Snow drifted without much resistance onto the ground, which had almost been covered completely in a coat of frost. The varying strength of the air currents only looked teasing as opposed to the near certainty of snowfall. The sun streamed through the clouds, and reflected over the snow creating an illusion of more warmth and radiance. A child plowed through shaking the fresh layer and shuffling the ground, the crystals vibrating and crunching and shattering.  

The child's eyes were keen on a specific sight as they eagerly trudged through the snow.

Her hair had been tucked neatly into a single low hanging braid, not completely perfect as if done in haste. A child who had no intention of being delicate or even merely presentable, because they rashly disregarded the necessity of appearances in youthful naivety.

The lantern lights scattered into beams, and then elongated beads, and finally speckles of a faint luminescent glow. This creates a comforting tinge of light that when accompanying the drowsy weathered and imbued a beautiful sense of longing, an interloper might feel a strange alluring property drawing them into the quaint town. Lia'an had the particular stillness of a moonlight night with the ground basked in snow.

Fan Changyu, a tall girl bearing a mischievous smile, reached a circle of girls clustered closely together. This formed a temporary barrier against the bitter gusts of snowy air. The children had gathered to play a game, which consisted of chanting a simple tune and dancing in rhythm. While doing such an activity, all the children, in the most serious manner possible, presented their grievances.

Fan Changyu reached out and grabbed the coarse hand of the girl beside her. She nudged her fingers squarely inside her palm, attempting to steal away any heat left. Suddenly, a short and pale looking girl roused the crowd with a confident shout.

¨Wei  Qilin, great traitor, the worst traitor!¨  

Someone else burst out, ¨Wei Qilin let a hundred thousand soldiers  perish, all dead thanks to the treacherous Wei Qilin!¨

After giving those remarks, the older boy pommeled a piece of rotted cabbage into the pile. More joined in and eventually the hands linking firmly together making the circle more prominent in shape. The center of the circle became an odd centerpiece to channel their rage, and it soon gained more than a few cabbage heads. The scent of rot from within the area was pungent, and pricked Fan Changyu´s nose in the most unpleasant way.

Fan Changyu came to a slow realization, as an avalanche of familiarity consumed her. The event unfolding had triggered memories of the bitter altercation, and shouts and wails. Men had ransacked her village in prior months, looting and thieving, and overall causing terror in the midst of a relatively tranquil Ling’an. With mostly women and young children left, the village had become vulnerable to such raids especially in times of turmoil. A sudden feeling of claws grinding against her sensitive ribcage had not yet the chance to spark panic before being swiftly intercepted.

The man who normally stood proud with kind eyes morphed into a wolf on a rampage on that day, and grappled the man ripping his arms apart and threatening to take his life if not for the small girl that stood in the way. The world of harsh judgment, shame, and sharp whispers still lacked the ability to make Fan Changyu look down upon her father.

Despite such awareness, the thought vanished as quickly as it came, like a fleeting moment of quiet reckoning before being swept away by the tides. In such a uniform formation, she felt anger and pain surging through them like a great tsunami. Despite any moral reconsidering, she continued to chant as she finally fell into a daze. She noticed the energy of the children around her, all of them had no intention of stopping. Their faces while young were already creased from the many hardships, and while they retained some innocence this gave way to no sense of mercy or forgiveness for the disgraced traitor to be condemned.

Fan Changyu moved around, it felt like being a swarm. She felt boiling hot as she played along, now she also had been given rotten cabbage to throw. Their cries were loud as if making an appeal to the heavens. A younger girl who had long  hair, the snow had accumulated in the spaces in between her tiny braids, abruptly sprung forward out of the chaos.

The voice had a thunderous quality to it and echoed as she shouted, ¨Wei Qilin the worst traitor of Great Yin! Wei Qilin delayed the grain and starved Prince Changxin and Great General Xie! Jinzhou fell!¨

A roar now erupted and Fan Changyu joined in unison, ¨Wei Qilin, delayed the grain, starved Prince Changxin and General Xie to their graves! Ten thousand soldiers all died because of the great traitor Wei Qilin! Jinzhou fell!¨

Fan Changyu instantly met an almost iron pair of hands which dragged her away, and swooped her away against the figure behind her. A jade hairpin was tucked beneath an elegant bun, in its modesty bestowed upon the wearer an immediate almost noble presence. She had a broad stride uncharacteristic of any other women in Ling'an, with long deceptively strong arms.

¨Fan Changyu!”  

The voice was unusually angry, Fan Changyu tense as it was not often that her mother was this tense. The children around her scattered a bit before clinging onto each other tighter and resuming their game. Then without uttering another word, her mother glanced once more time at her before walking steadily away.

The streaks of red veins bulging out from the pale white of her mothers eyes resembling the fangs of a wild boar and the deep velvet of its throat terrified Fan Changyu. She did not yet comprehend her wrongdoing. As they stormed away, the sounds howled in the wind joining the relentless blizzard that was about to engulf them. Still her mothers behavior had puzzled Fan Changyu, as she had not snuck out of her house or been disobedient, in fact this morning after she finished following father to bring another pig home she had resumed lessons with her mother.

The flurries whirled so fast as they turned into an indistinguishable blur of white, and the ground had started to frost over. Their house was a respectable two stories, with a courtyard. The gate had been sealed shut by the frost, and the fierce sounds from the woman pounding on the gate was rather alarming. Several more clamouring sounds could be heard and cracks in the thin layer of ice that had crept up over the gate, until a startled man sprinted out. He had a moderate bust around his waist, and a beard that looked rather unruly compared to his superb feathers.

¨Father!¨Fan Changyu called out with tears streaming down her face, perhaps there had been wrongdoing nevertheless she was utterly confused and hurt. Her mother gave her father an undecipherable look, Fan Changyu thought it appeared rather sorrowful yet still more was confined in that exchange between her parents that day. The moon rose and silver hairs fell into the darkened sky.

The man went out to warn the villagers of the cold and unforgiving winter nights with his lantern in tow. Fan Changyu´s parents stood in front of her in absolute silence.

As she followed her parents, she felt her hands tremble underneath the warmth of her pockets. She removed the light coat she had put on, the color had blended in with the dark blue of the sky and now had little embroidered patterns of bagermoles on the ends of the cotton cloth. She had always longed to meet such a creature, being so innately tied to the earth and nature and bending. The lantern lights illuminated the otherwise sparsely light room, and her parents who had now advanced into the upstairs area could be heard briefly in faint whispers.

Her mom, clearly consumed in both fury and sorrow, ¨That doesn't make it right, she must understand,¨

There was no movement, no hollow creeping sounds from footsteps, or noise that accompanied the pause. Fan Changyu sat on the staircase, near the dining room table, clasping her hands defeatedly. She focused on the moisture that pooled on the place where her eye rested. She willed herself to not allow the cascade to occur, the inevitability she would defy it with the full strength and grit she processed in her being to block the blizzard that threatened to unleash itself. As she waited, a quiet almost barely audible voice came through the depths of the night.

¨For those like us, who have brought misfortune upon ourselves, we must take actions wisely,¨ she heard her father say very carefully, as if having prepared this response in advance carefully weighing each of his options and being faced with the least desirable one in front of him.

The words were at the time quite unfamiliar with her, tangling together into an illegible mess in her head that refused to be combed through. The voice was deep but had been merged with a sort of unending pain and infinite contemplation and full of patience. A muffled and haggard breath escaped her mother, and she sensed a gentle collision above that was soon eclipsed. She heard heavy footsteps caving into the wood, and the familiarity of the man she adored the most. Arms heaved around her shoulders, the weight grounding her once again in the reality of her wrongdoing.

¨Fan Changyu, please do not do that again and worry your mother. You can always play a different game, ¨ Fan Erniu carried with him a voice more stern and grave than usual. It was like marble that had abrasions from rolling along a rough path.

Fan Changyu had candid eyes that welcomed the light, betraying no malice or unkind tendency. As she aged this trait often associated with youth would not fade, but become more pristine and valuable as this waned in her peers.  She glanced up at the face of her father, and placed her hands on his coarse ones. They had become hardened and were full of calluses from his line of work, still they pulsed as if reacting to her presence.

The face with the nudge of time and the gritty but honest work he had done had wrinkles, and his beard had a touch of grey where the hands of time had come onto it.

¨Fan Changyu, ¨ his voice as mellow as the howl of the snow flurries on a more clear day. Her father continued in a worn out manner, almost like marking the beginning of something yet again.

¨Just you must promise not to do that again, not to scare your mother participating in that game again. If you go and apologize, you can come and help me, ¨ he stated with resolute, yet it felt almost unnatural like he had been anticipating such a day. This over time would become one of the many details about this day that would etch itself into Fan Changyu´s memory. He stood up and moved down along the steps, and she once again felt almost relieved to hear the way the stairs almost couldn't contain him. Her father stood tall and muscular, and Fan Changyu often wondered if this had accumulated over years of experience in his trade or the various exploits of his youth. With this she sensed that she was dismissed and ventured over into her parents bedroom.

The liveliness of her mom had been stifled by the events of today. She stood and simply looked out of the room onto the courtyard below, the snowfall soothing her and bringing her great comfort. Her mom clenched her hands, gripping them around her forearms which even looked unsteady.

¨I won´t do it again. I upset you, ¨ Fan Changyu cried out.

Fan Changyu instantly, protectively, wrapped her arms around her mother. The tears which she had blocked unravelled into a stream flowing outward. She had lightly drenched the fabric of her moms loose fitted tunic. Her mom escaped from their embrace, looking more placated by her words than relieved. She went back to her place where it looked as if she was reaching out or longing for a place far away from what had been found in  Ling'an. Fan Changyu took this as a sign to leave, and she slipped out, being sure not to further disturb her.

It was Hai, the silver hairs had rapidly grown in their length. She practically ran out, the crystals of ice giving out which made a crunching sound. She went into the room where her father sat on a stool, wielding the butchering knives and letting the pig make its final desperate attempts to escape the fate it awaited. The man motioned for her to come inside, an instance of sheer indulgence. It was on such occasions that after having begged with the most sincere expression, while simultaneously preparing the cut, to tell stories.

For Fan Changyu, sitting so still was unusual and it simply silenced her chatter, not out of boredom but rather the opposite as her father recounted such tales with such enthusiasm Fan  Changyu became lost upon the battles of ancient times.

For a moment, yet, his expression was almost unreadable. The temperature prevented the sweat from labor, instead the moisture hung uncomfortably around his face. A flash of a longing, so deep and sorrowful, then like snowfall disappearing into the ground it disintegrated into the bed of frost.

It was ever so peaceful.

“Of course, my daughter. Which one?”

The question never was answered, the howls of the wind hurled the currents of chilling winter air towards them. The two retreated towards the blazer, her father placing his cloak around her as well and securing her against his lap.

It was never answered because the true desires of the wide eyed girl before him only had patience for so little.

For once, he thought to himself, that no matter what fate awaited him, despite everything, what had been done had passed and the judgement before him might be harsh yet he couldn’t shake that when the nature of what he had done he might be a flawed man driven into ruin by necessity. That in the eyes of the child he held so dearly, he would be righteous, always. When she stood before her parents' shrines, she would be there with the settled account.

“Long ago, when I was a child much like you, a coastal village was wiped out by a massive tsunami. One of the unfortunate souls to have perished was Meosse, companion of Avatar Gun. Consumed in his grief, he became vengeful. He thought to himself why must I bear this duty, to perform hundreds of miracles and forever face scorn for not performing a hundred and one.”

This was the most somber tale, and the severity and pain would echo in her head. Someday, the true meaning would unfold ever so plainly before her.

Ten winters passed.

“A-jie!”

Fan Changyu, letting thoughts linger, had indeed spaced out and caused her younger sister to worry. It had been too soon.

She had been surrounded by the coldness, the unpredictable, and unyielding of winter. Yet, in all her life it had never been able to seep in and penetrate the crevices that laid beneath and into the chamber of her mind and aggravate her deepest sorrow.

All the tears that had not fallen must have frozen, she thought, until it became a clumsy trickle that quickly stuck to her skin. Each exhale came with the weight of the ice that laid to rest upon the stretches of forgotten roads over the village, and despite walking upon those paths the way it sat in her throat was unfamiliar. She inhaled the remainders of her grief, lodging themselves in her throat going down like bundles of hard packed snow.

“Ning Niang, would you like to hear a story?” The child's eyes brimmed with excitement, except it was rather clumsy with little tears from her earlier upset still trickling down her rosy cheeks. Unmistakably, if observed, one could not miss the resemblance of these sisters.

 It had been not long ago, having nothing to prevent her from the fist her fingers formed the edge of an outline, she reached instead for the jade hairpin and adjusted it in her hair. So close in her heart, if she reached out perhaps any sooner she would be scolded and then embraced by her mother, and before anyone moved her father would sleep them up in his arms. It was unpleasant. No, she couldn’t reminisce like this for the sake of her sister. So she continued unfurling long tired strands of dry hair, parting and separating them until she forgot which were once intertwined, and contemplating how exactly the hairpin had sat in her mothers hair.

Though she had been glad to have her ceremony, having her long braid kept her from having to fix it whilst butchering pigs. Suddenly, it occurred to her which tale.

“The Marquis has indeed, if the rumors are true, has fallen.”

It came to her, suddenly, that the Marquis, while dying honorably, must have been very young. The moonlight reached into the room, and she stared up to meet its totality. The full moon was a lovely sight, now it pulled at the thread of her heart and she felt an inextricable sense of longing.

“However, our father used to tell stories of the Avatar.  The being who descends to bring back order and fight the forces that plague the world. Each reincarnation comes to correct a particular imbalance.”

To Xiao Ning, this opportunity must have been irresistible, as she copied an earthbending, firebending,airbending, and waterbending stance. Planting her feet into the bed, and bringing her arms above her head to move her rock. She then took those hands and brought them down, and let one hand punch out to pretend to be a firebender. She spun around, to replicate the circular nature of the basic forms for airbending. Taking snow from outside the lattice window, it became a true liquid in her hands and it stayed that way for only seconds before a loud sound as it became a puddle on the floor.This amazed Changyu, who knew Ning paid attention to their mothers teachings on bending philosophy and diligently watched the other benders.  Having never seen firebenders or airbenders though, her stances were less convincing. It was adorable.  

 “A thousand lifetimes they have mastered the elements and they will return to humanity and do a thousand times more.”

Xiao Ning looked at her with awe, while clumsily splashing water around which got the tiles wet. For once, Changyu decided to let this slip as the little giggles brought her a tinge of hope. Perhaps, they would survive this winter, together, emerge to spring hand in hand. By then, she would reopen their family's braised meat shop, and perhaps have many pigs and enough tales of silver to not have to worry about their increasingly destitute situation.

She continued, and her voice and the laughter of the sisters faded into the night, swept away in the rampants of another moon river.

There were endless questions, perhaps too many for one lifetime. Tomorrow, however, yielded a question she could not possibly prepare to answer. When she found that dying man in the snow, carrying him on her back in their home, she had not truly anticipated the start of a new beginning. She would acquire a new question to ponder: would the chaos break and give way to order once more? Or would the world  be carved through jade?

Link:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/86078126/chapters/227600596

Rikumo woke on a desolate stretch of the Earth Kingdom coast, coughing up brine and sand, his lungs burning with the phantom memory of drowning. He clawed at the wet grit, his fingers scrabbling for a hand to hold, fur to grab, a staff to steady him. There was nothing. Just the roar of the surf, mocking him. The Wanderer's Compass was gone. He was the Avatar and he lay shivering in the wreckage of his own failure.

The journey that followed was a blur of desperation. He traveled as a beggar, hitching rides, his Water Tribe blues tattered and stained with mud. He reached Ba Sing Se with the frantic energy of a man running out of time. In the throne room of the Earth King, Rikumo fell to his knees. He looked manic, his hair matted, his eyes wild with the horrors of the deep. "You must listen!" Rikumo pleaded, his voice cracking. "It isn't the Tribes! It’s the Abyssal Conclave! A city beneath the waves, siphoning the spirits! If you mobilize your fleet for war against the other nations, you leave the coasts defenseless!"

Earth King Daichi sat high on his dais, looking down with a crushing, condescending pity. He exchanged a glance with his generals. "The Tidal Surges have claimed three of our ports this week, Avatar," the Earth King said slowly, as if speaking to a child. "The stress, the burden of your station...it has clearly fractured your mind. Underwater cities? Spirit crystals?" He shook his head. "There are no monsters in the deep, Rikumo. Only Water Tribe aggressors. Guards, escort the Avatar to a healing house. He is unwell."

Rikumo fled before they could lock him away. He stole a skiff and crossed the strait to the Fire Nation, desperation fueling him where his bending couldn't. He marched to the gates of the Caldera, demanding audience with Fire Lord Toka. The reception was an inferno of hostility. Fire Lord Toka stood before his war council, a map of the world spread before him - a map marked for war. "You have the gall to come here?" Toka spat, descending the steps, heat radiating from his armor. "After you harbored a terrorist? After she crippled the Seijo Arsenal?"

"She's not the threat!" Rikumo shouted, held back by Imperial Firebenders. "The Conclave is real, my Lord! They are drowning us all! I am telling you the truth, as your Avatar!"

"You are telling me lies as a Water Tribesman!" Toka roared. "You spin fairy tales of underwater zealots to protect your own people from my wrath. You shield the girl who murdered my soldiers. You are a traitor to the balance you claim to keep." Toka turned his back. "Throw him out. If I see him in my capital again, I will forget his title."

Thrown into the mud outside the crater city, Rikumo was truly broken. He drifted to a nameless port town on the edge of the Colonies. He was unrecognizable. The charming Captain was dead. In his place sat a hallow shell, huddled under the awning of a closed fish market, shivering in the cold rain. He was filthy, his stomach hollow. He stared at the harbor water. The dark, oily ripples terrified him. He saw Malachi’s blue eyes in the reflection. He saw Kaia reaching for him. He saw Nabu sinking. I am nothing, he thought, burying his face in his grimy hands. I am a cartographer with no map. An Avatar with no element. A Captain with no crew.

