Chapter 93: Ash in the Air
After abandoning the spirit vine project, a shell of herself, Ren's mom turned to the writings of gurus and sages. Ishaani would repeat a story transcribed by Guru Pathik, about a spirit, grown strong from man's endless wars.
If a thousand suns were to rise up simultaneously in the sky, the brilliance of this great spirit was similar to that. So I asked it "O best among the immortal! Please tell me who you are, of such terrible and fierce form, for I don't know your nature."*
It replied simply. "I am of the void before time, the end of all things. For I am death, the destroyer of worlds."*
Why would mom be so scared of a fable, Ren wondered? Only later would he realize she wasn't afraid of the spirit of death...
She was afraid of becoming it.
xXx
The Colossus made an emergency landing, still in the fading purple light of the spirit vine bombs. Planes flew out to investigate, but shorted out when they got anywhere near the blasts. Now out of immediate danger, the crew was in shock, in awe, and in grief, realizing their friends on the ground were undoubtedly dead.
Meanwhile, Mako and Bolin carried Ren out of the cockpit, friends following, with Asami holding a flickering Aera and Astraea in her hands. "What's happening to him?" Mako worried, watching Ren seize and twitch.
"A panic attack, just a... bad one," Kylie vaguely explained. "He needs a soft bed, and a lot of space."
"Uh, OK," Mako tentatively agreed. He didn't understand what was happening, but Kylie looked like she was about to cry... yet she wasn't confused, nor in wonder. She knew way more than she was letting on.
xXx
Outside, Korra landed as close as she could get to the fading blast and stowed her glider. Her eyes flashed white, and she spun in spiral airbending movements, trying to blow it away with a massive upward gust, then with a blast of dust and fire. But it was stuck in place.
"Come on," she complained. The Avatar switched to a lighting bending stance, arms stretched wide, and her eyes flashed red with Vaatu's bent as much electricity as she could stand, blinding arcs of lighting flooding in one hand and out the other, back into the Earth. But it just kept coming and coming, like an infinite well.
"Urgh!" she cried, shaking her smoking hands out. "Any ideas?"
"No," Vaatu admitted. "It is a well of power."
"As if the veil between worlds is punctured," Raava agreed.
Not even the Avatar could clear this, Korra dismally realized. The hopeful looks of a few survivors standing behind her dropped.
xXx
Having dropped Ren and Kylie off in an empty bedroom, Mako and Bolin waited outside, with the latter gently stroking the sky spirits in his hands. "You guys OK?"
"Getting there," Astraea weakly replied, voice wavering almost like a distorted radio.
"It's getting less... noisy. What just happened slowly goes away," Aera added.
Mako raised an eyebrow again. "What did just happen?"
Aera didn't mean to let that slip. How do humans lie so much? "This is bad, Mako. Even worse than it looks."
"Worse!?" Bolin exclaimed.
"Easy, Bo," Mako warned, squeezing his brother's shoulder. "Aera, what do you mean?"
"I... I can't say," she admitted. "Sorry."
There was an awkward silence. Then Kylie burst out of Ren's room, eyes red and puffy, staring at them for just a second before running towards the back of the ship. She bolted out the back, gasping for air, but could still see explosions in the distance from there, too. She cursed out loud. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to even *breathe*.
Asami and Mako came jogging up on either side. "Kylie? Are you alright?"
"No!" she screamed, ripping the railing off in distress. "I'm not alright!"
"Hey! Calm down, Kylie, you're hyperventilating," Mako implored, grabbing her forearm. "Deep breaths, OK?"
Kylie took a deep breath, and started crying again. "That stupid smell, like an electrical fire. It's even worse out here!"
They both pulled her in, and Kylie sobbed into their shoulders. Mako didn't know her well, but Asami did. Gangsters, Red Lotus, a whole circus of ancient spirits... nothing fazed her. And *now* she's scared?
Finally, Kylie pulled away, still distraught. "We'll get through this, Kylie. Think of the crazy things we've already survived," Asami comforted.
"No... we won't." Kylie shook her head. "You don't understand."
"What do you mean?" Asami asked.
Kylie looked back out at the explosions. "I can't really explain."
"What's going on?" Mako pointedly asked. "You and Korra know what those explosions are, and even Aera won't tell us. What's so bad you can't even say it?"
