Chapter 10
Takaro stood frozen, rooted to the ground as he stared at the brightly glowing tree. The voice had sent an icy hot shudder through his body that threatened to shake the sword from his grip and take his legs out from under him. He nearly collapsed over in sheer exhaustion. Whatever this thing was, it was powerful. Far more powerful than he dared to imagine.
After an achingly long minute, Takaro realised something that he could not quite believe. It was leaving room for him to speak. It was waiting for an answer. There were a thousand things he could ask and they all seemed equally as important, but eventually he unstuck his tongue and spoke.
"Why did you bring me here?"
The tree said nothing for a moment, as if pondering his question. Then, in the same powerful voice, it responded.
"I'm surprised that is your first question. Are you not curious about my identity, or the land in which you find yourself?"
Takaro almost rolled his eyes at that.
"I can figure all of that out myself. You're some great spirit, trapped in a giant tree, and this is the Spirit World. Probably a part of it that no humans ever been to before." He gripped his sword in both hands and held it aloft, though not as if prepared to strike.
"I know that you're the thing that summoned me here, gave me those nightmares, sent the cat to the south pole. And you did it all because you wanted me to bring you this sword. Now tell me, why did you need me to bring it here?"
The tree paused again. Then it huffed. Takaro hadn't thought a spirit this great and powerful would do that.
"I have summoned you here so that you and I may both transcend our limited beings and usher in the dawn of a new age. So that we may restore true balance to both our worlds."
Whatever Takaro thought he was expecting, it had not been that. It seemed completely absurd and impossible, and he had absolute no articulate response to it. His tongue knotted again.
"I… I don't… What does that even-"
"Are you perhaps now realising that you, a simple human, cannot 'figure this out' on your own?"
Takaro was flabbergasted. Irritation and confusion swirled in him, alongside the outlandish indignity of the fact that he'd just been verbally smacked down by a talking spirit tree. This was bizarrely embarrassing.
"Er- okay then, let's start with… who are you?" He stammered, trying not to sound too flustered.
The glow of the tree began to move, shifting into multiple dark colours and twisting in on itself to reveal a strange pattern; a collection of swirling patterns, pulsating around a distorted diamond shape at the centre.
"I am Vaatu. Great spirit of Chaos. Greatest spirit of freedom."
Takaro swallowed, and tried to keep his breathing even and his face impassive. Vaatu was not a name that ever came up in any of his research, and 'great spirit of chaos' definitely sounded like a bad thing. He didn't know what to think of the freedom part.
"Okay… so what exactly do you want with me? How am I supposed to help with your chaos and… balance?" The notion of a chaos spirit bringing about balance seemed like a pretty big oxymoron to Takaro. He was growing more apprehensive and nervous with every word this spirit spoke.
"In your hands, you hold a weapon unlike any other in this world. The metal from which it was formed came from beyond the skies, where the stars shine at their brightest. With it, you are capable of freeing me from this prison."
Takaro glanced between the tree and his sword. He'd guessed that earlier, but he still didn't completely understand it.
"Why this sword, specifically? There's a lot more meteorite ore out there. Hard to believe I'm the only person with a weapon made of the stuff."
The tree hummed.
"Perhaps. But any other human who possessed such a thing would not be as able and willing to do so as you."
"Oh? And why am I so special, so able? And who even said I was willing?" With every moment he spent with this spirit, the more sure he became that he had been manipulated into something he'd bitterly regret.
"You are powerless. You were born weak and alone, and have lived by the grace of other and at the mercy of those stronger. Finding that sword was the only thing of note about your existence. When I first took notice of you, I admit, I believed you to be just another simple minded mortal that I could bend to my will."
That was confirmation that he was being manipulated. The spirit continued.
"That night, when you first became aware of me, I had not intended to make myself known to you. I had only meant to observe you - not for your consciousness slip into this realm. How that happened, even I do not fully understand."
"Is that way you were so angry-"
The tree completely ignored him and carried on.