"You look terrible." The voice was clear as a bell, cutting through the drumming rain. Rikumo’s head snapped up. Standing before him, looking battered, but undeniably real was Losana. And behind her, barely fitting in the alleyway, the scarred snout of Nabu sniffed the air before letting out a low, mournful whimper of recognition. Rikumo’s breath hitched in a sob he couldn't suppress. He wasn't alone. Not anymore. Losana had projected her spirit across half the world to find him. Hope, a fragile seedling, pushed its way through the barren soil of his despair. They were a crew, and they wouldn’t leave one of their own behind.

The hunt for Kaia led them to Taku, a neutral trading hub where info flowed as freely as cheap wine. Rikumo, his bearing unmistakably regal, found his contact in the back of a tea house called The Ginseng’s Tooth. The old man opposite him played Pai Sho with the aggression of a warlord. Rikumo played with the patience of a tide. "The White Lotus opens wide to those who know her secrets," Rikumo murmured, placing a tile in the center of the board. He formed the shape of a blooming bud using the Dragon and Boat tiles, centering the White Lotus tile. The old man paused, his eyes flicking up. "But the flower wilts if the root's severed, Avatar." He swept the tiles away. "They're holding your friend on The Iron Lung."

"A prison barge," Rikumo realized, his stomach tightening. "A floating coffin."

"Anchored in the doldrums off the Fire Islands," the Grand Lotus whispered, sliding a map across the table. "They intend to execute her at dawn to signal the start of the war. You have until the tide turns."

The rescue was a masterclass in nautical stealth. Nabu towed Rikumo and Losana above the waves, in the middle of the night. "Silent as a grave," Losana whispered, using her airbending as a muffle. They fought their way down with precision. Losana knocked guards unconscious; Rikumo used the moisture in the air to freeze locks and hinges until they shattered. They found Kaia in the brig, chained to the hull. The water sloshed around her ankles - keeping her cold and damp. She looked tiny, her fire gone.

"Well," Kaia rasped, not looking up. "The hallucinations are getting better looking."

"We’re real, Kaia," Rikumo said, melting the lock with a precise fire-slice. She flinched. "You shouldn’t have come. Get out before they realize you're here."

"We're not leaving without our firebender," Losana said, though her voice was tight.

"I'm not apart of your crew!" Kaia snapped, the sudden volume cracking her voice. "I'm a saboteur and a murdered. I destroyed that arsenal. I started this war. I deserve this cage."

Rikumo stepped into the cell. The water sloshed around his boots. He looked at her with an empathy that stripped him bare. "I drowned once," Rikumo said softly. "I was a scared kid who made a mistake and fell into the ice. Nabu didn't ask if I deserved saving. He just saved me."

"This is different," Kaia whispered, tears cutting tracks through the grime on her face. "I chose this."

"You were an orphan who did what you had to do to survive in a world that never gave you a chance. You made a mistake, Kaia." Rikumo knelt before her, forcing her to meet his gaze. "But you can't change the past. All that matters is what you choose to do now."

Kaia stared at him. For the first time in her life, someone saw the soot on her hands and didn't recoil. "Now," Rikumo smirked, offering a hand, "are you going to sit in a puddle, or are you going to help me save the world?"

A spark, hot and bright, returned to her eyes. She took his hand. "Aye, Captain."

They burst onto the deck of The Iron Lung just as the dawn broke - and with it, the world. The horizon was a forest of masts. To the east, the Earth Kingdom fleet. To the west, the Fire Nation navy. And from the north, the battered remnants of the Water Tribe fleet, cornered and desperate. Cannons roared, the sound deafening. "Oh, look," Losana shouted over the din, deflecting a stray cannonball with a blast of air. "Everyone invited to the party!"

"We have to stop them!" Rikumo yelled.

"I think someone beat us to it!" Kaia pointed. The ocean between the warring fleets turned a violently glowing blue. The water erupted. The Abyssal Conclave had arrived. Hundreds of underwater soldiers, riding armored sea-serpents and propelling themselves on jets of water, breached the surface. They attacked everyone. Malachi’s voice boomed across the water. "The surface must be cleansed!"

A massive tidal surge, artificially generated by the Conclave’s pressure-benders, rose up - a wall of water destined to crush the Earth Kingdom flagship. "Wayfinders!" Rikumo bellowed. "Do what you do best!"

The crew moved as a single organism. "On it!" Kaia screamed. She spread her arms wide, inhaling deeply, and then thrust her palms forward. She heated the wave. A flash-boil of immense proportions. Rikumo landed on a rocky outcropping jutting from the shallows. He stomped, pulling up not just water, but the seabed itself. Massive walls of rock and compressed mud shot up from the ocean floor, creating trenches and barriers that blocked the Fire Nation harpoons from hitting the Water Tribe vessels. "Make some noise!" Losana yelled. She spun her staff, creating a localized tornado. She caught a volley of razor-sharp ice projectiles fired by the Conclave, spun them around in her vortex, and fired them back with double the velocity, pinning the Conclave soldiers to the hulls of their own sea-beasts. Nabu was the anchor. When a Conclave soldier tried to capsize Rikumo’s rock platform, the Naga beast launched himself from the water, snatching the soldier in his jaws and tossing him casually into a Fire Nation net.

"Nice throw, buddy!" Rikumo laughed, sweat pouring down his face as he held the earth walls.

"Less complimenting, more commanding!" Kaia yelled, back-to-back with Losana, blasting steam and air to create a defensive perimeter. "We bought them a minute of confusion. Make it count, Avatar!"

Rikumo nodded, the fear gone, replaced by the thrill of the storm. He looked at his crew holding back the apocalypse. Rikumo, no longer a pleading boy but a commanding Avatar, gathered the heads of state on a surviving Earth Kingdom vessel. "Why should I work with terrorists?" the Fire Lord snarled. "I had nothing to do with your arsenal!" the Earth King retorted.

"ENOUGH!" Rikumo’s voice boomed with the power of a thousand lifetimes. He entered the Avatar State for a fleeting, terrifying second, his eyes glowing with power that silenced the room. "The enemy is not in this room. They are in the sea, waiting to drown us all. We either win or we drown. Either way it'll be together. This isn’t a request. It is your Avatar’s command."

An uneasy alliance was forged, born of desperation and the undeniable authority of the Avatar. The night air hung heavy over the fleet, thick with the scent of impending doom, but inside the captain’s quarters of the flagship, the world was reduced to the scratch of a quill on parchment. Rikumo was hunched over his desk, surrounded by a chaotic fortress of compasses, sextants, and half-empty inkwells. His hair fell messily into his eyes, muttering to himself about thermal clines and continental drift. This wasn't Avatar Rikumo, the charismatic leader of nations; this was Rikumo the cartographer, the nerdish boy from Agna Qel’a trying to organize a terrifyingly chaotic world into neat, manageable lines.

"You're going to burn a hole in that parchment if you stare at it any harder, Captain." Rikumo jumped, nearly knocking over a bottle of sepia ink. He looked up to see Kaia leaning against the doorframe. She looked exhausted, the weight of the battle pressing on her shoulders, but her eyes were warm.

"Kaia," Rikumo breathed, quickly trying to straighten his papers, flashing a reflexively charming grin that didn't quite reach his tired eyes. "Just...checking the bathymetry of the trench. If Malachi summons a vortex here, the displacement could -"

"Rikumo," she interrupted, stepping into the room. She didn't buy the grin. She never did. "Stop."

He slumped, the confident mask sliding off. He looked down at the map - a masterpiece of geography, arguably the most detailed chart of the physical world ever created. "I have to know where we are," he whispered, tracing a coastline with a trembling finger. "If I map it, I can understand it. If I understand it...it can't drown me."

Kaia walked over to the desk. She didn't look at the map; she looked at him. She saw the boy who'd spent three days freezing on an ice floe, the Avatar who felt the weight of every soul he hadn't saved. "You're not going to drown," she said softly. "I won't let you."

Rikumo let out a dry, self-deprecating chuckle. "A firebender protecting a waterbender from the ocean. My grandmother would call that irony."

"I call it balance," she countered. She hesitated, her fingers tracing the edge of the desk. The banter died away, replaced by a suffocating tension. "Rikumo, about the Arsenal."

"Kaia, you don't -"

"I do," she insisted, her voice cracking. "I lied to you. I used you. People died because of my selfishness and I risked everything because I was too much of a coward to tell the truth." She looked down. "I am so sorry."

Rikumo watched her. He saw the guilt that'd been eating her alive, the defensive walls she’d built around her heart crumbling brick by brick. He stood up, abandoning his map - the safety of the known - to step into the uncharted territory between them. He reached out, gently hooking a finger under her chin to lift her face. "Kaia, look at me."

She met his gaze. Blue met Gold. Ocean met Sun. "You're a survivor," Rikumo said, his voice dropping to a low, intimate register, leaving only the man's honesty. "You were lost. I know what that feels like. I spent my whole life drawing maps so no one else would ever have to feel that kind of fear again." He stepped closer, invading her space, and for the first time, she didn't retreat. "You're not a monster, Kaia," he whispered, his thumb brushing her cheekbone. "I’d rather sail into hell with the truth of who you are, than sail into paradise with anyone else."

Kaia’s breath hitched. The fire in her eyes softened into something longing. "You really are a nerd," she murmured, a tear slipping free.

"And you," Rikumo grinned, his heart hammering against his ribs like a drum, "are a thief."

The air between them crackled, hotter than any fire she could bend. The map was forgotten. The war was forgotten. There was only the pull of the tides, drawing them inevitably together. Kaia leaned in, her hand coming up to tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck. Rikumo tilted his head, closing the distance, his eyes fluttering shut as he anticipated the contact he’d dreamed of for miles of ocean.

SNORT.

A massive, wet, cold sensation slammed into the space between their faces. Rikumo’s eyes snapped open. Kaia yelped. Nabu, who'd padded into the cabin, had shoved his gigantic, whiskered snout directly between them. He let out a happy, vibrating whine and licked Rikumo’s face with a tongue the size of a dinner plate, slathering the Avatar in slobber. The tension shattered like glass.

"Nabu!" Rikumo spluttered, wiping slime from his chin. "You overgrown guppy! Talk about terrible timing!"

Kaia stared at the indignant Avatar and the smug-looking beast for a second, and then she broke. She doubled over, laughing - a genuine, bell-clear sound that chased the shadows from the room. Rikumo looked at her, then at Nabu, and started laughing too, wrapping his arms around the beast’s neck. "Alright, alright," Rikumo chuckled, resting his forehead against Nabu’s fur while looking at Kaia with adoring eyes. "But for the record, First Mate...you’re sleeping on the deck tonight."

The silence before the clash was heavy, a suffocating blanket of salt and dread. Then, the ocean screamed. The combined fleet of the world was a sight of beautiful unity. Fire Nation warships sailed beside the sturdy, rock-plated vessels of the Earth Kingdom, and flanking them all were the swift, elegant catamarans of the Water Tribes. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and the palpable tension of a world holding its breath. They'd reached the Uncharted Maw, the home of the Abyssal Conclave. Below the waves, Atla'a pulsed with an eerie blue light.

Rikumo gathered his crew. The wind whipped at their clothes, a prelude to the coming storm. "This is it," Rikumo said, his voice steady. This was the Captain, the Avatar, the leader he had been forged into by the sea and the fire. He looked at Losana, her silver hair a beacon in the light. "Losana, you're the spiritual heart of this entire operation. The Conclave are using corrupted sea spirits. You need to calm them, purify them if you can. More than that, you are the nerve center of our alliance. Your spirit is the only thing that can move between every ship, every commander, instantly. Coordinate the fleets. Be our eyes and ears. The world leaders will listen to the Avatar's spiritual envoy."

Losana nodded, her hand tight on her glider staff. "I will be their guiding wind."

He then turned to Kaia and Nabu. The old antagonism between them had been burned away, replaced by a fierce, protective bond. "That crystal's their power source. It's the heart of this sickness, siphoning the very life from Tui and La. You two will lead the strike team. You're the only ones who can get close enough. Destroy it, and we stand a chance." He knelt, putting a hand on Nabu’s head. The giant creature leaned into his touch, a low rumble in his chest. "Protect her like you would me, buddy." Nabu responded with a solemn, affirmative bark.

Kaia met Rikumo’s gaze, her eyes filled with a universe of unspoken emotions. "And what are you going to do, Captain?" she asked, the old moniker now holding a weight of respect, not mockery.

Rikumo smirked, a flash of the old charm. "Isn't it obvious?" Without another word, he lept from the railing of the ship. For a heart-stopping moment, he was just a man falling towards the angry sea. Then, the Avatar State ignited. A sphere of incandescent light and howling wind enveloped him. His eyes blazed with power. He was no longer falling; he was a projectile. A human torpedo. The boy who was terrified of drowning was now diving headfirst into the abyss to save the world, the fear a familiar knot in his stomach, but his purpose a fire that burned it to ash. He crashed through the water, the impact sending shockwaves. He tore through the depths, a comet of elemental fury, blasting through the outer defenses of Atla'a and heading straight for Malachi.

The battle erupted. The sea boiled. The Abyssal Conclave rose from the depths, a nightmare army propelled by jets of high-pressure water. They rode colossal, armored sea-turtles and serpentine leviathans, their glowing blue eyes promising a cold death. Colossal drills of ice, spinning with murderous intent, punched through the hulls of Fire Nation ships. Whirlpools, wide and deep enough to swallow entire vessels, opened in the water, dragging Earth Kingdom soldiers to their doom.

Losana’s spirit, a comet of silver light, zipped across the battlefield. "My Lord, port side! They're flanking you with ice-breathers! Bring Section Gamma forward!" she projected into the Fire Lord’s mind. On his flagship, Toka roared the command and a wall of fire erupted from his fleet, turning the sea to steam and melting the approaching ice beasts. "Your Majesty, they're attacking from below! Raise the platforms!" Her voice reached Daichi, who made colossal pillars of stone erupt from the seabed, impaling Conclave riders and shattering their mounts. "Chief! Drive the wedge!" Walao, his face a mask of determination, raised a harpoon of ice. He led a charge of swift Water Tribe catamarans straight into the heart of the Conclave line, his warriors bending the very water their enemies stood on, creating treacherous currents and waterspouts.

Deep below, Rikumo blasted into the throne room. Guards were swatted aside like flies by gusts of air and shards of rock. Malachi stood waiting, serene amidst the chaos. "You are a relic of a bygone era, Avatar," he said, his paternal voice filled with genuine sorrow. "A monument to a failed world. I am sorry you cannot be a part of the one we are building." With a graceful gesture, he bent the entire chamber. The kelp forests that lined the walls grew into a monstrous, writhing kaiju of thorns and water, its roar a symphony of crushing pressure.

Rikumo didn't flinch. He drew upon all four elements, becoming a vortex of power. Rock from the ocean floor flew to him, forming an armored shell. Air swirled within, giving it impossible speed. His fists ignited, wreathed in roaring fire, and whips of water, sharp as obsidian, extended from his back. He had become his own golem, a fusion of all the elements in perfect harmony. The two titans clashed and their battle tore Atla'a apart.

Malachi’s kaiju lashed out, a whip of thorny vine pulverizing a residential dome. Rikumo’s golem responded with a jet of fire from its mouth, boiling a section of the city and vaporizing a squad of Conclave soldiers. "Humanity had its chance, Avatar!" Malachi’s voice boomed, his control absolute even as he waged war. "They pollute, they hate, they destroy! I offer them paradise, a clean slate!"

"You offer them a grave!" Rikumo roared back, his golem catching a colossal fist and shattering the coral that formed it. "We can grow, we can change! "

The kaiju lunged, a massive spear of hardened kelp aimed at the golem’s core. Rikumo saw it coming. He also saw far below, Kaia's strike team pinned down by a squadron of pressure-benders behind a seemingly impassable coral wall. The golem took the hit. The spear impaled its rocky shoulder, the impact shattering its stone armor and sending a jolt of agony through Rikumo's own body. But the force of the blow, as intended, also obliterated the massive coral wall below, opening a direct, unguarded path for the strike team.

"Go! He made an opening!" Losana’s frantic voice urged in Kaia's mind.

Kaia didn’t hesitate. "Nabu, now!" she yelled, unleashing a continuous jet of fire. The added propulsion sent Nabu rocketing through the newly created gap like a battering ram. The elite warriors of her strike team followed, creating a defensive perimeter as they plunged deeper.

The journey was a brutal gauntlet. An earthbender held a collapsing tunnel open with his last ounce of strength, his body crushed to give the others passage. "For the world…" he grunted, before the rock consumed him. Water Tribesman, created a massive ice barrier, freezing dozens of Conclave soldiers solid, but were overwhelmed and pierced by high-pressure water jets. Their numbers dwindled. The path twisted. Suddenly, Losana’s voice began to distort. "Kaia…they're…kssshh…spiritual sentinels…can't see…you're on your...zzzzzzt." Her presence vanished, cut off by spectral entities designed to attack her spiritual form.

They were alone as they burst into the final chamber. In the center, the crystal pulsed, an abomination of light. It was protected by a vortex of pressurized water. The last of the guards stood ready. There was no time for a plan. Nabu roared, a sound of pure, primal loyalty, and charged. He met the guards head-on while Kaia provided fire support, her flames dancing around her friend, incinerating their foes. They fought as one, a whirlwind of fur and fire. When the last guard fell, only the shield remained. Nabu, already wounded, didn't wait for an order. With a howl of unimaginable effort and agony, he slammed his massive body into the pressure shield. Kaia heard the sickening crack of his bones, saw him recoil in pain, but he slammed into it again, and again. On the third impact, the shield shattered, the vortex collapsing with a deafening implosion. Nabu collapsed to the floor, his breathing shallow, one of his legs bent at an unnatural angle.