Kylie looked back to them. "...Giam is a monster."/
"Wait, you know Giam?"
"Know him? I watched him burn our parents alive, crush our friends, enslave our neighbors, without even changing his expression, like he's dead inside. If he has these things," she gestured. "We're done."
"...Done?" Asami echoed.
Kylie bit her lip, and stared at the ground. "If you two have a bucket list, things you've been meaning to do, I suggest you do them now. While there's still a world to do them in."
xXx
Korra found Bolin in a hall, clutching the spirits for his comfort as much as theirs. "You OK, Bo?"
"I'm fine," he lied. "I'm just... I'm just glad I'm not the only one who's freaking out."
"It's OK to be scared," Korra assured. "I'm scared too."
"But you're the Avatar! You've been through like a hundred apocalypses already!"
Only Bolin could make Korra laugh in all this. "Then let's make it a hundred and one. Can you get Aera and Astraea somewhere safe?"
"Save the spirits?" Bolin perked up. "Sure thing, Korra."
"Good, I'll meet up with y'all soon," she promised. "Um... how's Ren?"
"He won't say anything, or get out of bed. I think he's in shock."
It's so much worse, Korra thought. "I got him." She hugged Bolin lightly. "Stay away from those blasts, Bo."
"You too."
xXx
Korra opened the door to Ren's room on the Colossus, and closed it behind her. The light switch didn't even work, leaving only the dim yellow glow of emergency lighting. He was laying on his side, face away from the door, breathing shallow and uneven like he was in pain. "Ren?" she gently asked, sitting next to him.
He didn't respond.
"I know what you're thinking. I'm not gonna tell you everything will be alright, but listen to me," she pleaded. "This. Is. Not. Your. Fault."
Ren didn't say anything, but shrunk more.
She laid down beside him, gently rubbing his back. Spirits, it's more flared up than ever, cracks glowing as purple as the vines. "You think you're a terrible person. You think you failed your parents, your friends, the entire world, and you're hurting more than anything physical possibly could." She took a shuddering breath. "I know. When I came to Republic City, I thought I was a waste of the Avatar Spirit, and a horrible person that hurt the world with every breath. I felt like I wanted to die, for good reason... But a certain engineer took that homeless girl in, put up with my shit, and swore I was a good person. Every. Single. Day, day in and day out. So here I am, telling you." She squeezed his arm. "You never want to hurt anyone. You'd give a total stranger your shirt if it was the last thing you had. You're so incredible, so smart, so kind, and you are *not* a bad person."
Ren finally turned around, still shaky. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and he couldn't even keep eye contact.
Korra started to cry too. "And I'm going to tell you that every single day."
His lip quivered, and Ren desperately hugged Korra, resting his cheek on her hair, sobbing and shaking. Korra squeezed him back, rubbing his curls. "You're a good person, Ren," she softly repeated into his ear. "I know you. I love you."
After his tears ran dry, Ren finally pulled back and sniffled hard, looking into Korra's eyes. "I, um... I need a few minutes."
"That's OK... Can I stay here with you?"
"You don't have to," he weakly protested.
Korra flipped over, pushing into him, so he was spooning her from behind. "I want to," she assured, pulling his arm over her waist.
Ren closed his eyes again, rested his head on Korra's, and hugged her tighter. He still didn't understand why this warm, radiant creature stuck with him, but he learned to stop questioning it, soak in every bit of Korra he could get.
xXx
Barely composed, Ren bumped into Kylie in the hall just outside the command center. After making eye contact, the siblings hugged each other, swaying back and forth. "Remember what we promised each other?" Kylie asked.
"We keep going, until the end."
"For mom and dad, Mera and Goro. All of them. We don't stop, so we can be there for each other."
"Always," Ren promised.
"Always," she agreed.
They nodded solemnly, and stepped into the command center, where Korra and Asami were already helping with repairs.
"Get that landline connected!" Kuvira ordered.
"Almost there!" an officer yelled. The center radio sparked and smoked worryingly, but came back to life. "Got it!"
Kuvira picked up the receiver. "Zaofu, come in," General Kuvira called out. "Repeat, this is the Colossus. Zaofu, come in."
It screeched back with static. "Turn the gain down!" Kylie yelled, and soon, garbled, but audible voices came through.