"But it is clear that you have a natural connection with the spirits. One that most humans will never achieve, even with a lifetime dedicated to meditation and study. Perhaps if you had been raised away from that repugnant town, you would have become aware of this on your own."
Takaro wanted to spit back that this was nonsense. But he remembered how easily he could feel the presence of the few spirits he'd encountered so far. How he hadn't even needed to think about it. He had just known what and where they were.
"So… why do I have this connection? What about me is so different to other humans?"
The spirit waited another moment before answering. "As I said, you were born weak; so weak, that you were dying from the moment you began to live."
Takaro's eye widened and jaw opened. The spirit continued.
"All the other humans around you accepted this end for you, believing there was nothing that could be done to change it. They were right, of course. Sickly children rarely overcome their fates."
Takaro's breathing was starting to overtake him. A cold sweat ran down his neck and throat felt tight. He was barely able to follow Vaatu as he spoke.
"As you lay there on what would have been your second and final night, playing out a most tragic and paltry of human stories, a spirit took pity on you. They nursed you better than you parents were able to, and soon enough, you were healed beyond anything a human could have done for you. And thus, with life given to you by a spirit, you gained just the slightest connections to this world and its natives."
Takaro's legs were trembling. He almost fell to his knees with shock, only staying up by stabbing his sword into the ground and leaning on it. Vaatu thankfully allowed him time to processes all this. The boy just stood there, breathing laboured, until eventually he could stand up straight and look at the tree again.
"Who was that spirit?" His voice was practically quivering.
"You're asking questions you have not yet earned the answers to. I know as much as I do by observing brief glances of your history after you came to my attention. If you wish to learn more, you will need to search further. I do not have the patients to watch the goings on of every measly human."
Takaro snarled. "'Haven't earned answers'? I made it all the way to the south pole. I travelled into the spirit world, survived everything that came at me, and you're telling me I have to go further?"
The colours of the spirits markings darkened slightly, the lines of them sharpening.
"Do you expect charity from me? You may have travelled this far, but only with guidance and aid from me. You have offered nothing in exchange. I do not make deals with your kind for just your sakes. My favour must be earned, and not a single human in ten thousand years has been worthy of it."
But he said he'd been in contact with other people. That Takaro was 'another simple minded mortal', so obviously this wasn't his first time trying to use a human to escape the tree. It would probably be a bad idea to point that out.
He took in a deep breath. Even if this thing was an ancient powerful spirit, he could get the upper hand in this conversation. Vaatu may have more answers, but he was the one with the means to release him. He needed to keep that in mind.
"You say you brought me here to free you and bring about a 'new age'. Now I ask you; why should I?"
There was a long minute of deafening silence between them. Then Vaatu spoke again, soft and deadly.
"You came this far because you desire power and vengeance. I can offer you both."
Bile rose from his stomach, forcing Takaro to swallow and grit his teeth.
"Don't try and trick me. You were sealed in that tree by something just as old and powerful as you are, probably even more powerful, and they did it for a reason. You said that you're a spirit of chaos. Why would I release something like that into the world?"
Takaro had only been in the spirit world for less than ten minutes, and he was already sick of the place. This spirit thought he was just another power hungry idiot that he could use and throw away when he'd outlived his usefulness. He wasn't going to play along with this.
"You claim to know me, so what made you think that I'd be selfish or stupid enough to help someone like you?"
He flipped the sword in his grip and tucked the blade under his arm to show he would not use it, glaring at the spirit. The diamond in the trees centre narrowed its own gaze.
"Tell me… what is the antithesis of chaos?"
Takaro blinked. This was an obvious redirect, but it wasn't a complete change of subject.
Chaos meant disorder; conflict, violence, havoc and frenzy. Anarchy and war. The word conjured images of riots and fires, of panic and the most vicious parts of humanity. The opposite of that was…
"Peace." He stated firmly. The symbols darkened again. He'd answered wrong.