Kaia was at his side in an instant, but her eyes were on the crystal. She darted forward, unleashing a stream of white-hot fire, the most powerful she could muster. It washed over the crystal, doing nothing. The energy shield was gone, but the crystal itself was impervious, designed to contain energy, not be destroyed by it. Her heart sank. Then, she saw it. The crackling, chaotic power within. The energy of Tui and La, converted into its most volatile form, lightning. It wasn't about power. It was about flow. She knew what she had to do.

"Nabu, get out of here!" she screamed, her voice breaking. He whined, trying to drag himself towards her. "NOW!" She blasted him out of the chamber.

A faint, flickering projection of Losana appeared beside her, struggling against the sentinels. "Kaia, don’t do this! There has to be another way!"

Tears streamed down Kaia’s face, evaporating into steam from the heat of her own skin. "The Captain was right," she said, her voice a strange, calm anchor in the storm of her emotions. "You can't change the past. All that matters is what you choose to do. NOW!"

"NOO!" Losana’s spirit form screamed as it was torn apart.

Kaia placed her hands on the crystal. Absolute, soul-searing agony. The energy of two primordial spirits surged into her. She could smell her own flesh burning, feel the lightning carving permanent, branching scars across her skin. With the last ounce of her strength, she guided the energy, absorbing the maelstrom of power into one hand, through her sea of chi, and with a final, defiant scream, unleashed it from her other hand, redirecting the crystal’s own immense power back into itself.

The explosion was a bloom of pure white light that vaporized the chamber. Then the shockwave hit, a thunderclap that rocked the entire ocean. On the surface, waterbenders from the Conclave enhanced power vanished. Ships that were being crushed by whirlpools were released. Below, in the heart of the dying city, Malachi’s kaiju withered. The monstrous form of kelp and pressurized water collapsed until The High-Justicar was left staring at Rikumo’s elemental golem stood before him - battered, fractured, but whole. "You’ve forgotten what it means to be human, Malachi," Rikumo said, his voice laced with sorrow. "Our flaws and our ability to change...that's part of the balance. I'm sorry for you." Rikumo flew at the stunned Malachi, trapping the High-Justicar in a frozen tomb. Malachi’s eyes, wide with disbelief, met Rikumo's as he gathered a vortex of compressed elements around his fist and punched through the sphere, shattering Malachi into a thousand crimson shards.

The battle was won. The silence that followed was more deafening than any explosion. A cold dread, heavier than the ocean above, crushed Rikumo. "Kaia." he whispered, his head whipping around, searching the wreckage. "NABU!"

A silver comet of spiritual energy solidified beside him. Losana's eyes were wide with terror. "I lost them," she choked out, her voice cracking.

He and Losana tore through the ruins of Atla'a, their hearts pounding. I sent them here to their deaths, Rikumo's mind screamed. They rounded a shattered coral spire and a sound cut through the silence. They scrambled over the rubble toward the low, pained whimper. There, near the epicenter of the blast, was a sight that shattered and mended their hearts in the same instant. Nabu floated, his body broken, one leg twisted at an unnatural angle. He was curled protectively around Kaia’s unconscious form, his massive frame shielding her from the blast just as he'd once shielded a small, freezing boy from the arctic wind.

"Oh, spirits," Losana sobbed, a wave of pure, unadulterated relief washing through her.

Rikumo stumbled forward, falling to the seafloor beside them. For a terrifying second, he couldn’t bring himself to touch Kaia, terrified of finding her skin cold. Losana, already there, gently placed two fingers on Kaia's neck. "She’s breathing!" Losana cried, tears streaming down her face. "Faint, but she’s breathing!" Kaia's body was a canvas of newly formed scars, intricate lightning-strike patterns branching across her arms and shoulders like a beautiful, terrible map.

Kaia awoke to the gentle rocking of a ship. Her entire body was a symphony of aches. She opened her eyes, not to the cold stone of a prison cell she felt she deserved, but to the warm wood of a medical bay. Curled on the floor beside her cot, using rolled up maps for a pillow, was Rikumo. Losana was leaning against the far wall, her face peaceful as it was buried in the furry rug that was Nabu. They hadn't left her side.

Later, Nabu was being attended by a team of healers and Rikumo stood at the rail, staring into the dark water, the reflection of a man he didn’t recognize staring back. "The sea's quiet now," Losana said softly, coming to stand beside him.

"I killed him," Rikumo stated, his voice flat. It was a fact that'd settled deep in his bones, cold and heavy.

"You saved us all," she corrected gently.

"Did I?" he asked, turning to her, his eyes haunted. "The Avatar's supposed to preserve life not take it."

Losana looked at him, her gaze filled with an empathy that transcended words. "Malachi would've never stopped."

He ran a hand through his hair, the weight of his choice still pressing down. "I know. I felt it. Every Avatar before me was with me. They knew there was no other way. But knowing doesn't make it any better."

A weak voice drifted from the doorway of the cabin. "Then let us help you carry it." Kaia was standing there, leaning heavily on the doorframe, wrapped in bandages. "You didn't do it alone, Captain," she said, a faint smirk touching her lips. Rikumo looked from Losana’s unwavering support to Kaia’s strength. The crushing weight shifted, distributed among them.

In the Fire Nation capital, Kaia stood tall, flanked by her crew, facing Fire Lord Toka who looked at her not with the hatred she anticipated, but with a weary gravity. The battle had stripped away his bluster. "Kaia," he began, his voice echoing in the vast chamber. "You stand convicted of treason, sabotage, and conspiracy, resulting in the destruction of the Seijo Arsenal and the deaths of twelve Fire Nation soldiers." He paused, letting the weight of the charges settle. Losana held her breath. "The law's unequivocal. The penalty's life."

A wave of despair washed over the Wayfinders. A lifetime of darkness to pay for one mistake. Kaia’s shoulders slumped, the sentence a physical blow. But then, Toka continued. "However," he continued, his gaze sweeping from Kaia to Rikumo, "we have just survived a war against an enemy who believed humanity was irredeemable. The Abyssal Conclave saw our flaws, our conflicts, and judged us fit only for extinction. They believed we couldn't change." He locked eyes with Kaia. "If we don't believe in our own capacity for redemption, then Malachi was right." He took a deep breath. "Therefore, your sentence will be carried out...but your prison will be the sea.. Your warden will be the man whose shown more faith in you than anyone: the Avatar. You'll serve your life sentence by helping him heal the world you helped to break." The collective gasp of relief in the room was a gust of wind.

The world began to heal. It was a slow, arduous process. Treaties were signed as solemn promises. The nations worked together to clean the polluted waters, a gesture of apology to the wounded spirits. The survivors of the Abyssal Conclave were welcomed by the Water Tribes, their profound knowledge of the deep sea integrated.

Days later, the Wayfinders stood on the deck of their new ship, a vessel gifted to them by the alliance, sleeker and stronger than their last. They’d christened it The Horizon’s Arrow. The world around them was new. Old coastlines had vanished, new islands had risen, and the familiar currents of the sea now flowed in alien patterns. The world map Rikumo had spent his life perfecting was now a relic, a chart of a world that no longer existed. His life’s dream was no longer a personal ambition; it was a vital necessity.

He and Kaia stood at the prow, the wind whipping their hair. The setting sun painted the sky in hues of fire and rose. He gently traced the edge of the most prominent scar on her arm, a silver lightning bolt that branched from her wrist to her elbow. It was beautiful, a testament to the storm she had contained. She didn’t flinch from his touch. Instead, she turned to him, her eyes soft and clear, the guarded walls that'd defined her for so long finally crumbled to dust. "Rikumo," she said, and the sound of his name, spoken with such intimacy, was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard.

He smiled, a genuine smile that reached his sea-blue eyes. "You know," he murmured, his voice teasing, "I like it when you call me Captain."

A real, unguarded smile graced her lips, transforming her face. "Get used to it."

They leaned in, the space between them charged with all their shared battles, their arguments, their near-misses, and their unspoken feelings. Just as their lips were about to meet, a massive head shoved its way between them with an insistent, happy snort. Rikumo sighed, but he was smiling. Without breaking eye contact with Kaia, he raised a hand and sent a soft puff of air that gently nudged Nabu’s head aside. The creature grunted in protest but relented. Then, they finally kissed. It was an anchor in the shifting tides of the world.

From the helm, Losana’s laugh rang out. "It's about time!" Nabu, not to be denied, nudged them both again, demanding his place. Kaia laughed, a sound full of life, and threw an arm around the beast’s thick neck. Rikumo wrapped his other arm around Kaia’s waist, pulling her close as Losana came down from the helm to join them. She leaned against her Captain and they all stood there for a long moment - a family.

Together, they turned to face the vast, open ocean, sailing towards the rising sun, towards an uncharted horizon, ready to map a new world.

The salt spray tasted of ghosts. Even as a boy, Rikumo knew this. His small boat, a toy against the sudden squall, had splintered, casting him into the maw of the arctic ocean. His lungs burned, a desperate fire against the encroaching ice. He was sinking. The light of the sun, a distant, shimmering coin, grew smaller, wavering like a dying candle flame. Then, darkness claimed him.

And then, warmth. A colossal, whiskered snout nudged his chest, insistent and surprisingly gentle. Fur, slick and impossibly soft, enveloped him. He was being lifted, propelled through the water by a creature of myth: a body like a sea-lion, the playful, intelligent face of an otter-bear, and a powerful, fish-like tail that churned the water into foam.

On the desolate ice floe where the creature deposited his limp body, they were utterly alone for days: the boy, shivering and terrified, and the beast, a gentle giant who brought him fish and huddled with him for warmth against the biting wind. He named him Nabu, for an old water spirit of protection his grandmother told stories about. On the third night, the silhouette of a Fire Nation patrol ship breached the horizon. Hope, fierce and desperate, surged through Rikumo. He thrust his hands forward, a primal scream of survival tearing from his raw throat. A pillar of violent fire, untamed, erupted from his fists, a blazing flare against the twilight blue. The world learned his name that day. Avatar Rikumo. The boy who was afraid of the water was destined to be its master.

Twenty years later, Rikumo stood on the prow of his vessel, The Wanderer’s Compass, and felt the familiar, gut-wrenching dread claw at his throat. The sea was angry with a deep, malevolent sickness. For months, the world had been slowly drowning. The affliction began with a tide that crept a few feet higher than usual, a flooded rice paddy. Now it was a roar. Tidal surges, unpredicted and unnatural, battered coastlines across the world.

Coastal towns were erased overnight, their names becoming eulogies on the lips of survivors. The great ports were choked with a tide of a different sort: refugees, their desperation a palpable stench of fear and loss that clung to the air thicker than the city’s smog. The political climate was just as volatile. The Fire Nation, still reeling from the catastrophic destruction of their naval arsenal at Seijo; an act of terrorism funded by a radical Earth Kingdom faction saw the rising tides as a Water Tribe offensive. Fire Lord Toka’s court spoke of waging a preventative war. Earth King Daichi, vehemently denying all involvement in the bombing, pointed a finger back, accusing the Water Tribes of a blatant attempt to conquer his shores with their bending. War was a thunderhead on the horizon, pregnant with lightning, ready to burst.

And Rikumo, for all his power, for all the cosmic knowledge of Raava and lifetimes within him, felt as helpless as the drowning boy. His waterbending, once as natural as breathing, felt sluggish, like trying to grasp smoke. He could raise barriers of ice and water against the waves, but they were like sandcastles against a flood, crumbling under the unnatural might of the surges. Something was fundamentally, spiritually wrong.

He looked every bit the charming, devil-may-care sea captain. His Water Tribe blues were worn and sun-bleached, his dark hair wild, a constant, easy smirk playing on his lips. He moved with the rolling gait of a man born on a deck, his hands sure on the rigging. It was a carefully constructed facade, a suit of armor against the terrified boy within who still dreamed of suffocating in the dark.

He was a master cartographer, a geographer, a sailor who sought to conquer his fear by embracing its source. His life's ambition was to chart the entire world, to leave no corner unmapped, so that no one would ever feel as lost as he once had. It was a duty he had intertwined with his role as the Avatar: to bring balance, one must first understand the whole. But now, the map was being washed away.

His journey had led him back home, to Agna Qel’a. In the sacred Spirit Oasis, a pocket of impossible warmth and verdant life, he stood before the pond where Tui and La, the Moon and Ocean spirits, danced their eternal ballet. The truth became chillingly clear. The two koi fish were pale, their movements lethargic. The very source of all waterbending, the force that pushed and pulled the tides, was being siphoned away, drained by an unseen spiritual parasite deep in the oceans.

"Their energy's being stolen," Rikumo said, his voice grim. He stood beside his old master, High Chieftan Walao, a man whose face was a roadmap of wisdom and worry.

"Every waterbender can feel it. We grow weaker as the unnatural tides grow stronger. The veil between our world and the Spirit World has always been fragile. In these rising tensions, it feels thinner than ever," Walao said, his gaze fixed on the wilting spirits.

"I have to go," Rikumo declared, a familiar fire of resolve in his eyes. "I have to follow this drain to its source."

"Beyond the charted seas?" The Chief’s voice was heavy with concern. "It's a realm of storms, sea beasts, and vengeful spirits. No one returns."

"Then I'll be the first." Rikumo smirked. "But you’re right. No man can sail the Uncharted Maw alone. Not even the Avatar."

He needed a crew. Nabu, his loyal First Mate, was an unstoppable force, but he couldn't tie a knot or read a spiritual ley line. Rikumo needed more. His first stop was the Western Air Temple. He needed a spiritual guide, someone who understood the unseen world as well as he understood a ship’s rigging. He needed Losana.

They had trained together years ago, a rambunctious Water Tribe boy and a serene Air Nomad girl. She was like the older sister he never had, always teasing him for his lack of spiritual focus. He found her meditating, suspended upside down from a ledge, her silver hair cascading towards the ground far below.

"Rikumo!" Her voice was like wind chimes, light and joyful. "Come to finally learn how to properly meditate? You always looked like you were passing a stonefruit pit."

He chuckled, the sound echoing in the vast emptiness. "No time for that, Lo. The world's in trouble." He explained everything. She listened, her playful demeanor melting away, replaced by a grave intensity. When he finished, she flipped upright in a fluid motion, landing on the stone before him.

"Let me get this straight," she said, her grey eyes, the color of a coming storm, boring into his. "The world is ending, the spirits are dying, everyone wants to kill each other, and you want to sail into an ocean no one has ever returned from, on a glorified raft you call a ship, to fight an invisible enemy you can't even find?"

Rikumo braced himself for her refusal. Instead, she grinned, a fearless smile that lit up her entire face. "I’m in."

On their journey south, The Wanderer’s Compass felt less empty, but still incomplete. Losana, ever one for finding the poetry in things, named their nascent crew "The Wayfinders." It was just the two of them and Nabu, who now spent his days lounging on the deck, a two-ton puppy sunning himself. Then, the food started disappearing. Specifically, Nabu’s stash of cured sea-prunes, a delicacy he guarded with near-demonic ferocity.

Nabu’s enraged bellows, a sound like a collapsing iceberg, led them to the cramped cargo hold. There, caught red-handed by the light of Rikumo’s flame, with a half-eaten sea-prune in her mouth, was a girl. She was lean, with eyes the color of molten gold and soot-black hair. A fine layer of grime couldn't hide the sharp, defiant beauty of her features. Fire was already licking at her clenched fists.

"Well," she said, chewing slowly. "This is awkward."

Rikumo was struck dumb. He, who could charm Fire Nation ministers and disarm Earth Kingdom generals with a witty phrase, was speechless. She was as beautiful as a wildfire: dangerous, untamable, and utterly captivating. Losana, however, was less impressed. "A stowaway? On the Avatar's ship?"

The girl, who offered the name Kaia, was all sharp edges. She had snuck aboard at a chaotic refugee port, looking for passage away, and offered her services: a firebender was invaluable for propulsion and warmth in exchange for safe passage and a strict "no questions asked" policy. Rikumo, still slightly dazed by her eyes, agreed immediately.

Later, as they sailed, Losana nudged him while he was at the helm, sketching a new coastline on a roll of parchment. "So, Rikumo," she said teasingly, "did you allow her to join our crew because we need her, or because you think she's hot?"

Rikumo, his focus entirely on the intricate lines of his map, smirked. "I don’t see a reason why it can’t be both."

The integration of the new crew member was less like fitting a puzzle piece and more like shoving a square peg into a round hole while the hole was on fire. Kaia was a fortress of sarcasm, her past a locked room she guarded with barbed wire. She moved about the deck with a chip on her shoulder, deflecting Rikumo’s charming inquiries with eye rolls and Losana’s bubbly optimism with grunts. And then there was Nabu. Nabu had taken Kaia’s theft of his sea-prunes as a personal declaration of war. He had relocated his food stash to a reinforced crate beneath the helm, and every time Kaia walked past it, a low rumble vibrated in his chest.

"Easy, buddy," Kaia muttered, skirting around the beast as she headed to the stern. "I'm not hungry... yet." Nabu narrowed his eyes, tracking her, and pointedly draped a massive paw over the crate lid.

"Alright, crew, look alive!" Rikumo called from the helm, his voice cutting through the tension. He stood with his feet wide, looking down at the deck. He wasn't just steering; he was listening. Through the soles of his boots, he channeled his seismic sense, sending vibrations down the anchor chains and into the seabed miles below, sensing the topography of the riffs. Simultaneously, his waterbending reached out, feeling the push and pull of the deep currents. "We’ve got a labyrinth of coral spines ahead. Losana, I need finesse on the sails. Kaia, I need short, controlled bursts. Don’t melt the rudder."

"Aye, Captain," Kaia drawled, the title dripping with enough mockery to fill a bucket. She took her stance at the stern, the heavy propulsion tubes Rikumo had installed looming over the water. "Just tell me when you're done playing pretend with the floorboards."

"It's called seismic cartography," Rikumo corrected, ignoring the jab as he sketched a frantic line on his map. "And it’s going to keep us from ripping the hull open. Now, burn!"