"...Kuvira?" Suyin asked. "Thank the stars. You're one of the first to respond. All the radios are down, every frequency."
"The Colossus is in one piece, Su. What's the status of our other units?" Kuvira asked.
There was a grim silence. "The few that did report in... Total losses. Every single one."
Kuvira's face dropped. Zaofu's army, annihilated, in the blink of an eye. Her subordinates, her friends...
"There's more," Lin added.
"Lin!? You're in Zaofu!?" Korra chimed in.
Lin ignored her, and Su spoke up. "Giam left a message demanding unconditional surrender."
Kuvira remembered that name. "Is that *the* General Giam? The war hero? I thought he died years ago."
"He's been missing," Su explained. "And he claims the domes are next, if Zaofu doesn't capitulate by dawn."
There was another grim silence in the command room as that sunk in. "He can't be serious. Civilians?" Kuvira asked.
"He's bluffing," Lin bluntly agreed.
"NO!" Kylie and Ren yelped in unison. "No. When Giam makes a threat, he does *not* back down," Kylie reiterated.
"He'll do it without even blinking," Ren warned.
"Then we have to evacuate the domes, immediately," Su decided.
"You can't," Korra sadly objected, looking to Kuvira. "There's nowhere to hide... Zaofu has to surrender."
"What!?" Lin and Suyin snapped in unison.
"I will not surrender to a madman!" Kuvira roared.
"You have to," Korra insisted. "He's using bombs, Kuvira. Single bombs that can destroy an entire dome. They won't protect you, even I can't protect you... You have to surrender."
Kuvira's face turned ashen. Lin and Su were silent over the static.
"Slow walk, stall, do anything short of lying," Kylie agreed. "But she's right. If you don't, tomorrow, there won't be anything left to defend."
Kuvira exhaled. She finally understood Noatak. When the world falls from under your feet, you cling to who's falling with you. "Zaofu will surrender," Kuvira bitterly accepted. "But Avatar Korra, you *have* to stop him."
"*We* will," Korra corrected. "I'm not abandoning Zaofu again, and we *will* stop Giam."
xXx
Alone in his tiny command bunker, Giam was content. No... he was *excited*.
A few surrenders already came in. No need to press others yet, radio would be down for hours, until the first bombs dissipated. But he got the first refusal he expected, an explicative laden threat from a bandit queen in the Eastern Province.
He switched channels. "Do it," he ordered.
A loyal soldier, one of his oldest friends who lost five children to Hou-Ting, fired a rocket over the bandit's fortress, carved into the cliffs of a port city. It arced into the wall, and detonated, frying everyone deep underground... but spared some of the city. Giam chose a smaller bomb for this position, as he wasn't a lunatic like they were, he thought.
Over this, Giam felt no joy, no sense of grandeur, no remorse, not even considering that thousands just painfully died in the blink of an eye, rendering part of the city uninhabitable... no. Just a sense of duty fulfilled, thinking of all the suffering he was ending.
xXx
Korra scoured the Earth Kingdom all night, but found no leads. Giam needed a few turncoats sprinkled through other armies to hold the entire Earth Kingdom hostage, and was smart enough to keep them hidden. So she flew into Republic City just before dawn, for what she knew was coming, an emergency meeting of the Assembly, using protocol established for a crisis like the Hundred Years War. No visitors were allowed, for the safety of the delegates and sensitive talk of war.
Some representatives were already here, some remote, some calling in over garbled radio as they flew in on airships. But they were *all* shouting, and Azula, standing in the center, glared at them all.
"SILENCE!" Azula roared, casting a huge lighting bolt into the roof of City Hall. "The next interruption will be met with the next bolt, present or not. Is that clear!?"
The room shut up. Korra smiled smugly. Yep, Azula is the *perfect* person for this.
"Now, we will discuss this crisis civilly," she continued. "Does anyone have evidence of the unfolding catastrophe to present?"
Azula released her lock, and the light shifted to a Southern Water Tribe business mogul. "One of our trade ships had a mover camera on board. We just spoke, and it should be broadcast at any moment..."
The projector came on, and showed Port Yi-Sheng, in the Eastern Province, with towering buildings carved into the cliffs and bubbles of purple light in the background. Then the feed turned white, the speakers hissed with static, fading to cursing from whoever was aiming the camera, and finally, showed a bright, crackling bubble engulfing the center of the city.