"Fool! It is Order. Order is what mortals use to keep the world stagnant. It is the imaginary thing that justifies the most repugnant systems and concepts that one human may use to oppress another. Nations, classes, restrictions, the forbidding of true free will. You have spent your life under the thumb of law and rules enforced by those who told you that they were to be respected, and that respect will cause one to lie so still they forget how to move. Order is what happens when life is pushed down. Chaos is when living creatures pushes themselves up."
Takaro could barely understand or give credence to any of that. Laws were there to stop people from hurting others, stealing from and abusing them. In theory. He'd been hurt and stolen from plenty. The laws had never done him any good. But he couldn't say he wanted to get rid of them, that would just be…
Chaos.
"Okay… so if order is also a bad thing, that still doesn't explain why I should release you. Order may have it's problems, but chaos has just as many."
"Exactly!" Vaatu suddenly roared. "Order and Chaos are both essential for life to exist. Your world has had a paragon of light and so called justice watching over it for longer than any of you can remember, and look at it. Crawling with deceit and villainy, propped up by the societies you all cling to. How pathetic that this is Raava's legacy. The one she dared to imprison me for."
Takaro stared wide eyed, rattled by the sheer rage on display. Vaatu was speaking in such broad and vague terms that he was struggling to keep up. He did catch one thing though; Paragon of light and justice. Was that who had trapped him in the tree?
His next question bubbled up in his mind and past his lips before he could stop it.
"Raava… is that what you call the Avatar?"
The markings' colour changed once more, but this time becoming… more subdued. As if Vaatu was turning his eyes down to ruminate on something.
"The Avatar is the thing that Raava became when she gave up on herself." Vaatu said. "Ten thousand years ago, when spirits moved freely between this world and yours, Raava and I existed as equals. We lived to contradict each other, her as order and suppression and me as chaos and freedom. While I embraced both the positive and negative aspects of my being, Raava refused to admit any sort of fault, thinking herself to be the embodiment of 'good' and me, 'evil'. She believed that her purpose was to battle against me for all of eternity."
The symbols that indicated Vaatu's presence began to fade slightly, letting Takaro see the bark of the tree more clearly.
"Eventually, after the interference of a human, Raava was able to trap me within this; the Tree of Time. Since then, her vassals have wandered the mortal world, trying to fill the role of protector, and bridge between the two worlds."
Takaro ran all of that through his head, trying to comprehend everything he'd just learned. Vaatu was obviously omitting certain things. He didn't say why Raava believed what she did, what their battle had been like, how they had effected the world around them and why the human had gotten involved in the first place. He did, however, let two things slip in that Takaro didn't think he'd meant to; their battle was what caused Raava to become the Avatar (not her 'giving up on herself'), and the name of his prison.
"This Tree of Time you're trapped in. What is it?"
Vaatu paused before answering.
"This tree is the most ancient thing in existence. It's life began with the passing of the first second, and it will die after everything else there is has returned to nothingness. It remembers everything that has ever happened, its roots reaching into each life there has ever been or will ever be. It is the one thing in all of reality that is truly eternal. The only prison capable of containing me."
Takaro stared. Not at Vaatu, but at the tree. He'd been able to connect to Vaatu by accident, and with the hawk cat on purpose, and if this thing was some kind of spiritual being, he might be able to learn something from this. Tentatively, he stepped forward to the nearest of the giant roots and reached out a hand.
Before touching the bark, he looked up at the great spirit again. He didn't anything, but Takaro still twisted his body so that the arm his sword was tucked under was facing away from the root.
With a shaky breath, the boy leaned down and pressed his hand against the Tree of Time.
Nothing happened.
He huff and closed his eyes, trying to focus himself on what he wanted to see. Vaatu spoke of his battle with another great spirit, and how the a human had intervened, ultimately imprisoning him here. This was how Takaro would learn if he was telling the truth.
The first Avatar, who had lived over ten thousand years ago. When the spirits roamed freely between their world and his.
Avatar… Wan.