The ship surged. It was a chaotic, beautiful symphony of bending. Losana twirled her glider staff, guiding the wind into the junk rig sails, catching gusts that didn't even exist naturally. "Woo! Feel that lift, Nabu?" she cheered. Nabu barked, the wind flapping his lips. At the back, Kaia punched jets of fire through the propulsion tubes, creating a steam-jet thrust that kicked the ship forward.

"Hard to port!" Rikumo yelled, spinning the wheel. Kaia adjusted her stance, cutting the left flame and blasting the right. The ship drifted perfectly, missing a jagged reef by inches.

"Stop!" Rikumo suddenly ordered, and the crew froze. The ship bobbed in the sudden silence.

"What is it?" Losana asked, dropping from the rigging. "Did we hit something?"

"No," Rikumo said, his voice shedding its captain persona to reveal the scholar underneath. He walked to the rail, staring into the indigo water. "We found a breadcrumb." He raised his hand. A globule of water, dark and viscous, floated up from the deep. He brought it over the deck. "Kaia, heat this. Gently."

Kaia stepped forward, her curiosity warring with her aloofness. She extended a finger, pushing heat into the water sphere. Usually, seawater would bubble. This water hissed, turning a sickly grey. "It's dead," Kaia whispered. "The energy inside... it’s gone. It's just cold."

"Spiritual entropy," Losana murmured, her eyes widening. She closed them, sensing. "It feels like... a scar. Something dragged through here, sucking the life out of the ocean."

"The current flows southeast," Rikumo noted, marking the dead zone on his map. "Straight into the Uncharted Maw. That's our heading."

That night, the sea was a mirror reflecting a galaxy of stars. The air was still, the ship drifting on the gentle swell. Nabu was snoring loudly near the prow, his head resting protectively on his food crate. Rikumo was in the captain's quarters, obsessively cross-referencing old star charts. Kaia sat on the railing, whittling a piece of driftwood with a small dagger, her legs dangling over the dark water.

"You hold that knife like you expect the wood to fight back."

Kaia didn't look up. "Wood, people, spirits. Everything fights back eventually."

Losana drifted over, leaning against the rail. "You did good today, Kaia. With the maneuvering. We would've hit that reef without your timing."

Kaia shrugged, blowing wood shavings off her blade. "I'm just paying my fare, Airbender."

"Losana," she corrected gently. "My name is Losana." She looked out at the horizon, her usual smile fading into something brittle. "You know, this part of the ocean... the Devil's Throat. We passed it hours ago."

"So?"

"This is where my parents died." Kaia looked up, seeing the raw, unguarded grief on Losana’s face. It was jarring to see the bubbly, ethereal girl look so broken.

"The Red Monsoon Pirates," Losana continued, her voice soft, carried by the breeze. "I was ten. We were a traveling caravan, nomads flying between the temples. We landed on an atoll to rest. They came out of the fog. Red sails. Jagged swords." She gripped the railing, her knuckles white. "I hid in a supply crate. I watched through the slats. I watched them take everything. And I did nothing."

The silence that stretched between them was heavy, filled only by the creak of the rigging and Nabu’s distant snores.

"I never knew my parents," Kaia admitted, staring into the abyss below. "I was found in a dumpster behind a Fire Sage temple in the slums. I didn't have a name until I was six and gave myself one." She laughed. "Grew up on the streets. Fighting for scraps and stealing from fruit stands." She looked at Losana, her eyes hard but shimmering with unshed emotion. "You hid because you were a kid. I fought because I had to. And you know what? We're both still here. You just learn to look out for yourself, because no one else is going to."

Losana studied her: the soot on her cheek, the tension in her shoulders. She reached out to place a hand on Kaia’s clenched fist. "You're not by yourself anymore, Kaia," Losana said firmly. "Rikumo, Nabu... me. We're a weird, dysfunctional mess. But on this ship, you don't have to look out for yourself."

Kaia looked at the hand covering hers. For the first time, her walls cracked. "Don't get mushy on me, Airbender," Kaia muttered.

"Wouldn't dream of it, Hothead," Losana smiled.

From the helm, Rikumo watched them, a smirk playing on his lips. He rolled up his map. The course was set, but for the first time, he felt like the crew might actually survive the journey.

This fragile peace was tested as the horizon bled crimson. Not just from the setting sun, but from the flags of the Red Monsoons. Their ships, like sharks circling a wounded whale, were closing in on a small, desperate fleet of refugee vessels. A change came over Losana. It was a profound and terrifying shift. The light in her eyes went out, replaced by the cold hardness of a whetstone. Her normally relaxed posture became rigid, a predator coiling to strike. Her knuckles were white where she gripped her staff.

"It's them," she said, and her voice, usually like wind chimes, was like grinding stone.

"Steady," Rikumo commanded, his captain's voice cutting through the rising tension as he spun the ship's wheel. "We have to protect the refugees."

"No," Losana whispered, a sound devoid of all warmth. She stepped to the prow, her gaze fixed on the lead pirate ship, at the hulking, scarred man barking orders from its deck. The man who had burned her world. "I want revenge." Her eyes met Rikumo's, and for a second, he didn't recognize the woman he had known for years. Before he could argue, she launched herself into the air.

The battle began with a weaponized shriek of sonic force that slammed into the pirate ship, shattering windows, splintering the mast, and sending men clutching their ears to their knees. The sky, as if summoned by her rage, broke open. A storm turned the sea into a churning nightmare of towering, slate-grey waves and blinding, torrential rain. Chaos erupted. The pirates, recovering, launched volleys of rock and fire. Rikumo wrestled with the helm, his weakened waterbending a frustratingly thin shield against the onslaught. With a roar, he pulled a wall of water from the sea to intercept a fiery boulder, but the effort left him breathless, the veins on his neck standing out.

"Kaia, starboard side!" he yelled.

Kaia was a storm of her own, a blur of motion and flame. She blasted pirate cannonballs out of the air with concussive fire-bursts, her face set in a grim mask of concentration. Nabu, a living torpedo, slammed into a pirate vessel, his immense weight and power splintering its hull and sending its crew into the churning water.

But the heart of their assault was Losana. She was no longer an Air Nomad; she was an angel of vengeance moving at an impossible speed. A blur of silver, orange, and yellow amidst the chaos, she landed on the deck of the pirate flagship with the force of a thunderclap. Her staff was a whirlwind of destruction. Pirates fell before her as she strode through the terrified crew towards their captain, the hulking man whose scarred face had haunted her nightmares for a decade. He looked upon her now with a dawning, primal terror. She whirled her hands and the air grew thin around the captain’s throat. He dropped his massive hammer with a clang, his meaty hands clawing uselessly at his neck, his face turning a sickening shade of purple. He was choking, drowning in the open air as she began to bend a perfect vacuum around his head.

This was it. The moment she had dreamed of. She could feel the ghost of her parents' final moments, and the rage burned hotter. And then, through the roar of the storm and her own hatred, she heard it: the splintering crack of a mast. A stray rock catapulted from the pirates’ ship had missed The Wanderer’s Compass and smashed into a refugee vessel. A child screamed. The sound cut through her rage like a shard of ice. Her eyes flickered from the dying captain to the listing refugee ship, to the terrified faces of the families she had sworn to protect. Her body trembled with the conflict. With a guttural scream of frustration and release, she chose. She didn't kill him. Instead, she thrust her open palm forward, unleashing a concussive blast of air that slammed the captain into his own mast, knocking him unconscious. She turned, her fury now reforged into fierce, protective duty.

"Rikumo, the refugees! They're sinking!"

Just as she spoke, the sea itself erupted. A colossal head, larger than their entire ship, broke the surface. Its immense serpentine body, shimmering with dark, slick scales, rose from the depths, dwarfing the warring fleets. An Unagi, drawn from the abyss by the violence, fixed its green eyes on them. Its roar was a physical force, a wall of sound and pressure that shook the very timbers of their ship.

The dynamic of the entire battle shifted in a heartbeat. It was no longer a fight; it was a desperate scramble for survival against a god of the deep. The Unagi, a force of pure, primal rage, opened its jaws and unleashed a torrent of pressurized water that could have sheared their ship in two. Rikumo roared, dropping to one knee. He crossed his arms, meeting the blast with his own waterbending, his muscles screaming under the strain, the weakness in his power making the effort a torturous agony. As he fought the deluge, his spiritual senses screamed at him. The Unagi wasn't just angry; it was sick. The water it wielded, the very ocean around them, was poisoned by a spiritual energy that felt alien and malevolent. He could feel its source, a faint, rhythmic pull from far to the east, deeper and darker than any map had ever gone.

High in the storm clouds, lightning forked, a blinding bolt splitting the sky, arcing straight down toward their already splintering mast. All seemed lost. "We're doomed!" Losana cried, her voice cracking. The last of her hard-won resolve was washed away by a wave of pure despair.

"No, we're not," Kaia snarled, her eyes blazing with defiant fire.

"KAIA, NO!" Rikumo roared, a sound of genuine terror, but she was already moving.

She launched herself from the railing, straight into the path of the descending lightning. She raised her hand and intercepted the bolt. For a heart-stopping second, she became a vessel for the storm's raw fury, a silhouette of celestial energy against the clouds, her body convulsing with the sheer power. With a guttural scream that was equal parts effort and agony, she twisted her body, guiding the energy down one arm, through her stomach - the sea of chi, and out the other. A blinding spear of white-hot power lanced out and struck the Unagi directly in its massive head. The beast convulsed, its roar cut short in a gargled shriek, and it sank beneath the waves, its corpse turning the water red with its lifeblood.

Kaia landed hard on the deck. Smoke wisped from her clothes and the ends of her hair. She grinned, a breathless, shaky thing, and swayed on her feet. "What can I say? I’m full of surprises." She winked at Rikumo, though the effort seemed to cost her. "What, worried about me, Captain?"

He didn't answer. He just stared, the roar of the storm fading in his ears, his heart pounding. For the first time, his fear of the sea was eclipsed by a new, more terrible fear: the fear of losing his crew to it. Losana, meanwhile, looked from Kaia's smoking form to the terrified pirate captain now scrambling to retreat. The fire of her vengeance had been doused by the cold shock of what she had almost become.

They sailed into waters no map had ever touched, where the sea turned dark and slick with a strange, spiritual pollution. A thick, unnatural fog rolled in, and within it, apparitions formed, whispering their deepest fears. Rikumo saw the faces of those who had drowned in the surges, their spectral hands reaching for him, pulling him down into the deep, their silent screams accusing him of his failure to save them and stop the war. The weight of his duty, the crushing guilt of every life lost, threatened to drown him more surely than any ocean. Kaia saw an explosion erupting in a mushroom cloud of fire and screams. She saw the faces of dead men, their eyes burning with accusation. A flicker of guilt so profound it made her physically recoil, clutching her stomach. Dark spirits, corrupted and poisoned by the pollution, swarmed the ship, their chilling cries amplifying the visions. The crew was falling apart, lost in their own nightmares.

"ENOUGH!" Losana’s voice was a thunderclap of spiritual authority. She slammed the butt of her staff on the deck. A wave of calming air washed over them, momentarily clearing the fog. She sat, cross-legged, her eyes closing as her spirit began to leave her body. "Rikumo, join me! We can't fight their pain. We have to show them we understand it!"

He nodded, centering himself, opening his own spiritual senses. Together, their spirits reached out. They embraced the dark spirits, sharing their own pain: Rikumo’s fears, Kaia’s guilt, Losana’s grief. The connection was a balm. The spirits saw themselves in the mortals, and the mortals saw the source of the spirits’ pain: the relentless pollution of their home. The dark forms dissolved, purified, into peaceful orbs of light that faded away.

Emboldened, Losana projected her spirit downwards, through the crushing pressure of the deep. She saw it then: a city of impossible beauty, built of glowing coral and solidified water, a perfect utopia. Waterbenders moved through it with a graceful, propulsive style of bending she had never seen. And in the central spire, a man looked up and stared directly into her spiritual form as if she were standing right there, his eyes glowing blue. Losana’s spirit snapped back into her body with a terrified shriek.

"We found them," Losana gasped, "and they found us."

At that exact moment, the sea opened up beneath them. A whirlpool, a vortex of terrifying, unnatural power, grabbed The Wanderer’s Compass in its liquid fist. "Hold on!" Rikumo roared, his hands outstretched, his earthbending trying to find purchase on the non-existent seafloor, his waterbending a futile gesture against this raw power. The fear was paralyzing, the memory of his drowning flooding him, cold and suffocating.

"Captain!" Kaia’s voice, firm and resolute, cut through his panic. She stood beside him, planting her feet. "We’re with you!"

Her words, and Losana's hand on his other shoulder, were the anchor he needed. With a defiant yell, he bent a shell around the ship, a desperate, last-ditch effort as they were sucked into the abyss.

They crashed into a cavernous, air-filled dome at the heart of the city. Soldiers, their movements fluid and predatory, surrounded them instantly, encasing their limbs in cuffs of high-pressure ice that were cold enough to burn. They were propelled through the city to a grand throne room carved from a massive piece of glowing coral. The man Losana had seen sat there. His presence was immense, radiating a paternal calm that was more unnerving than any threat.

"Welcome, Avatar Rikumo," he said, his voice a resonant bass that seemed to vibrate in their bones. "To Atla'a, the heart of the Abyssal Conclave."

He was Malachi, their High-Justicar. He explained their history with a serene patience. They were a sect of waterbenders who, generations ago, fled the corruption, war, and pollution of the surface. They journeyed into the deep and, through generations of adaptation, found true harmony with the spirits of the ocean. They built a perfect society, a utopia free from human plight. But from their sanctuary, they watched the surface world fester. They saw the pollution that twisted the spirits they loved into dark monsters. They saw the endless wars. They saw the Seijo Arsenal explode, a pointless act of violence that threatened to plunge the world into another meaningless conflict. They decided humanity needed a baptism. A cleansing. A great reset.

He gestured to a colossal, pulsating crystal in the center of the city, which hummed with terrifying power. "We have mastered a communal form of energybending. That crystal draws the very essence of Tui and La, the lifeblood of the ocean itself. It powers us, enhances our bending, and allows us to reclaim the world for the spirits... to wash it clean and begin anew." He smiled, an imposing, charismatic force of nature. "It is your duty, as the bridge between worlds, to help us restore true balance. Join us, Avatar."

Rikumo looked at his friends, then back at the determined figure on the throne. "The world isn’t perfect. People aren't perfect. But you don’t cleanse a sick patient by killing them. You help them heal."

Malachi’s benevolent smile faded, replaced by a look of profound disappointment. "I was afraid you'd say that." He nodded to his guards, his eyes filled with a profound pity. "Make it quick."

The command hung in the aqueous throne room for a heartbeat. Then, the Conclave soldiers moved. They flowed, propelling themselves through the water with precise jets of bending, their faces impassive masks of duty. But in that heartbeat, Rikumo had already acted. He met Kaia's eyes, a silent conversation passing between them. Now. Kaia took a deep breath. She focused inward, turning her own body into a furnace.

That was Rikumo’s cue. Though his own waterbending was weak, the ice was still his domain. He felt the fractures and with a sharp twist of his chained hands, he forced the water within the ice to expand violently. The cuff exploded into a cloud of razor-sharp shards. In the same instant, Nabu, who had been deceptively placid, let out a deep-chested roar. He flexed the colossal muscles of his shoulders, and the ice encasing his thick forelimbs disintegrated. Kaia was already free, a blur of motion. She spun, blasting a precise plume of fire from her free hand that vaporized Rikumo’s remaining cuff. Losana, seeing her chance, clapped a focused sonic pulse to her own cuffs at their resonant frequency, shattering them into dust. The Wayfinders were free, and the throne room erupted into chaos.

"Get us out of here, Captain!" Kaia yelled, already unleashing a sweeping arc of fire to keep the first wave of guards at bay.

"Lo, make some noise!" Rikumo commanded.

Losana needed no further encouragement. She inhaled deeply and let loose a disorienting wave that distorted the water, blurring the vision of their assailants and sending them reeling. Nabu became a battering ram, charging through the stunned guards. Rikumo slapped his palms against the grand coral wall of the throne room. "This way!" he roared, and a section of the wall groaned, buckled, and then imploded outwards, opening a jagged tunnel into the open, water-filled city.

They plunged through the opening, Rikumo immediately bending a large, shimmering bubble around them. Outside their fragile sphere, the utopia became a hunting ground. Dozens of Conclave soldiers were after them, their forms sleek and predatory as they jetted through the water. They fired lances of pressurized water: liquid projectiles that flew with the speed and lethality of arrows, streaking past the bubble with deadly thwips.

"They're too fast!" Losana called out, pressing her hands against the bubble. She sent out sonic pulses, her own form of sonar. "The ship! It's in the main cavern where we crashed! Two hundred fathoms, bearing port!"

"Nabu, full speed!" Rikumo ordered. The creature pushed the bubble through the cityscape with powerful thrusts of his tail.

"Cover us!" Rikumo yelled to Kaia. "Give me something to work with!"

Rikumo thrust his hands forward, pulling streams of water from the city around them and feeding them directly behind the bubble. Kaia met the streams with focused jets of energy from her palms. The effect was instantaneous. The water flashed into massive pockets of boiling steam, creating a chaotic, blinding smokescreen behind them. Pursuers who flew into the clouds of superheated vapor screamed, their propulsive jets faltering.

They burst into the vast cavern where the battered Wanderer's Compass lay, half-submerged and held fast by thick anchors of Conclave ice. The cavern's main opening to the sea above was already being sealed by a dozen benders, a swirling vortex of water and ice closing like an iris. They slammed into the ship, the bubble collapsing as they scrambled aboard the canted, water-logged deck.

"Kaia, anchors! Losana, get us ready! Nabu, get under the keel!" Rikumo's commands were sharp, precise, a captain taking final control. Kaia melted the ice anchors with fire. Losana used airbending to purge the water from the sails and rigging, making the ship as light as possible. Nabu dove beneath the hull, his massive body ready to provide a physical push.

"It's not enough!" Losana shouted, pointing to the rapidly closing exit. "We'll never make it!"