The room collectively gasped. Some cried out. Korra's heart sank.
Lord Zuko was the first to stand up and speak. "Never. Again."
"The Fire Nation will not stand for another genocide," Fire Lord Ryu emphatically agreed. The great house nobles nodded, their petty squabbles melting away to irrelevance.
"Nor will the Water Tribes," Eska added.
"Agreed," Senna nodded, remembering what the Southern Water Tribe was like as a child well.
A United Forces General, representing a border city, put down a phone. "Refugees are pouring in from the Earth Kingdom, even more than from the Red Lotus Insurrection. While I share the sentiment, what, precisely, are we advocating for?"
"Simple. Giam must be stopped," Raiko declared. "The United Republic could be next."
Korra tried to swallow her disgust. What about the masses of people who just perished, Raiko? But Tenzin beat her to it. "This is a *world* crisis, councilor. One far beyond our borders."
"Agreed," the Republic general quickly added, beating Raiko to the button. "But let me clarify. What is our response? Is it diplomatic? Military?"
"Military," Tonraq firmly stated. "We hunt down Giam, and end this."
"You can't, dad," Korra objected. "If we defy Giam, he'll just blow up more cities. Not even I can fight what he's using."
"And just what *is* he using, Avatar Korra?" a Northern Water Tribe noble asked.
"Is it spiritual?" a Fire Sage wondered.
"Are you withholding information, Avatar?" Raiko accused.
"It's a weapon..." Korra trailed off.
"And?" Raiko pressed.
"Look, I can't tell you what it is, but you can't fight it like that," Korra explained.
"We deserve to know what we're up against!" a Northern general demanded.
"I put forth a motion to subpoena the Avatar for information," Raiko declared.
"What? No!" Korra protested.
"I must agree," another noble added.
The assembly got a rowdy, votes started coming in, and Korra got flustered. "I *can't* tell you!" Korra screamed.
"Why not!?" Raiko demanded.
And then to Korra's shock, Ren, sitting in the shadows behind the Avatar, walked up, and pressed her button. "Because she's trying to protect you. And because no one really knows, except me."
"And just who are you?" Raiko asked. "What do you know of these 'weapons' Giam is using?"
"My name is Ren," he calmly explained. Korra put a concerned hand on his arm, but he pushed it way. He couldn't hide from his past anymore. "...And I designed Giam's weapons."
xXx
After Azula reigned in the Assembly by electrocuting one of the empty seats, effectively ejecting the remote participant, Ren took a witness seat in the center, squinting from the spotlight. He'd never even spoken to a crowd before.
"You may speak," Azula allowed.
Ren took a deep breath, trying to swallow his anxiety. "Giam is using simple bombs. Compact, cheap, he probably made them by hand and attached them to rockets. I know, because they're my design."
"*You* came up with this?" a Fire Nation scientist asked.
"Yes," Ren admitted. "It was an accident... like many inventions are, I guess. But Giam was holding my hometown hostage at the time."
"Hometown?" Eska asked.
"Bao Shui," Ren muttered.
Azula muted the mics as that implication sank in, and a Fire Sage was the first to speak up. "So it wasn't dragged into the Spirit World. It was this! You knew all along!"
"My armies, my *friends* were burning, and you didn't think to tell us!?" General Kuvira snapped over her airship line.
"It... didn't matter," Ren weakly protested.
"Didn't matter!?" Kuvira roared.
"Order," Azula warned.
Ren looked down. "Sorry, General Kuvira. I meant that there was nothing I could do," he tried to explain.
"But there is," the United Forces general pointed out, finally seeing a military solution. "We fight fire with fire."
"You can't," Ren quietly argued. "This isn't tech that should ever see the light of day."
"It already has. You're holding back the inevitable, Ren," Doctor Sheng argued over Kuvira's line.
"Science should be open, and we need it now, more than ever," the Fire Nation scientist added.
"You don't understand," Ren pleaded.
"I concur with the general," Raiko declared. "We need the ability to defend ourselves, and present a credible deterrent."
More started to object, demanding Ren explain himself. "You can't," Ren quietly repeated.
Raiko raised another motion to subpoena. Votes came in.
"YOU CAN'T!" Ren roared, standing up and heating the metal floor around him to a glow. "DON'T YOU GET IT!?"
