be the last kiss they would ever share. Like Korra was about to disappear, or worse. It felt like a goodbye. It felt like Korra was about to die.

"You found Raava."

Without another word Korra walked away from Asami, leaving her as the archaeologist tried to hold onto her hand, like she was possessed, walking to the base of the Spirit chandelier. She walked past Zaheer and Kuvira as they were talking about something that Asami didn't care for and if she did she would still be disgusted that they were thinking about doing it. She tried to run after Korra, to catch her and stop her, to bring her in for another embrace and hold her tightly, to love her as she knew she did even after a day; she didn't care anymore.

Zaheer grabbed her by the arm again, the same firm, and no doubt wife beating hand if he ever had one that was surely going to bring a bruise to her bicep the amount of time he was clutching at it today. She was forced to simply watch as Korra, miraculously, as if some form of messiah, walked across the water without stepping into it. She actually walked on the water. "Hold your horses lovergirl" Asami heard Zaheer mock with a laughing breath while she watched the beautiful Korra walk across the water completely ignoring her. It brought her to tears.

"K..Korra" she cried into the silent cavern and yet the Princess ignored her still, making her way toward the Spirit. "Korra… Please?" Asami cried again. Again the Southern Princess ignored her as she reached the spot underneath the Spirit and turned around to face the three still at the shore. Her eyes were suddenly glowing and hot white and she looked as if she was not there anymore, like something else was inside her. "K..Korra?" Asami asked the woman under the floating stone circlet.

When she spoke her voice was ethereal, angelic and with such an echo coming from her lungs it assured Asami that it was certainly not Korra who was speaking. "You have done well Asami Sato. I thank you" the strange voice spoke.

Again like an angel, Korra began to float, a small cyclone of airbending under her feet to make her rise up and glide into the center of the stone circle. In a single fluid motion, she was completely encompassed by the stones with faces, becoming one with the white kite light inside. Once inside, the rotating circle of stones began to pick up speed, getting faster and faster until suddenly slowing as rapidly as it began to pick up speed.

She began to glide down again to touch the water with a glowing blue tribal pattern on her chest; the white Spirit inside the circle was gone, inside Korra with the glowing blue pattern over her and the hot white eyes.

She was loaded in the shipping bell and loaded on the truck before the what Asami could guess was ten in the morning. The entire team was silent, gruff and full of spite. She knew, and they all knew, that this was wrong; it would be killing the entire civilisation. Suyin would never stand for it; she was still in the throne room making sure the King was comfortable while he was entering his final moments.

"So this is how it ends. You're wiping out an entire civilisation. But hey, you'll be rich" she spat at the team, not Zaheer or Kuvira, she didn't care about them at all; it was all aimed at P'Li, Bolin and above all Opal, who she thought was the best friend she made on this trip. She could tell that the young engineer was being torn up inside over it, over essentially abandoning her mother and friend, but it wasn't for money, it was because she was scared of what would happen if she stayed. "Congratulations Opal. It looks like you'll be able to help your dad with the housing project after all" Asami jabbed Opal's way.

"And P'Li, it looks like you and your family can open up a whole range of flower shops," she spat towards the demolitions expert as she was getting into the truck with Opal. "But that's what it's all about. Money."

Zaheer hopped from his truck with a look. "Get off your soapbox Sato" he grunted, walking towards her rather menacingly. Kuvira shouted to him from the truck with the container on it, inside was Korra in some kind of hibernation with the spirit inside her. Raava. She remembered. "Now I know I forgot something," he said to himself, closing all of the gap. "I got the cargo, the girl, the crew and, what else?" He asked himself, the most smug anyone had ever seen him. "Oh yeah."

He turned around swiftly, the force of his backhand moving with him in a forceful blast, striking Asami full throttle against her cheek, taking her from her standing posture to the floor, a crimson red mark forming on her cheek. Her glasses fell from her face when he struck her, falling to the floor with a small framed photograph of an infant Asami Sato with a broad and striking Hiroshi Sato.

Zaheer stepped on the frame, destroying the glass covering it and puncturing the parchment of the photograph, ruining it. He clasped the glasses and wiped them with his vest like a gentleman, rubbing the most painful kind of salt in Asami's emotional wound. "Look at it this way Sato. You're the woman who found the South and now…" He dropped the cleaned glasses back on the floor, luckily not destroying them as well as the picture, to which Asami was now sopping over. It was the only real photograph of her father and her that she had left, and it was now destroyed. "Well, now you're part of the exhibit."

He walked back to the trucks, rolling two fingers in the air, giving Kuvira the signal to get the convoy up and running to leave with their boon. "Alright people move it."

Opal couldn't. She just could not do it. She slammed her palms on the rubber of the steering wheel in her frustration. Asami was right, all the time she had been right and seeing the brute that Zaheer was first hand, the engineer knew she could not be any part of it.

She left the truck, making her way straight to Asami to help her up and rub her finger along her cheek apologetically and saddened. She gathered up the photograph and handed the picture to the archaeologist. P'Li followed, then Bolin, the Bumi and Mrs Beifong from behind, who was already staying with her daughter. "We're all gonna die."

Zaheer launched himself from his truck, shocked and yet still arrogant. "Give me a break. We're so close to our biggest payday ever and you all choose now to grow a conscience?" He asked the crew, he didn't need to hear their response, he was already running behind schedule. "Fine, more for me" he jabbed with bile and got back in with Kuvira; the convoy finally leaped into action and slowly meandered back down the bridge to the volcano, taking Korra, Raava and the life force of the entire Southern Water Tribe with them.

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