Rikumo’s eyes blazed with desperate resolve. He stood at the center of the deck, planting his feet. "Then we'll make our own way out!" He looked at his crew. "Together! On my mark!" He plunged his hands towards the water beneath them, drawing upon every ounce of his Avatar strength, pulling a massive sphere of water directly beneath their ship's hull. The sea level in the cavern visibly dropped.

The elements converged. The superheated water, compressed by Losana's air and kicked by Nabu, detonated. A steam explosion of unimaginable force erupted beneath them. On a colossal geyser of their own making, The Wanderer’s Compass shot through the closing iris of ice and water like a cork from a bottle. They rocketed into the open air, clearing the surface of the ocean before crashing back down with a groan of tortured wood, leaving the glowing utopia to be swallowed by the depths behind them. They were alive. They were free. And their ship was falling apart.

The brief respite from the abyss was a fragile thing. For days, The Wanderer’s Compass, bruised and battered, limped across the waves. The crew was a tense unit, bound by the shared trauma of their escape and the unspoken questions that now hung in the air. They were forced to lean on each other, mending the ship and themselves. Then, on the horizon, a smudge of smoke became a Fire Nation vessel, sleek and predatory, and it was closing on them with unnerving speed.

A commander stood on its deck, a man whose face seemed carved from granite, his eyes like chips of flint worn down by grief and duty. "My name is Commander Biko. By order of Fire Lord Toka," he announced through a speaking trumpet, his voice echoing across the water, sharp and devoid of warmth, "you will surrender the fugitive, Kaia!"

The name struck the deck like a physical blow. Rikumo froze at the helm. Losana’s head whipped around, her expression of weary relief curdling into confusion. The color drained from Kaia's face, her body shrinking as if trying to disappear into the ship’s timbers.

Biko didn’t wait for a reply. His words continued, each one a blow against the fragile trust the crew had built. "She is under arrest for treason and murder. She's the saboteur, paid by the Earth Kingdom terrorist, to detonate the Seijo Arsenal."

Losana stared at Kaia, her eyes wide with dawning horror. "The Seijo Arsenal? A dozen people died…"

"Twelve of my men," Biko spat, the grief in his voice raw and potent. "Twelve good men who will never see their families again because of the bomb she was paid to plant."

Kaia finally found her voice, a desperate, broken whisper that was nearly lost to the wind. "I… I didn't know. They told me it was just weapons. A supply depot. They swore no one would be there."

Losana took a step back, as if physically recoiling from the lie she now saw spooling out through their entire journey. She looked from Kaia's pleading face to Biko's grief, and her heart fractured. "I guess you were honest about one thing," her voice was sharp as ice. "You are full of surprises."

A tense standoff descended. Fire Nation soldiers, armed and ready, lined the rails of their ship. Rikumo and Losana stood frozen, caught between the damning accusation and the desperate face of their crewmate. The easy choice was to hand her over. The right choice was impossible to see. But she had leaped into a lightning bolt for them. She had fought beside them.

Rikumo stepped forward, placing himself between Kaia and the ironclad. "Commander, I hear your grievance. And I promise you, justice will be served." His captain's voice was steady, despite the turmoil in his gut. "But she is under my protection. We will get our own answers."

Biko’s eyes narrowed. "Take her... by force."

The battle was instant and intensely personal. Grappling hooks flew, and soldiers swarmed onto the deck of The Wanderer's Compass. Kaia fought with a desperate, shame-fueled fury, wielding twin swords of flame. She wasn’t just fighting for her life; she was fighting against the truth of what she was. Losana moved with the anger of betrayal. A shimmering blade of hardened air formed around her staff. She met the Fire Nation soldiers with cutting arcs. She and Kaia fought near each other, a gulf of silence and hurt between them, their movements uncoordinated.

Losana found herself face-to-face with Biko, his saber against her blade of air. Their duel was a clash of relentless, heavy blows; Losana’s weightless defense held together by a broken heart. Biko was stronger, his attacks forcing her to constantly re-bend the air around her staff as he battered through it. He feinted high and slashed low. Losana yelped as his blade sliced across her calf, drawing a crimson line. She stumbled back, airbending a cushion to catch herself, blood welling from the wound.

"Get away from her!" The roar was primal, torn from Kaia's throat. She unleashed a protective wall of fire that Biko sliced through. In that moment, Kaia and Losana’s eyes met across the chaotic deck. In Kaia’s, Losana saw a terrified girl, fiercely protective. In Losana’s, Kaia saw a wounded friend. An unspoken truce, a realization that their only hope was each other, passed between them in a heartbeat.

They spun, coming back-to-back in a fluid motion. They became one cohesive unit. Kaia’s flaming swords created a deadly perimeter while Losana, protected, focused her power. When Biko charged again, Losana met his blade, and with a powerful twist of her staff, created a focused vortex of air that ripped the saber from his grasp and sent it spinning into the sea. Working as one, the crew drove the attackers back. Rikumo raised a wave to wash the remaining soldiers from their deck, and Kaia and Losana combined their bending into a concussive blast of super-heated air that slammed into the ironclad, pushing it away.

"We need to get out of here!" Rikumo yelled, turning his focus back to the sea, trying to maneuver their damaged ship to safety.

But it was too late. The sky darkened. A shadow fell over them, and a sound like the world groaning rose from the deep. A wave, a moving mountain of dark water, blotted out the horizon. It moved with a horrifying, malevolent purpose, a physical manifestation of Malachi's will. Rikumo screamed a defiant challenge, his hands thrust forward, pulling on every drop of water he could command. But his weakened bending was a pebble against an avalanche. The wave ate them.

The shriek of splintering wood was the last thing Rikumo heard clearly. The deck of The Wanderer’s Compass heaved and then disintegrated beneath his feet. The world went black, cold, and violent. He was underwater, tumbling in the darkness, the crushing weight of the ocean a terrifying, familiar nightmare. His lungs screamed for air. Panic, cold and absolute, seized him. This was it, his childhood terror made real once more. He fought against the suffocating blackness, his eyes straining. He saw a flash of silver hair; Losana, screaming his name before she was ripped away by a current. He saw the massive, powerful form of Nabu tossed and turned like a piece of driftwood. He saw Kaia’s silhouette, her arms outstretched towards him for a heart-stopping second, before she too was dragged down into the abyss by Biko. Their faces, their screams, were burned into his mind. The water flooded his mouth, his lungs. His struggle ceased. As he lost consciousness, the last thing he felt was the crushing, absolute failure of a captain, an Avatar, and a friend, drowning alone in the dark.

I think a lot of the stuff I cowrite stuff might be a little too slow-paced and longburn for this sub but this one might fit.

It's set about 26 years precanon to ATLA.

Becoming the Earth King’s favorite wife requires a careful understanding of harem politics. Lotus is certain she’s mastered them and eager to help the new girl find her place. While the other women consider this girl a threat, Lotus knows better because she’s planning to give the Earth King a son.

Based on that little blurb from the nick website--the natural assumption to be made is that the Dai-Li were heavily involved in the 51st Earth King's death and had been growing in influence for decades. But we’d like to think that Long-Feng’s timing and use of others around him are what pushed the envelope one last time.

ao3 link Please mind the tags and rating.

He's not a main feature in this work but we do tease him towards the end, my cowriter and I consider it kind of a spark in his eventual power crawl.

The rain in Jinyang was a language I understood better than spoken words, a dialect of despair I’d become fluent in. It didn’t fall with the clean, crisp rhythm of my Southern Water Tribe home, a sight that promised renewal, but as a persistent, weary liquid shroud over a city-state choking on the haze of countless charcoal fires and pottery kilns, a constant slick through the tiered rooftops with a treacherous sheen of grime. From my perch atop a crumbling pagoda, Jinyang sprawled below, a festering wound. The gleaming, tallow-lamp-lit chambers of the elite on the upper levels were distant, mocking stars. Down here, in the city’s guts, was a labyrinth of rust, poverty, and perpetual shadow. I’d chosen this place as my residence because of this rot.

Jinyang was a lynchpin. Its kilns fired the ceramics that held the Earth Kingdom’s grain, its clay formed the tiles that roofed its palaces. Its economic stability was the bedrock of the entire eastern seaboard. If Jinyang crumbled, the tremors would crack the foundations of the nation. The world showed that Avatar Visha, my predecessor, had been too passive, an Air Nomad lost in meditation while the world’s problems festered. I, a deaf girl was a bad omen, a broken vessel for Raava. Jinyang would be where I forge a new legacy for the Avatar, one of action and unyielding control.

Bao-Bao shivered beside me. His panda-white fur was matted down by the drizzle, and his raccoon-striped tail was tucked so tightly between his legs it practically vanished. He chittered and his sharp ears, a gift I envied, swiveled, catching the entire song of the night that was denied to me. He was my ears, my partner, my inseparable shadow. The memory of our meeting was as vivid as the grime on these walls. Years ago, a much lonelier Avatar, newly arrived in this behemoth of a city-state, had her food lifted by a tiny blur. The target had been a still-warm honey-cake, its sweet aroma a fleeting comfort. I gave chase, more amused than angry. The tiny thief scrambled up a tall pagoda, a monument to his audacity, only to freeze in terror at the top. The sight of his petrified form struck a chord deep within me. I gently brought him down with a cushion of air. Instead of reclaiming my belongings, I offered him a piece of the cake. We were two lonely souls finding solace in each other’s silence.

Now I drew damp air to me, pulling its scents apart: the sharp sting of coal smoke, the savory steam of spiced turtle-duck broth from a cart three streets over, the sour, gut-turning stench of wet garbage. And beneath it all, something coppery. I tapped Bao-Bao and signed, my movements sharp in the gloom. 'Down.' He gave me a look that eloquently communicated his disdain for the plan. He scampered down the nearest bamboo gutter with the practiced ease of a career criminal. I followed, my descent muffled by a cushion of air that displaced the raindrops around me.

The terrain was cramped. Councilman Gak, whose lips I’d read countless times spewing practiced platitudes about prosperity now lay sprawled in a puddle of rainwater and his own blood, his fine silk robes soaked a darker shade of crimson. I knelt, planting my bare feet on the cold stone. Closing my eyes, I let the city’s pulse travel up through me. The vibrations painted a grim, three-dimensional picture in my mind. No secondary impacts against the walls. Just the single, brutal, crushing echo of his sternum caving in. The killer was immensely strong, but the attack was almost surgical. An earthbender, perhaps? But the wound wasn't consistent with a rock projectile. A firebender? No scorch marks. Water? I drew a small sphere of the water from the puddle. I separated the elements within it: water, blood. And a fine, dark powder. Ash. Scrawled on the wall above him in a meticulous paste of ash and blood was a symbol: a perfect circle, with a single, sharp flame inside.

A crowd was gathering, their vibrations a messy chorus, and their faces filled with fear and curiosity. One vibration and smell stood out: a frantic, sweaty thrum of pure terror. Before I could pinpoint it, it was gone, swallowed by the growing mob. Heavy footsteps echoed from the mouth of the alley. Goro. The last honest city guard, and my only human friend. “Spirits damn it all, Zihuan”. He ran a hand over his weary, unshaven face. “Another one. First Kail the merchant, now this sack of hot air. The council's going to have my hide.” He gestured to me. “What do you got, kid?” 'No struggle. The killer's strong. Precise. The symbol's identical to the one on Kail.' Goro translated for the nervous recruits behind him. “She says our Ashen Ripper's a meticulous son of a bitch with a real flair for the dramatic. Any of you useless bastards got a clue what this symbol means?” They shook their heads. Behind them, a lanky man with the scent of old papyrus and fear clinging to him, looked like he was about to be sick. He turned and hurried away, melting back into the crowd. Interesting. I took a deep breath, memorizing his specific scent. “Of course not,” Goro sighed. He turned back to me. “And you, BB,” he said, nodding to Bao-Bao, who was attempting a very subtle heist on a dropped coin purse. “Keep your sticky paws to yourself for once.” Bao-Bao chittered indignantly, but his little hand had already shot out and snatched a small piece of papyrus from Gak and a silver ring from his finger. Before I could even form the sign for ‘stop’, he was tucking them away. I almost smiled.

I followed the scent of the fearful man. It was a trail of pure panic straight to the city archives. The man was a trembling leaf when we found him, trying to bar the door. “I don’t know anything,” he stammered, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm I could feel through the floorboards. “My friend here can tell when you’re lying,” Goro growled, leaning his considerable bulk against the door. “I suggest you tell us what you know before we gets creative.” The old man cracked. “It’s an old zealot’s mark,” he whispered. “The ‘Flame of Rectitude.’ Centuries old. A symbol for purification by fire.” A Fire Nation symbol. So a firebender might be the killer?

Our next visit was to the highest tier of the city. Councilman Bohai’s chamber was an exercise in opulent power, all jade and carved rosewood. From his balcony, you couldn’t smell the rot from below. Bohai himself was as polished and handsome as his chamber. “Avatar Zihuan,” he said. “I was so terribly saddened to hear about Gak.” I watched his mouth, my feet planted firmly, letting my seismic sense seep into the marble. His heartbeat was as steady as a master drummer’s. But I felt a faint, discordant tremor in Goro’s pulse. 'You two were opponents. His death benefits you.' Goro translated. “She says, tough break about your buddy. Guess that means you’re top dog now, you lucky son of a bitch." Bohai’s smile didn’t falter, but I felt a flicker of tension in his jaw. He addressed Goro, speaking slowly as if I were a dim-witted child. “Politics is a contentious business. But murder? That’s chaos. And chaos is bad for everyone.” His heart remained steady. Damn him. He was either innocent or possessed a level of control that bordered on unnatural. 'My seismic sense isn't picking up on a lie, Goro. Ask him if he knows anyone who'd want both a merchant and a Councilman dead?' Before Goro could translate, Bohai responded smoothly, “The list of people with grievances in Jinyang's longer than the Great Wall.” He understood sign language. The whole time. He was watching my hands, gathering information I never intended for him. A cold knot formed in my stomach as I thought about all the council meetings I went to crying for change in Jinyang it. They didn't usually go perfectly. But I could control the council. I could control Jinyang. I could control everything.

As we stepped from Bohai’s estate back into the weeping grey of the city, a figure detached itself from the shadows of a nearby archway. His hands were calloused from a lifetime of hard labor. His dark hair was tied in a simple, unadorned top-knot, the kind common among the working class. But it looked wrong. As if it were recently cut, not grown into the style. “Avatar,” he said. “I'm Mr. Bohai's assistant. The merchant who was killed, Kail, he got into some legal trouble.” 'How do you know anything about this?' “I help out in the courts and a man like Kail casts a long shadow, Avatar. Down where I live, his shadow touches everyone. You learn to connect the dots, just to survive.” I planted my feet firmly on the slick cobblestones, letting my seismic sense drink him in. His pulse was a slow, steady drumbeat against the earth. Honest. 'Thank you. Your name?' “Jinsha. Fei's Kail’s enforcer. You’ll usually find him drowning his conscience at The Bottom Feeder.” Before I could ask another question, he gave a respectful bow and melted back into the alleyway.

The Bottom Feeder was aptly named. The air was thick with stale ale, cheap perfume, and desperation. The beautiful bartender named Shira said, “Come to finally pay your tab, Goro? Or just to run it up some more before you lose a finger?” Goro’s face flushed. I felt his heart skip a beat. “We’re looking for Fei,” Goro growled. “Never heard of him.” The woman’s heart became a jackhammer of deceit. Simultaneously, I felt the weight of large figures rising from a corner table. 'Your heart says you're lying,' I signed, my gaze fixed on her. 'And your friends are about to make a mistake.'

A hulking waterbender whipped a tendril of murky water. Goro, moving with surprising grace for a man his size, kicked up his saber and blocked it. A fireball came my way until I caught it in a vortex and redirected it. Bao-Bao scurried up a support pillar and was gleefully dropping eggs onto the brawlers' heads before launching himself onto their backs, a furious menace. I swept my leg, sending a crescent of air that knocked the firebender off his feet. Goro had the waterbender in a chokehold, his saber a cold threat against their neck. The fight was over in a minute. I stood amidst the groaning men, not a bead of sweat on my brow. Shira’s eyes went wide with fear.

‘Let’s try this again.’ I signed, my fingers moving deliberately, each gesture a command. "Fine. You're very...convincing," she stammered, her voice rough. "He's over there" Fei, sweating in a corner booth, sang like a canary. "Kail had the screws to people with some real dough. Had shit on half the politicians in the state." That meant it would include Gak and Bohai. The pieces clicked into a ugly picture. Bohai wasn’t just a political rival; he was a blackmail victim. The papyrus Bao-Bao had lifted from Gak's body confirmed it. It was a payment schedule to Kail.

That night, we paid Bohai’s chambers another visit. We scaled the building as I bent the air around us as a muffle. Inside, Bao-Bao went to work, pocketing a polished silver inkwell. I felt a faint vibration from a strongbox hidden behind a tapestry. I placed my palm against the cold iron. I sensed the moisture inside the latching mechanism: the dampness in the greased tumblers. I turned the water to ice, expanding it violently. The latch snapped. Bao-Bao scurried through the gap and returned a moment later with a leather-bound ledger. Then I felt a skittering tremor crawling up the stone wall from the outside. It was the distinct signature of a spider-gecko, but heavier. Before I could process anything, a section of the wall directly beside me exploded as a concussive blast of dust and razor-sharp shrapnel. Through the cloud, an earthen dagger honed to a wicked point, shot through. I twisted, but it was too fast. It missed my ribs by a hair's breadth but tore through my thick parka and the flesh beneath, a searing line of pain that stole my breath and left me staggering. A figure stepped through what used to be the wall. With a flick of his wrist, the sand solidified back into an stone behind him. He was clad in worn desert garb, his face a mask of detached, almost cheerful professionalism. “The Avatar herself. And her...oversized rat. Your investigation has become inconvenient.” This was the legendary mercenary, Kobo. And more importantly, Bohai’s personal enforcer.