The floor turned quiet. Ren's friends were mortified... they never even heard him raise his voice before. It broke Korra's heart.
"You don't get it," Ren repeated, voice shaking. "This isn't a war, these bombs aren't weapons, they're our *extinction*. If you use them against Giam, he'll escalate back. The designs will get out. And it will be the end of everything."
"You're not making sense," Raiko argued. "Are we going to let this child dictate our response?"
Ren shook his head, and Korra stepped forward. "He's twenty-two, he's lived through more than you can imagine, and you're all idiots," she bluntly declared. "So how about we listen to some people who aren't? We'll show top scientists from every nation how these bombs work, and then *they* can tell you how stupid you are for even considering this."
Fortunately for them, most leaders of the world knew Korra and Ren personally. Tonraq and Senna *immediately* agreed, followed by Ryu, Tenzin, Eska and Desna. Kuvira relented at Sheng's urging, and the few combative Republic City councilors had no choice but to agree.
xXx
In a small room on the top floor of City Hall, scientists and experts gathered in something resembling a classroom. Korra leaned on a wall in the back, Kylie on the side, and Jinora sat in the front, being the closest thing the Air Nation had to a head scholar. Asami sympathetically squeezed Ren's shoulder on the way in, and Sheng pulled him aside. "Ren, is this what Isha found?"
"It is."
"I'm so sorry," she apologized. "I can only imagine."
"Can you? Don't pretend I forgot what happened, Sheng. You turned a blind eye to Kuvira's camps."
"We were at war. Was I just supposed to stand by and watch the Earth Kingdom fall apart, when I had the knowledge to stop it?"
"You should have spoken up," Ren countered. "You wanna know what happened to Mom? She *stood up* to Giam, and died for her principles. That's who she was, and she would be ashamed to see what you were silently complicit in." He turned to walk way. "Don't make that mistake again."
Sheng's face dropped, and Ren left her standing there, moving to the front of the room, where a black chalkboard was set up. "What's said in this room, stays in this room," Ren stated.
"We'll be the judge of that," the Fire Nation scientist replied.
"Oh, no you won't," Korra interjected. "No one breathes a word of this."
"Or what?" a United Forces military scientist challenged.
"I'll bloodbend every one you until I find out who did, *then* kill you," Korra threatened.
"...You wouldn't dare," the scientist scoffed, mortified at the suggestion.
"I would. It's that serious. Now, shut up and listen."
That got the message across. Ren cleared his throat. "So, um... let's get started," he awkwardly began.
The experts paid close attention as Ren drew a straight line from left to right. "Our world is divided into two realms, the Physical World, and the Spirit World. Between them-" he paused, trying to find the words.
"A barrier," Jinora suggested.
He nodded. "It's kinda like a potential energy mountain. That you can... you know-"
"Break through, with precise mediation and application of your body's chi, or with the portals Vaatu made early in Earth's history, that Raava later stabilized," Jinora finished.
Ren smiled. "I think you're the expert here, Jinora. Care to help me out?"
"Sure, Ren." Jinora, always the eager academic, jumped up as Ren started drawing a tree on either side of the line.
"This is the center of the Spirit World," Ren explained.
"The Tree of Time." Jinora agreed. "It's roots go all the way through the barrier, to the Banyan-grove tree in the Foggy Swamp. It's one big, living organism."
"Exactly." Jinora helping Ren is adorable, Korra and Asami simultaneously thought. "And their roots we find on either side..."
"Spirit vines," Jinora explained. "They run through both worlds, connecting all nature together."
Ren nodded. "Thanks, Jinora," he said, and she sat back down. "So... that's what got my mom thinking. There's a huge potential between the Spirit World and Physical World, yin and yang, like positive and negative terminals on a battery. The barrier is the insulator, but the tree's vines jump the gap. It turns out, they exist in both worlds simultaneously, here and there, depending on how you look at them. It's how the tree draws energy for its own life. She dreamt of replicating this as a clean, natural, limitless power source."
"That's brilliant," Asami complimented.
"That could bring the world into a new age. And you wish to hide it?" the Fire Nation scientist asked.