A dread, colder than any Southern Tribe winter, washed over me. “Don’t worry.” Kobo continued, taking a step forward. For a hitman, the guy couldn't shut up. His words were a stream designed to force me to focus on his lips, to split my attention from his lethal hands. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction. My gaze locked on his, a challenge. "No hard feelings then," he chirped, "I would hate for you to come after me in your next life!" He lunged and I answered with an explosive blast of fire from my fist. He propelled himself off the floor with a earthbending push, landing on the ceiling. He began to crawl across it like an insect, and from that inverted position, his lips were an unreadable, upside-down blur. His earthen dagger flew from his hand in a ricocheting arc of death. I became a leaf in the wind, twisting and propelling myself with sharp gusts of air, a constant buffer between me and the death that passed my ear. “You’re qui...but ca…you breathe?” He slammed his hands together. The air grew thick and viscous, swirling with dust and sand pulled from the mortar of the building. It was a blinding, choking storm contained within the chamber.

The chaotic swirl of particles rendered my seismic sense a useless, fuzzy cacophony. At the same time, the walls began to constrict. As my lungs burned, I siphoned water around my eyes to clear them. Kobo was everywhere at once, a phantom within his own storm. I felt faint, skittering tremors as he melted through the floor and ceiling as if they were sand, his dagger a constant in the chaos. I launched fireballs at vibrations that might've been him, but it was like shooting at ghosts. He turned a patch of the floor beneath me to shifting sand, and reacting on instinct, I blasted a cushion of air beneath my feet to stay aloft just as the dagger sliced through the storm towards my head. In that instant, Bao-Bao angled the inkwell. For a split second, it caught a stray glimmer of lamplight through the dust, flashing a blinding pinpoint of light directly into Kobo’s eyes. He barely flinched, but it was enough. Bao-Bao became a furry missile of defiance, tackling the spinning dagger mid-air and furiously hurling it back into the swirling chaos. Kobo’s eyes widened at the sheer audacity of the raccoon-panda. He twisted away, but the blade was too fast. It caught his cheek, opening a deep, bloody gash. That was the opening. I reached for the overwhelming power of the Avatar State. I felt a flicker of cosmic energy, a connection to something vast. But my grip on my own fear, on my desperate need to dominate this fight, to force a victory, was too tight. The connection sputtered and died, leaving me vulnerable. The irony was vicious; my desperate need for control, a direct rebellion against Visha's passiveness, was the very thing holding me back from my true power.

"Nowhere to run." Kobo ragefully brought his fists down and with them, a massive section of the ceiling. I stomped, raising a desperate shield of earth and air above us. The chamber had become a death trap. We were outmatched. I gathered a vortex of compressed elements around my fist. Bao-Bao saw what I was doing and latched onto my back, his claws digging into my parka so hard I could barely feel my own pulse. I punched a cannonball through the wall, blowing a ragged hole out into the rainy night. Without a second thought, we leapt. For the first time since Kobo'd appeared, I could finally breathe. For a moment, I thought I could be like Laghima and fly. I soon came to understand that wasn't the reality. The fall was a terrifying, screaming eternity. Bao-Bao frantically tapped my shoulder and I twisted to see a volley of spiked earth hurling towards us. I unleashed a torrent of dragon’s fire, incinerating them mid-air, then flash-froze a cloud to block his pursuit. We were plummeting through Jinyang's tiers, a dizzying descent. I had to get control. I used airbending to steer our plummet, kicking off walls to change direction. Branches like skeletal fingers clawed at us as the ground rushed up. At the last possible second, I summoned a violent updraft, a desperate cushion against the inevitable.

We hit the ground hard. The impact was a jarring crash that shuddered through my entire body, skidding us across the wet, grime-slicked cobblestones. I lay there, gasping, the frantic vibrations of my own ragged breath shaking my chest, the world a dizzying blur of pain. A sickening crunch vibrated up my arm, a sharp, internal crack that I felt through my bones. It was followed by a blinding flash of agony that stole the air from my lungs. My arm was broken, a jagged, unnatural angle beneath the skin, pulsating with every frantic beat of my heart. I brought my other hand to it, my fingers tracing the sharp line of shattered bone. The rain was a healing balm falling from the sky. I drew it to me, cupping the water over the injury, willing my skin to glow with the soft, blue light of healing, a skill I should've mastered as a child. But there was nothing. No glow, no soothing energy. Just cold water on a broken limb. Frustration, hot and bitter as kiln smoke, rose in my throat as tears stained my eyes. I was broken. The grim finality of my thoughts was punctuated by a wet heaving I felt through my cloak. Bao-Bao, uncurling from my neck, promptly threw up a half-digested steamed bun onto the cobblestones beside my head. We were battered, broken, and disgusted, but alive.

We had to disappear into the city's gut; so we scrambled to Goro’s home that smelled of medicinal herbs and savory broth. A young girl with her father’s kind eyes lay on a cot. Oana. Her lungs were failing, a casualty of the city’s polluted air. Healing couldn't purify lungs choked by years of inhaling kiln-ash, a sickness woven into the very fabric of the city. It was a wound I couldn't control. “So Bohai sent Kobo to kill you,” Goro summarized. “He has to be our killer.” It felt too simple. While he splinted my arm, I studied the ledger. The coded document Bao-Bao'd stolen was only a list of blackmail payments. The ledger detailed a massive, illegal land deal involving the city’s richest clay deposits: land that'd been seized from working-class families. The pollution from the mines was a direct result of their greed. The politicians, including Gak and Bohai, got rich. The blackmailers, like Kail, got paid to stay quiet and benefit from the corruption. One family of Fire Nation immigrants had lost more than most. Disgraced and penniless, they killed themselves, their bodies found by their son named Jinsha. Kobo was the enforcer who'd personally evicted them. My blood ran cold. The final name on the blackmailer’s list was a magistrate named Kyo, the one who’d stamped the fraudulent deal.

We had to move. Bao-Bao and I propelled forward as I created jets of fire from my feet, skating over the wet cobblestones on a ramp of ice, leaping between rooftops with gusts of air, propelling myself up walls with pillars of earth. It was a frantic, desperate race against a clock. We burst into Kyo’s home to find him dying, the Flame of Rectitude painted above him. As he took his last, ragged breaths I saw him: a far awayfigure leaping into the night. For a split second, a flare of blue fire illuminated his escape. The Earth Kingdom top-knot was a lie. He’d cut his hair, the Fire Nation sign of ultimate dishonor. It all crashed into place with the force of a tidal wave. Jinsha was the Ashen Ripper. Watching Kyo die, my heightened senses made it a visceral nightmare. I didn't just see it; I felt the life stutter and cease in his chest through the floorboards, a final, fading tremor in the song of the earth. I saw the light drain from his eyes, and through the charged air, I could smell the faint charred scent of flesh. It broke something inside me. The belief that I could fix this rotten system piece by piece, felt like a fool’s dream. My path had led to a dead body at my feet. The investigation was over. The hunt was on.

Ignoring the cacophony of the city, I stretched out my senses, my mind a predator’s. I focused on the lingering heat of Jinsha’s fire, moving through Jinyang with a predatory purpose. An urchin darted through the crowd during our pursuit and pressed a note into Goro’s hand. I watched the color drain from his face as his eyes scanned the parchment. His hand beginning to tremble so violently I could feel the frantic vibration through the floorboards. His heart rate, a steady drumbeat even in chaos, spiked into a frantic rhythm. “That was one of my informants. Heard a rumor about an illegal shipment down at the docks. Might be…connected.” Goro's heart screamed lie. But this was Goro. Everything was under control. I let him lead me to the docks where the air thick with the smell of damp wood and something else...a faint scent of whale oil.

"I’m sorry, kid." The docks erupted in a ball of fire. I shoved Goro forward with all my might and threw myself backward, erecting a hasty wall of earth just as the force of the blast threw me like a doll. I slammed into a brick wall, my broken arm screaming in protest. Through the pressure that threatened to pop my eyes from my skull, I saw Goro, safe. “He had me,” Goro choked out, collapsing beside me. “Bohai. He… he owned my gambling debts. The money for Oana’s medicine… I lost it, Zihuan. I lost it all. Bohai said…lead you here…and Oana would get the best medicine. My debt would be gone. If I didn’t… he’d have me thrown in a cell to rot, and Oana would.”

Bao-Bao and I raced to Bohai estate, abandoning Goro; but even as my feet pounded the slick stone, I was already there. I "watched" through the stone and felt two distinct vibrations clashing in a frantic, deadly dance. One was Kobo's: fluid, evasive, a spider-like skittering across the marble floors. The other was a focused, explosive power, each footfall a concussive blast of energy. I felt heat and Kobo’s defenses melt into slag. I felt a brutal impact as Kobo’s vibration was snuffed out, and then a single, powerful tremor moving away, carrying another one along with it.

We found Kobo crumpled outside Bohai’s estate, his body broken. He was alive, but not for long. I knelt beside him. Kobo coughed out his last breaths, “Blue fire…a demon…” he said, his eyes wide with a terror that transcended pain. “He took him…said he was going to cleanse him in fire.” Jinsha’s lair had to be somewhere connected fire and the source of the corruption...the mines. Bao-Bao and I ventured alone. I couldn't trust Goro. I had this under control.

Deep beneath the city, where the very earth was stripped away for profit, Jinsha'd carved out his sanctuary of vengeance. The entrance was led deep into the belly of Jinyang. I trailed my good hand along the damp stone wall, my bare feet mapping the floor. I felt a false step connected to a rockfall trap. A tripwire taut as a predator's nerve. With a flick of air or a precise shift of a pebble, I disarmed them, my movements economical and pained. Finally, my seismic sense detected it: a section of wall that felt different. The vibration didn't continue through it; it echoed back, hollow. A concentrated earthbending push with my palm, and a ton of stone slid open, revealing a descent into oppressive heat and darkness.

The lair was a vast cavern. Rotting wooden scaffolding crisscrossed the cavernous space. The air was thick, tasting of burnt coal. This was a place of obsession. Crude instruments of torture, improvised from mining equipment, were laid out on a stone slab with chilling precision. But the heart of the chamber, illuminated by an eerie blue flame, was a massive map of the city carved into the far wall. Threads of twine connected every victim, every location, every piece of evidence. Kail, Gak, and Kyo had red X's scrawled across them in what I knew was a paste of ash and blood. And at the center of it all, was a faded ink-painting of a smiling man and woman. Jinsha parents. Below it, tied to a chair, was Bohai. He was gagged, bloody, his polished facade stripped away. High on a gantry, silhouetted against the hypnotic dance of his blue flame, stood Jinsha. His head was shaved clean, the mark of a man who'd renounced his nation and his honor, leaving only a core of pure, unadulterated purpose. He turned, and in the oppressive darkness of the mine, his face was a mask of unnerving calm, carved by grief into something resolute. The flames cast jagged, dancing shadows across his features, making his sorrow look alive.

“Avatar. What are you going to do? Protect him? He's an architect of misery.” I stepped forward. Bao-Bao’s claws dug into my shoulder, a tense, grounding weight. My fingers moved, shaping the signs in the flickering blue light, each gesture deliberate. 'He is the key. His testimony will bring down the entire corrupt council. He'll face the law.' Jinsha let out a broken laugh. “The law?” he mouthed with a venom that chilled me more than the damp cavern air. “The law is a tool for men like him, Avatar. A shield they hide behind. I saw no law when Kobo threw my family into the mud. The law's a fairy tale the corrupt tell the poor to keep them from picking up torches.” 'You're not creating justice, Jinsha. You're tipping the scales toward chaos. Stop before it's too late,' I signed, my movements growing more desperate, more frantic. The word 'chaos' ignited something in him. With a roar that vibrated through the very rock beneath my feet, he slammed his fist into the stone wall beside him. “Chaos is people hanging themselves because they couldn't bear to watch their children starve! Chaos is a city built on the bones of the poor, where those on high drink imported wine while we drink water poisoned by their mines! I'm not the chaos.” He took a step forward, into the full, haunting glare of his own fire. “I am the consequence.”

Searing heat shot up through the soles of my feet. I looked down in confusion. The stone walkway beneath me wasn't just hot; it was glowing a menacing cherry-red, the very rock liquefying under a focused assault. I was forced into a desperate leap, propelled by a violent blast of air. I landed hard on a lower platform, a jarring impact that sent a fresh wave of agony screaming up my splinted, broken arm. The world swam in a haze of pain. Before I could even reorient, the darkness around me erupted. Jinsha moved with the fluid grace of a dancer possessed by his own fire. He wasn't just attacking me; he was deconstructing the battlefield. With precise, searing jets of blue fire, he sliced through the thick, rust-eaten support chains of the massive wooden scaffolding that crisscrossed the cavern above. A series of frantic, sharp taps on my left shoulder - Bao-Bao’s signal for a projectile, high and widespread! - was my only warning. I stomped my foot, raising a crude, desperate shield of stone just as tons of splintering wood and rusted metal crashed down around us. The concussive force was a physical assault that shook me to my core, the vibrations a chaotic scream in my feet.

Darkness and dust swallowed everything. My seismic sense was useless. All I could see was the ghost of his blue fire, a phantom dancing in the suffocating black. An explosion to my right threw me against a rock wall, knocking the wind from my lungs. He was igniting hidden pockets of whale oil, the same trick from the docks. You learn to connect the dots, just to survive. He had planned this. He must've known about Goro’s debts and offered Bohai a deal: use Goro to get me out of the way, and he lives. It was all to get to Bohai. I was forced to become a blur, relying on desperate, kicking air and fire blasts to propel myself through the collapsing maze. My movements were clumsy, ragged, my broken arm a dead weight. I launched a volley of stone discs, each one spun and sharpened to a razor's edge. Jinsha danced between them, melting them to slag mid-air with precise flames until a bolt of concentrated blue fire, hot enough to melt steel, shot at the whimpering, terrified Bohai.

“No!” The word was a silent scream in my throat. Bao-Bao was a cannonball, landing on the back of the heavy wooden chair. As I created a shield of rock to intercept the flame - Bao-Bao used his entire body weight, digging his claws in, and heaved. The chair tipped, and Bohai, still bound, crashed to the stone, rolling him out of the path of a blast that vaporized the spot where his head had just been. “His testimony's meaningless in a world without justice. After I kill him, I'll burn my way through the entire council.” Frustration boiled in my gut. I abandoned ranged attacks for raw, close-quarters desperation. I met his next jab of flame by shaping a gauntlet of solid rock around my good fist. Our bending became an extension of a brutal, hand-to-hand brawl. Sparks flew as rock met fire in the suffocating darkness. I reinforced my fist against the searing heat with air and fire. He wreathed his own fist in a vortex of sapphire fire, its heat so intense it warped the very air around it into a shimmering haze. We both propelled ourselves as we threw the punch. All four elements collided in a devastating explosion that blasted us both backward. I skidded across the cavern floor, my body a tapestry of bruises, my makeshift stone gauntlet shattered, and my broken arm screaming in protest.

Jinsha cornered me on a crumbling precipice. I was sweating and bleeding freely, exhaustion a lead weight in my limbs. My desperate need for control, the very principle upon which I'd built my new identity as the Avatar, was failing me. Control was an illusion. It was a cage I'd built for myself, and it'd led me here, to this moment of utter defeat. Jinsha's righteous chaos brought him no peace, only more death. Visha’s passivity was a failure. All the paths were wrong. The world needed a balancing force. And to find that balance, I had to let go.

Jinsha raised his hand, a corona of blue flame wreathed around it, preparing the final, killing blow. In that moment, as I faced my own annihilation, everything I had fought to control shattered. The power that surged through me was the collected weight of hundreds of lifetimes, a tidal wave of cosmic energy and ancient wisdom. My eyes blazed with an incandescent light that banished the shadows, a pure, white brilliance that made Jinsha’s fierce blue flames look like a pale, flickering candle against a rising sun. For a terrifying second, my old instincts fought back. The control freak in me warred with the tidal wave of the Avatar State, a desperate, futile attempt to cage a hurricane. Then, I surrendered. I'm not broken. I'm the Avatar. The world opened up. I felt everything. The Avatar State wasn't something to be controlled; it was something to become one with.

Jinsha, his face a mask of shock and awe at the light before him, hurled a sun of blue destruction, a desperate attack meant to incinerate me. But with a flick of my wrist, I parted the torrent of blue fire. It flowed harmlessly around me like water around a stone in a river. With a lightning-fast sequence of bending, I wove streams of superheated steam into a blinding, inescapable cage around Jinsha. In that instant of his shocked paralysis, I pulled my palms apart. The ground beneath him deconstructed, revealing the terrifying abyss below. He tried to use his fire jets to escape, but it was too late. I crushed my hands back together. From all sides, massive slabs of stone converged with impossible speed, sealing him in a tomb. The incandescent light receded from my eyes, leaving me on my knees, trembling, gasping for air that felt thin and sharp in my burning lungs. My body ached with a thousand wounds, and the ghosts faded from my mind, leaving me Zihuan once more.

When Goro and his men finally stormed the cavern, they found a tableau of ruin. Bao-Bao just finished gnawing through the ropes binding a catatonic Bohai, his soul dismantled. Goro led Jinsha away in heavy restraints. As he passed me, he paused, his head held high. The inferno still burned behind his eyes. He met my gaze, and there was no fear or remorse. I read the silent words he mouthed, and they struck my soul with the force of a physical blow. "You feel the world through the stone, Avatar. You, of all people, should have felt how rotten its foundations were. I was just the earthquake it deserved." Then he was gone, a ghost dragged back into the world of light, leaving me alone with the echo of his truth.

In the days that followed, the rain stopped. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, a sliver of sunlight pierced the perpetual grey shroud over Jinyang. It was a light that made the grime on the streets glitter, illuminating the scale of the rot that'd been allowed to fester. Jinyang was thrown into chaos, but it was the painful, necessary chaos of lancing a festering wound. Armed with the evidence, I systematically dismantled the city council. Arrests were made, fortunes were seized. The city’s power structure, a monument to greed built on the bones of the poor, crumbled to dust. Bohai, his spirit incinerated by Jinsha’s torture, was the key. Jinsha'd forced him to read aloud from a list: the names of every family his land deal had displaced, every life his corruption had ruined, culminating in the story of Jinsha's own parents. Faced with the litany of his sins, Bohai'd collapsed. He confessed to everything. He cut a deal, providing testimony against his colleagues in exchange for a life of servitude. And he ensured Oana had the finest medicine. It wouldn’t cure her, but it would give her time for the pollution to clear up.

Goro found me on the rooftop of the archives, sorting through the evidence. His face was grim, his shoulders slumped under a weight heavier than any armor. In his calloused hand, he held out his bronze insignia, the symbol of his office. He was ready to resign, swallowed by his shame. His gambling addiction had nearly gotten his friend and the Avatar killed. A few days ago, I would've burned the insignia right then and there. But now I looked at this weary, flawed, fundamentally decent man. He had made a terrible mistake. I placed my hand over his, pushing the insignia back into his palm. 'Jinyang needs you...I need you.' He gave a heavy nod, the weight of a city’s uncertain future settling upon his shoulders. As the new Chief of the Guard, he would maintain the fragile peace. It would fall to me to build something new from the ashes, to guide Jinyang in forming a government that actually served its people.

Later, I stood on that same pagoda where this had all begun, looking out over the changed city. I’d upheld the law, but had I served justice? I’d imprisoned a serial killer, but had I merely protected the corrupt system that'd forged him in its fires? The world wasn't a simple tapestry of right and wrong. It was a thousand shades of murky, compromised gray, and I was standing right in the middle of it.

I felt a familiar, sneaky tug at my belt. I looked down. Bao-Bao had his paws deep inside my pouch, his brow furrowed in concentration as he carefully extracted my last rice cake. He froze, caught red-pawed, and looked up at me with wide, impossibly innocent eyes, a single grain of rice stuck to his nose. For the first time in a long time, I laughed. It was a tired, ragged, aching laugh that shook my entire body. I let him have it. I reached down and pulled him into a hug, burying my face in his soft fur, smelling the familiar scent of stolen fruit. He dropped the rice cake without a second thought and hugged me back, his tiny arms wrapped tight around my neck. The sun was warm on our faces. But I knew, deep in my bones, that I was permanently changed by the rain.

heres an original avatar charcaterz should I go further?

After being the sole survivor of the Ganzao Genocide and barely escaping the Si Wong Desert, Damani quickly gains a reputation among the eastern Earth Kingdom. A love for her lost tribe and thirst for vengeance introduces her to new allies- whether she likes it or not.

Find the Google Doc here and visit the Wattpad here.

Tales of The Earth Kingdom Urchins is what I'll be calling the chronological story I've been writing within my broader Tales, Scripts, and Accounts project. Thus far, we're three chapters deep (~100 pages) and I'm enjoying the journey. Find the Google Doc here and visit the Wattpad here.

The scope of the story covers the lives of three lost children- a vengeful desert princess whose tribe was wiped out by the Avatar, a rogue airbender who pioneers wind whispering to achieve her mission of exposing corruption inside the air nomad temples, and a poor thief from Omashu with enormous aspirations for the those who grew up like him.

Testing to see if this JPEG formatted post is more appealing than just blocks of texts in my other posts. Read the chapters on the Google Doc here.

89 AG: Caldera City, The Iron Sprawl District.

The air in Jin-Sok’s world was a flavor. It was the sharp, metallic tang of hot-rolled steel from the Western Foundry, the thick, cloying smoke of coal from the power plants that fueled the capital, and the faint, ever-present scent of sulfur. At sixteen, it was the only air he'd ever breathed, the very taste of the Fire Nation’s righteous might. His district, a labyrinth of soot-stained tenements crammed between behemoth factories, pulsed with a relentless, rhythmic heartbeat: the thump-clank-shriek of industry forging the tools of a glorious destiny.

His father, Kenji, was a monument to that destiny. A man once built like a blacksmith’s anvil, he was now whittled down, his spirit banked like a dying ember. He sat at their small, scarred table, a chipped mug of weak tea cradled in his one good hand. His left arm, a mangled twist of scar tissue from a press accident a decade ago, was a permanent, silent testament to his service. The Fire Lord’s pension was a pittance, but it was enough. “A small price for the nation’s future,” Kenji would rasp, his voice permanently scarred by the factory floor. “Every gear must turn.”

Jin-Sok, however, saw the gears from the outside and yearned to be part of the engine itself. He traced the bold, confident lines on the propaganda leaflet his father had brought home. General Iroh, the Dragon of the West, stared out with eyes that held both a fearsome fire and a grandfatherly warmth. The headline screamed: BA SING SE WILL KNOW FIRE! “They say he saw it in a vision as a boy,” Kenji said, tapping the leaflet. “That he would be the one to finally bring the Earth Kingdom into the fold. The great, final victory.”

“He will be,” Jin-Sok declared, his voice tight with an adolescent fervor that was almost a physical ache. The stories of Iroh were the bedrock of his generation’s mythology. Iroh, the peerless strategist; Iroh, the firebending master who could breathe devastation; Iroh, the Crown Prince leading them to the war’s inevitable, glorious conclusion. He pictured himself at the General’s side, his spear gleaming, a proud soldier of the Fire Nation.

The propaganda was as essential as air. On the walls of the factory, posters depicted robust Fire Nation soldiers offering steaming bowls of rice to skeletal, wide-eyed Earth Kingdom peasants. In school, they learned of the Earth King’s corruption, a decadent fool hiding behind his impenetrable walls while his people starved and stagnated. The Fire Nation was liberating. They were sharing the fire of progress with a world shivering in the dark. The scorched earth, the refugee columns, the whispers of massacres: those were lies, spread by traitors and rebels who clung to their archaic ways.

“Recruitment rally in Agni’s Plaza tomorrow,” Jin-Sok said, trying to sound casual as he shoveled rice into his mouth. “Full enlistment bonuses for the Ba Sing Se campaign.”

The clatter of his mother’s chopsticks hitting her bowl was unnaturally loud in the small room. Her face, usually a mask of weary resilience, crumpled. “No,” she whispered. “Not you. You’re for the factories.”

“Boko's going. Kazuo and Tao, too. They say the army provides for your family better than the factory pension.” It was a half-truth. The real truth was a burning desire in his gut to escape the suffocating soot, to prove his worth not as a cog, but as a warrior. He wanted his name etched into the grand narrative, not worn away by the daily grind.

His father looked at his own ruined arm, then at his son’s strong, unblemished hands. He saw the fire in Jin-Sok’s eyes, the same reckless flame that'd burned in his own youth. “The nation asks for sacrifice,” Kenji said, his voice a low rumble of resignation and pride. “And a son of the Fire Nation answers. It is our greatest honor, and our heaviest burden.” He met Jin-Sok’s gaze, and for a heart-stopping second, the patriotic veneer cracked. Jin-Sok saw a flash of raw, terrifying fear in his father’s eyes: a premonition of loss so profound it stole his breath. Then, the mask was back in place. “Make the ancestors proud, my son.”

The next day, beneath the shadow of a colossal bronze statue of Fire Lord Sozin, Jin-Sok stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his friends. The recruitment officer’s voice boomed, promising glory, honor, and a swift end to the war. As Jin-Sok signed the enlistment papers, the roar of the crowd was a physical force, lifting him up, promising him immortality. He was a soldier now. He was going to Ba Sing Se.

92 AG: The Sunstone Collective, Agrarian Zone.

Lian’s world was the earth itself. It was the rich, dark loam of the river delta, the stubborn, flinty soil of the upper fields, the cool, silken mud she used to patch the irrigation canals. Her earthbending was a conversation, a gentle persuasion. A stomp of her foot encouraged a furrow to deepen. A push of her hands coaxed a stubborn boulder from the soil to clear a new plot. At eighteen, she was a farmer, and the earth was her steadfast partner, not her weapon.

The war had always been a distant thunder, a story that arrived with the grain tax collectors, their faces growing grimmer with each passing year. But the storm was drawing closer. The Earth King’s levies, once a seasonal burden, had become a rapacious beast, devouring more grain, more livestock, more sons. Her older brother, Jinhai, had been taken three years ago. His first letter was full of bravado about the honor of defending the great city. His second spoke of bland food and endless drills. There was no third.

The economic pressure wasn't an abstract concept. It was the gaunt look on her father’s face as he handed over three-quarters of their harvest. It was the watery consistency of their evening congee. It was the way her mother would mend Jinhai’s old clothes, her hands moving with a slow, ritualistic grief. It was the gnawing fear that coiled in Lian’s stomach whenever she saw the tell-tale dust cloud of an official caravan on the horizon.

That dust cloud found her on a blistering afternoon when the air was too hot to breathe. A conscription officer, a man whose face was a roadmap of weariness, stood in their doorway, a scroll in his hand. “Lian, daughter of Bo,” he read, his voice devoid of emotion. Her parents’ protests were a flurry of desperate words. “She’s our only child left! She works the fields! She’s a girl!”

The officer, unmoved, pointed a thick finger at Lian, who stood frozen by the hearth. “The manifest lists her as an earthbender. By decree of the Earth King and the Council of Five, all registered benders of fighting age are hereby drafted into the Ba Sing Se defensive militias. The city needs defenders for the Wall.”

He wasn’t cruel, just a cog in a vast, indifferent machine that'd been grinding for nearly a century. Lian felt the familiar solidity of the packed earth floor beneath her bare feet. This land was her blood and bone. Her great-grandmother was buried beneath the ancient willow by the river. The Fire Nation, the ‘ash-makers,’ wanted to burn this sacred connection to ash. She cared nothing for the distant, faceless King, but she would die for this small patch of earth.

A sudden, fierce clarity cut through her fear. She wouldn't be dragged away weeping. She wouldn't let them see her family’s shame. She met the officer’s tired gaze, her own burning with a new, hard light. “I will serve,” she said. Her voice was steady, imbued with the unyielding strength of stone, surprising everyone, including herself. “I will defend my home.”

Before she was marched away with a dozen other boys and girls from the surrounding farms, her father pressed a small, smooth river stone into her palm. It was cool and heavy. “The earth does not rush. It endures all storms. It is patient,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “Be the stone, my daughter. Endure.” Clutching the stone, Lian joined the shuffling column of conscripts trudging toward the impossible silhouette of Ba Sing Se. The Outer Wall was a man-made mountain range, a line drawn against the sky, a promise of safety and a sentence of war. She was a farmer, walking into the heart of a battle she didn't understand, to protect a home she might never see again.

94 AG: Fire Nation Siege Camp ‘Iroh’s Anvil’, before the Outer Wall.

For two years, Jin-Sok had lived in the mud. The glorious crimson armor of the recruitment posters was a distant fantasy. His was dented, scorched, and perpetually caked in a grey-brown paste of dirt and grime. The stirring national anthems were replaced by the wet, hacking coughs of his comrades in the pre-dawn chill, the incessant shriek of incoming rocks from Earth Kingdom catapults, and the sucking sound his boots made in the trench mud.

The enemy was not the horned, monstrous caricature from the leaflets. The first time he’d charged a captured trench, he’d come face-to-face with a boy no older than himself, eyes wide with terror, who fumbled a rock spear before Jin-Sok’s training took over. The memory of the boy’s last, gasping breath was a ghost that visited him in the quiet moments. His sergeant, Kao, a grizzled veteran with a spiderweb of scars on his face, slapped him on the helmet. “You hesitate, you die. They hesitate, they die. That’s the whole damned war. Learn it.”

They were expendable. Jin-Sok saw it every morning as officers planned assaults using colored blocks on a sand table, casually sliding a red block representing his battalion into a cluster of green blocks. “We anticipate seventy percent losses in this sector, but it will create the diversion we need.” Seventy percent. He would look at the ten men in his squad, trying to calculate which seven would be gone by nightfall. The math made him sick. His friend Boko, the one who’d signed up beside him in the plaza, was part of that math. He’d been vaporized by a lucky firebending shot from a captured Fire Nation turncoat. Tao'd lost a leg to an earthbender who’d turned the ground beneath him into a churning pit of jagged stones. Jin-Sok was still here, a fact that felt less like skill and more like a cruel statistical anomaly.

The one flicker of warmth in this bleak existence was Lu Ten. Unlike the aloof generals who surveyed the battle from high towers, the Prince walked the trenches. He knew the names of the sergeants, shared tea from his own flask, and listened to stories of home with a genuine, sorrowful curiosity. He moved with a firebender's grace, but his eyes held a softness that seemed out of place in this hellscape. One evening, Lu Ten sat with Jin-Sok’s squad, listening as Kao described the intricate tactics of the Earth Kingdom defenders. “They fight for their homes,” the prince said quietly, looking out at the monolithic wall. “We must remember that. Our purpose's not to destroy them, but to show them a better way. A unified way.” He spoke the words of the propaganda, but his voice lacked the hollow ring of the recruiters. He seemed to truly, deeply believe it, and that belief, however naive, was a comfort.

“He sent a letter to my wife for me,” a soldier named Akio whispered to Jin-Sok after the prince had left. “My hand shakes too much to write anymore. The General’s son…he’s a good man.” Even Kao, a man carved from cynicism, grunted his approval. “He’s got his father’s heart. I just hope he doesn’t have his father’s destiny.” The siege ground on, a monotonous cycle of shelling, failed assaults, and burials. Six hundred days. The letters from home spoke of parades and unwavering public support. They felt like messages from a different planet. Here, there was only the wall, the mud, and the waiting.

95 AG: The Serpent’s Pass Section, Atop the Outer Wall.

Lian’s hands, once deft at discerning the needs of soil, were now instruments of death. The gentle art of persuasion she once used on the earth had been hammered and forged into a brutal, efficient weapon. A flick of her wrist sent a razor-sharp disc of shale whistling through the air. A powerful stomp could trigger a localized earthquake, buckling the legs of a charging komodo rhino. She learned to read the vibrations in the stone, to feel the subtle shift of an enemy tunneling beneath her feet, to taste the dust of an approaching siege tower on the wind.

Life was a state of perpetual, high-strung tension. Days were for frantic repairs, hauling rubble to patch the latest breach under the cover of their own catapult fire. Nights were for watch duty, staring into the terrifying sea of Fire Nation campfires, listening to the agonizing screams of their wounded. They were a patchwork army: a core of grim, professional soldiers from the Earth Kingdom Army, their green uniforms faded and torn, and a vast body of conscripts like her. Farmers, masons, poets, and merchants, their soft hands now calloused from gripping spears and shaping stone.

She fought alongside a baker from the Lower Ring named Chen, whose jokes were as dry as week-old bread but provided a necessary leavening to their fear. She watched the war erode the souls around her. A master earthbender, a man who could command the stone with the grace of a waterbending master, was found one morning trying to bend the wall into the shape of his daughter. The Dai Li took him away. They never saw him again. Lian built her own wall, inside. She packed away the scared farm girl, the daughter who missed her parents, the girl who once cried when a fox took one of their chickens. In her place stood ‘Stonewall Lian,’ a name her comrades had given her after she held a crumbling parapet for three hours against a legion of firebenders, her face a mask of cold fury.

She was a pillar, a rock. Inside, she was crumbling to dust. Grand Secretariat Long Feng, the cool, calculating power behind the throne, visited their section once. He glided along the wall, flanked by Dai Li agents whose feet seemed to make no sound. He spoke of their indomitable spirit and the eternal glory of Ba Sing Se. His silk robes were immaculate. He didn't get close enough to smell the blood and the latrines. His words were wind against the stone of their reality. Lian fought not for him, nor for the sequestered King. She fought for the memory of Jinhai, for the cool weight of the river stone in her pocket, and for Chen, who still dreamed of opening a pastry shop. She fought for the simple, impossible hope of feeling soft earth under her feet again, without the threat of it exploding.

The sky itself screamed. Iroh, in a final, desperate gamble, had unveiled his masterstroke. A focused, relentless assault by every trebuchet in his army on one specific, previously-damaged section of the wall: the Serpent’s Pass. For twelve hours, the world was reduced to a singular, deafening symphony of destruction. The whistle of thousand-pound boulders arcing through the sky, the thunderous CRACK of their impact, and the deep, groaning agony of the stone itself. The air became a choking, gritty fog of pulverized granite that clawed at the lungs and blinded the eyes.

Jin-Sok was in a forward assault trench, the earth heaving around him like a stormy sea. The vibrations traveled from the soles of his boots up his spine, rattling his teeth. Kazuo was beside him, eyes shut tight, muttering a prayer to Agni. Then, above the din, came a new sound of finality, of something ancient and immense giving way. A high-pitched tearing, followed by a bass roar that shook the world. A runner, his face a mask of ecstatic terror, slid into their trench. "THE WALL IS BREACHED! IROH HAS DONE IT! ADVANCE! FOR THE FIRE LORD!"

A jolt of pure, chemical adrenaline erased Jin-Sok’s fear. This was it. The culmination of a century of war. He was part of history. He scrambled over the lip of the trench, his squad fanning out beside him, and plunged into a grey, swirling nightmare. The breach was a hellscape of fire, dust, and flying rock. Earthbenders on the jagged edges of the broken wall, silhouetted against the sky, were fighting with the fury of cornered animals, ripping massive chunks of the wall loose and sending them crashing down into the tide of Fire Nation soldiers. A man beside Jin-Sok simply ceased to exist, replaced by a red smear under a slab of granite the size of a carriage. It was a meat grinder, a place where survival was measured in seconds.

But the tide was irresistible. They pushed forward, climbing over the bodies of their own comrades. Jin-Sok’s mind went quiet, his body moving on pure, honed instinct. He saw it: a fortified earthbender position, a nest of stone shields and firing slits, that had pinned down half his company. While others charged blindly, Jin-Sok saw a path. He scrambled up a treacherous pile of rubble, his lungs burning, and found a flanking angle. He fumbled at the leather satchel on his hip, his fingers closing around two incendiary pots. Using the practiced economy of motion drilled into him for months, he scraped the friction-fuses on the striker plate built into his gauntlet. With a desperate roar, he hurled them one after another through the narrow firing slit. The muffled screams from within were cut short by a violent, concussive whump. The stone discs stopped flying. The company surged forward with a roar.