"Well... then she realized where it leads," Ren drew a circle on the chalkboard, just above the line, and a squiggly vine inside. "They're like conductors for spiritual energy. I don't completely understand it, but let's just pretend it's electricity." He drew a coil around it. "The vines respond to magnetic fields and try to amplify energy running through them. So... if you hook them up to that field, it forms a positive feedback loop."
"In other words, a bomb," another scientist observed.
"More like a shorted wire between worlds, or a siphon. The energy comes from the gap."
"That would quickly burn out and destroy the vines," a Water Tribe scientist argued.
"It does." Ren wrote an equation out. "Holding the setup together longer gives you exponentially more energy. So a basic loop?" he wrote down a number, a quantity of energy. "Nothing much. But you start optimizing it..."
Ren switched the solenoid tube out for a doughnut-shaped toroidal coil, and added two more zeroes. "Reinforce the casing." Another zero. "A reflector, cores, cheap foam." Two more zeros. "This is what Giam has. It's the last thing I drew out for him, and I guess he memorized it."
Now everyone's eyes were wide. "It's so simple," the Fire Nation scientist marveled.
"Simple enough for almost anyone to replicate," Asami realized. Chills ran down her spine. "That's the danger. It's too easy to manufacture."
"It's finicky, but yeah. And that's not the end of it." He extended the circle. "Add a second set of vines, a 'secondary' boosted by the first." Two more zeros. Hearts started beating faster. "Use cutting edge tooling." Another zero. "...And switch everything out for precision made superconducting toroids, like Future Industries just started selling. Scale up."
Three more zeros.
Everyone was agape. Asami covered her mouth, blood draining from her face.
"I can keep going, but the number doesn't matter anymore." He erased the barrier below the bomb, and set the chalk down. "At some point, theoretically, that pinhole turns into a tear between worlds, the same cataclysm Vaatu unleashed when he first breached the barrier."
"...Our extinction," the Fire Nation scientist realized.
"From anyone rich enough, who knows how," Kylie added.
Ren nodded grimly. "Still feel like this science should be open, Doctor Sheng?"
Sheng's mind raced, appalled at how wrong she was. No wonder Ishaani was so distraught. "This can *never* be replicated, not even spoken of."
"Agreed," several stunned scientists blurted out. Others absently nodded. Several swore on their lives, Jinora and others on every spirit they knew.
Asami thought back to that moment she met Ren, a shy mechanic fixing up engines, living in his shop, carrying doomsday in his head this entire time. So was Kylie. It was overwhelming, it explained so much...
No wonder Korra and Ren bonded so deeply, she realized. They felt each other breaking under the weight of the world, even when they didn't know why.
xXx
The scientists returned to their delegations as pale as ghosts, and frantic. They not only shot down Raiko's motion, but threatened to resign, and take their institutions down with them, unless the Banyon Grove tree was quarantined and Spirit Portal commerce tightly controlled, immediately. They *emphatically* refused to say why.
The emergency motion was shoved through. Others condemned General Giam, affirmed the sovereignty of the United Republic, and pledged aid and travel for refugees, mobilizing coordinated armies to help. This is exactly what Korra built the Assembly for, tackling all these thorny complications, so the Avatar could focus, and more importantly, stay sane.
Korra fell into bed, and flipped the loft's shutters shut with a wave of her hand to block out the morning sun. Ren was already curled up, facing away, and stirred. "Korra?"
"Hey," she softly greeted.
"I'm sorry I'm... you know. I don't have to sleep here-"
"Shh," she hushed, hugging him from behind. "Don't think like that. Just try to relax."
He nodded absently, and Korra snuggled closer. "You're a good person, Ren," she said into his ear. "Don't ever forget that." Ren seemed to relax a little, but even as he dozed off, she could feel his scars burning and his soul streaming out. As selfish as it was, this was the hardest part of the crisis for Korra. Just when Ren seemed healed, his nightmares rose from the dead, and swallowed him whole.
Ren, utterly miserable, drifting in and out of sleep, kept thinking back to that look on his mom's face, and that story. Now *he's* the one that let the Spirit of Death loose, with a thousand suns of his making still scorching the Earth as he lay there.
His friends, this life, Ren was positive he never deserved any of it. The whole world would be better off if he had just died with his parents.
xXx
Notes: The whole story was edited/cleaned/expanded a bit in March 2025. If you started this fic a long time ago, FYI there are some new scenes and changes in the old chapters!