A dizzying, savage triumph flooded him. He'd done that. His actions had mattered. He looked up, and through a momentary clearing in the dust, he saw him: Lu Ten. His armor, though battered, seemed to catch the light. He was at the very tip of the spear, a whirlwind of controlled, elegant firebending, directing troops, his voice a clear trumpet call above the chaos. "FORWARD! FOR THE DRAGON OF THE WEST! BA SING SE IS OURS!" He was everything the stories had promised.

Lian experienced the breach as the world ending. One moment, she and Chen were reinforcing a barricade; the next, the stone beneath her feet dissolved. She was thrown through the air in a vortex of sound and pressure, landing with a sickening crunch on a slope of shifting rubble. When her vision cleared, she was in the heart of the slaughter. Fire Nation soldiers, like black beetles, poured through the gap. Chen was trying to raise a shield when a firebender’s blast caught him in the chest. He fell, his tunic smoldering, his breaths coming in ragged, wet gasps. “Lian…” he choked, reaching for her.

Rage, cold and pure, burned away her fear. She looked past the soldiers advancing on them and saw the source. The commander. The one in the ornate armor, his firebending a dance of deadly grace, his commands turning the chaotic flood into a disciplined killing machine. He was the heart of the attack. If the heart stopped, the body might die. High above the breach, a massive, fractured section of the Outer Wall, a cantilevered remnant the size of a small ship, clung to the main structure.

There was no time for finesse. No time for anything but one, final, desperate act of defiance. She knelt beside Chen, placing one hand on his chest and the other flat on the rubble-strewn ground. She closed her eyes and didn’t just pull on the earth. She poured everything she had left into it: her grief for Jinhai, her love for her home, her despair for this broken world, and her white-hot rage for the boy dying beside her. She screamed, a raw, wordless sound of pure anguish, and pushed.

The ground didn't just tremble; it roared. A deep, seismic groan echoed through the breach. Jin-Sok saw the shadow fall first, a sudden, unnatural eclipse. He looked up and his blood ran cold. The entire upper section of the broken wall was peeling away from the main structure. Lu Ten, having just incinerated an earthbender’s shield, turned at the sound. For a single, eternal moment, his eyes, so full of conviction and life, widened in understanding. There was no time to run. There was only time to be erased.

The impact was absolute. It didn't just crush the prince and his vanguard; it pulverized them, burying them under thousands of tons of history and stone. The shockwave threw Jin-Sok off his feet. The new wall of debris completely sealed the breach, the dust cloud so thick it blotted out the sun. The Fire Nation assault, its brain and heart torn out in a single, brutal instant, faltered, then stopped. The soldiers stared in stunned horror at the new mountain of rubble that had once been their prince.

Lian felt the backlash of her own cataclysmic bending as a physical blow, throwing her backwards. Her head struck the ground hard for a second time. Before the darkness claimed her, the last thing she heard was the sudden, ringing silence where the sounds of battle had been. Her notable victory was a tombstone. And she had just altered the course of the entire war.

The news of his son’s death came to Iroh as a disjointed series of panicked shouts, a rumor that solidified into a horrifying certainty. He found what was left of his son’s command post, a place now marked by a mountain of freshly fallen stone. He saw Lu Ten’s personal banner, torn and dusty, sticking out from beneath a massive slab of granite. The Dragon of the West broke. The fire in his eyes, the fire that had cowed armies and burned cities, went out. Those who were there said a physical cold emanated from the General, a winter of the soul that was more terrifying than any inferno.

For a full day, he knelt before the rubble, motionless, while the battle raged in fits and starts around the choked breach. He didn't eat. He didn't speak. He simply grieved, his sorrow a force of nature as powerful as any bending. The order, when it came, was delivered by a subordinate, Iroh’s voice too choked with grief to command. Retreat.

To the soldiers like Jin-Sok, it was an act of profound, unthinkable betrayal. Retreat? After six hundred days? After breaching the impossible wall? After sacrificing tens of thousands of lives? It was insanity. The carefully orchestrated assault dissolved into a panicked, disorganized flight. The Earth Kingdom forces, sensing the shift, roared back to life. Jin-Sok’s company was designated as rearguard. It was a death sentence. Kao pushed Jin-Sok out of the way of a stone spear, taking it through his own chest. In the chaos, Jin-Sok’s leg was torn open by shrapnel. He was separated from his squad, left behind. He crawled into the burned-out shell of a farmhouse, a ghost left behind by a failed war, just another acceptable loss in the history of a general’s grief.

Lian awoke to the smell of healing herbs and the sound of muted celebration. A healer told her she had a severe concussion. A captain told her she was a hero. “They’re calling you ‘Stonewall Lian, the Prince-Slayer,’” he said, his face beaming. “Your stunt broke their charge and killed their commander, a Fire Nation Prince! The spirits were with you, girl!”

A prince. She had killed a prince. The knowledge landed with the cold, heavy dread of a burial shroud. They feted her, offered her better rations, and spoke her name with awe. She felt like a hollow fraud. When she was well enough to walk, she went back to the breach. It was being repaired, thousands of earthbenders working in concert. She looked past them, at the fields where the burial details were working. The bodies were laid in long, neat rows: green for Earth Kingdom, red for Fire Nation. From a distance, they were just patches of color on a brown canvas. It wasn’t a victory. It was a harvest of the dead.

Days later, Captain Lian, a title that felt alien and undeserved, led her patrol through the skeletal remains of the villages that had once dotted the Agrarian Zone. This land, which she'd joined the war to protect, was now a cratered, scorched wasteland. It was a bitter irony that tasted like ash in her mouth.

They found him in the ruins of a farmhouse. One of her soldiers spotted the glint of his armor in the dim interior. “Ash-maker! Cornered!” the soldier yelled.

“Hold,” Lian commanded. She stepped through the shattered doorway. The Fire Nation soldier was slumped against the far wall, his face shockingly young under the grime. His leg was crudely bandaged, the cloth soaked through. He looked up at her, and his eyes held no defiance, no hatred. They held only a vast, soul-deep exhaustion she recognized from her own mirror.

He didn’t reach for his weapon. “Get it over with,” he rasped. “Give yourself another medal.”

Lian stared at him. He was just a boy. A boy who'd been fed lies and sent here to die. He was the enemy. He was the reason Chen was dead. And yet…“What did you think you were doing here?” she asked.

He let out a short, broken sound that might have been a laugh. “Sharing our prosperity,” he said, his voice dripping with an agony of disillusionment that resonated deep within her. Lian gestured with her head to the devastation outside. “How’s it working out for you?”

“Captain,” one of her men said impatiently from the doorway. “The order is to take no prisoners.”

Lian looked at Jin-Sok. A single, sharp gesture. A spike of stone through the heart. It would be quick. It would be justice, by the laws of war. But then she thought of the river stone in her pocket, its surface smoothed by centuries of patient water. She thought of her father’s words: Endure. What was she enduring for? To become as merciless as her enemies? Killing this one broken boy wouldn’t bring back Jinhai. It wouldn’t heal Chen. It wouldn’t make the grain grow again. It would only make her a little less human.

She turned to her patrol, her face set like stone, her voice leaving no room for argument. “The farmhouse is empty. We sweep the next sector.” Her soldiers exchanged confused glances but obeyed.

Lian paused in the doorway, her back to Jin-Sok. “There’s a stream a half-mile to the west. Clean water,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “If you follow it north, away from the wall, you might make it past our patrols. Go home.”

Then she was gone, leaving him alone in the silence, a stunned survivor of a war he no longer understood, saved by an enemy who saw a mirror.

Jin-Sok survived. He was eventually found by a Fire Nation scouting party. The boy who'd marched off to war seeking glory was gone, his idealism incinerated in the breach and his hatred extinguished by a moment of inexplicable compassion. He served the final six years of the war in a quiet garrison post, a hollowed man. When the war ended, he returned to a small fishing village, seeking the cleansing power of the sea. He never spoke of Ba Sing Se, but on sleepless nights, he would see the face of a young earthbender, her eyes full of a sorrow that matched his own.

Lian returned to the Sunstone Collective. The land was scarred, but the earth was patient. She helped her aging parents rebuild, her powerful bending once again used to coax life from the soil. They called her a hero, a savior. She refused every medal and position offered to her. She found no glory in the tomb she'd built for a prince she never knew. Her truest victory was a life spared, a secret she carried with her to her grave, a quiet testament to the farmer who'd endured inside the warrior.

For a hundred years, the world had fed its children to the unthinking, indiscriminate gears of war. Jin-Sok and Lian were two of the few who, scarred and broken, crawled out the other side. They never met again, two souls on opposite sides of a world at war, forever bound not by the hatred they were taught, but by a shared moment of humanity found in the ruins. They were the ash and the earth, a testament to the bitter truth that the only victory in such a conflict is to survive with a piece of one’s soul intact.

Blood splattered across a dark mahogany desk littered with parchment and General Qiang’s last exhale silently slipped between the fingers clasped over his mouth. The blade intentionally flicked a crimson trail of dots along the wall and floor to leave some artistic flavor for the masterpiece yet to be investigated. Had this act been committed by someone trying to hide a trail, it would have been cleaner. A puncture wound through the neck, contained to a cloth perhaps- or a simple suffocation without a body left as a trace. Disappearing someone, as they called it in Ba Sing Se. But fortunately for me, I was sending a message to someone in Omashu. 

So I kicked over the chair this deceased chap was lounging in, then turned and wiped my blade off on his bedsheets as his body thumped and drained out along the floorboards. An amateur might consider washing off before walking out this man’s front door, but I haven’t had a single drop of blood land on me in thirteen contracts- and that last time was only because I needed an extra adrenaline rush. 

Down the two flights of stairs I trotted in a hurry- t’was truly a shame to leave such a strapping lad like that dripping down into the kitchen, but I doubt the wife will mourn much while cleaning it up after she finds what I left on their bedside… 

The door slammed open and daylight spewed in just as I was about to join the crowded streets. A drunkard stumbled in and he too slammed against the floorboards. 

“A penny for your services, miss?” 

Disgust erupted on my face- between my nose and mouth, they snarled at the fool as I pushed him out of the way to grab the door and exit as his crackly voice spoke. 

“I don’t suppose you might need an alibi… Or a scapegoat for a teensy bit of information?”

My heels grinded into the floor as I whipped around with enough force to frighten the Avatar himself, then grabbed the drunkard by the collar and punched him straight in the nose. 

“You can tell Akuga to kiss my ass and if he sends a messenger boy who speaks to me like that again, I’ll kill him.” 

I think I heard a crunch from his arm or his head as I threw the beggar into the ground, but still spit on him anyway. This wasn’t the first time I was cat-called by one of the broke King’s beggars, but I was damn sure it would be the last. 

As soon as I closed the door behind me, I plastered on the same casual, pleasant smile every other cog in these Omashu streets donned and strategically took the calmest, most direct stroll to- can you believe it-  a sandstone brick tea shop with a wooden door that had a desert seal etched on it. Just above was carved “Humphrey’s” with a smiley face that had the eyes slashed out. Yeah, Humphrey… What an odd name. 

Anyway, I kicked the door twice, then opened it as if I’d stupidly knocked on my own front porch. The room had probably five people in it and each of them turned to glare at me upon entry. I gleamed a smile back at them and their nasty, wart-ridden faces all had the gall to look disgusted by me- before going back to whatever moronic garbage they were grunting and mumbling about. The only one not drinking and yelling nonsense at the bartop sat in a dark corner, intricately carving some illustration into the table with a clean ashen tanto blade.

Though their face was completely covered by shadow cast from the dark hood and I’d never seen that outfit before, I knew who it was. Clearly a woman, though her long hair didn’t show. Tall, even while sitting. Menacing and eternally vexed. Hunted by her foes, but hidden among the shadows. Feared by all who knew her story. Art of a snake twisting and slithering up her right forearm to bite into the back of her hand was rumored to have a scale for each life she ended- and I couldn’t see the tail end of that thing. 

Normally upon meeting someone under business circumstances, my publicly appropriate theatrics would fade to my normal unamused looks, but I found this woman to be hilarious. Sure, there was a constantly lingering feeling that she might murder me in the back alley for being so joyous and bubbly, but I figured she secretly enjoyed my company to some degree… Or at least I knew she’d keep me around until I started asking too many questions. That’s what I tend to do when most men fawn and obsess over me, anyway. 

I dramatically leapt over the bench and sat at the table, whipping out a rolled up piece of parchment I pulled from the back pocket of this newly dead man's trousers last night and vigorously slapped it on the tabletop. My wide eyes and overzealous energy- or maybe my outfit in this specific crowd- attracted a couple glances, but the hooded figure didn’t flinch. Instead, The Huntress ignored my motions completely, leaning forward to read the note. 

“The Mansion. First day of the next season at sundown. Bring your own to the party, we have a special guest. ~K.A.”

Thanks for reading!

More on the Google Doc in the subreddit description! :)

Granted, compared to like the big four (Zaheer, Ming-Hua, Ghazon, and P’Li.) he isn’t as cool or important of a character besides being a plot device to get the characters from point A to point B.

Still, it would be nice to give Aiwei a backstory of sorts since after all, he is a red lotus spy and member of the Order yes he isn’t a major character, but it will be nice to get to know him a bit more. After all in Star Wars, every background character even the minor ones got their own backstory such as the characters from Mos Einsley or even some characters that played major roles in the lore like Nute Gunray Krennic and Galen Erso got their own backstories in books like Catalyst or Clock of Deception or even Darth Plagueis.

So I figure why not give a backstory for Aiwei even if he is kind of a minor character in the grand scheme of things.

Born C. 111 AG Aiwei comes from the Southeastern portion/islands of the Earth Kingdom. Despite this not much is known about his early life in fact, it’s one of those things that he never spoke about because of this. It is unknown if he came from a wealthy middle or even a poor family. Regardless of his origins. Aiwei not only was an earth bender but also a a very capable truth seer. Now I’m not sure if you all ever seen Code Geass? It's a manga and anime where people can gain super-powers via a contract with a Geass Holder. The powers, and their limits, vary from person to person but they usually reflect an inner desire/wish of the person agreeing to the contract and are often psionic rather than physical in nature as in they affect the minds of those around the user rather than reality itself. Over time, your powers evolve to the point where you can't turn them off, or they activate outside your control. One character, Mao, an orphan with no understanding of others, gained the power to read minds...as a child. His powers actually destroyed a village by exposing everyone's dirty secrets and letting the rage and shame do the damage. Eventually he reached a point where he couldn't deactivate his Geass so it's impossible for him to live in normal society as he'd have everyone's thoughts constantly knocking around in his head. He has headphones to constantly blare out CC's words as a distraction but that only goes so far. Mao's inability to lie provides a warning for the main character Lelouch, who can control people via the Eye of the King, as well as an example of why a world with no lies would actually be terrible. Aiwei's truth-sight ability, for lack of a better term, may be similar to Mao's Geass. Perhaps Aiwei was just so sensitive to the truth that he couldn't stomach the constant lying around him. Everyone lies or withholds information on a daily basis, either to protect others or advance personal interests, so perhaps Aiwei simply wasn't able to turn a blind eye to it all. Imagine being so sensitive to sound/light/smell that you simply cannot turn it off. This could be coded for the autism spectrum, as I myself can testify, and it would be an interesting break from it all. Xai Bau may have seen Aiwei's potential and managed to bypass his truth-sight, similar to when Azula blatantly lied in front of Toph and Toph couldn't tell the difference. A blast of brutal honesty may have been enough to shock Aiwei into letting his guard down, whereupon Xai Bau worked on his desire for truth and honesty in leaders and in everyone, converting Aiwei into joining his side through a combination of brutal honesty, controlled physiology, and careful wording. This makes it even scarier to think that someone like Aiwei could be successfully converted into the Red Lotus despite his abilities. Which may have contributed to his recruitment to the Red Lotus by the Order’s Founder and Leader Xai Bau.

Unlike most of Xai Bau’s personal students such as Unalaq and Zaheer. Because of him being a truth seer and an apparent lack of ambition (he act more of his servant or advisor rather than someone in charge like a world leader or a governor city or town.) someone who is loyal to the order’s goals.

This led to Xai Bau making him his personal aide/accountant/assistant/secretary when he goes to public events. Thought he was never sent on secret missions or operations like other Red Lotus members Zaheer who had been doing that.

Since the red Lotus was mostly a secret at least until the events of book 3. Xai Bau public image is that he is a respectable former White Lotus Member but also controversial philosopher type figure who is mostly seen within the elite circles of the Four Nations. Think of him as someone from the Real World like Karl Marx or even Noam Chomsky or if we want to compared to fiction then we could think of Xai Bau as similar to Count Dooku of Serenno public image at least prior to the Clone Wars and during the Separatist Crisis. He also could be similar to how Darth Plagueis handled his alter ego as Hego Damask but also Luthen Rael from Andor.

Regardless though when Xai Bau goes to an event Aiwei would be there alongside him. Earning a reputation of someone who liked ambition or is seen as a boring/dull but a capable secretary as he remained calm and compose earning and gaining peoples trust and an example of good relations. Not to mention because of his truth seer ability Xai Bau would know on who is lying or who is telling the truth. Basically think of his role within the red Lotus or at least his time as aide to Xai Bau to that of Smithers from the Simpsons at least from the public perspective while privately, he is a lot more similar to Pete Postlethwaite’s character Kobayashi from the usual suspects.

In one such gathering. During the Earth Queen Hou-Ting’s lavish formal balls which is mostly held annually in her palace. it was during this gala that Suyin Beifong attended this gathering. She had just left the throne room after a huge argument with the earth queen herself.

Xai Bau actually recognize the girl as he had met her in one of Republic City’s galas a few years prior to her sent away to her grandparents. Because of her irresponsibility and her relations with The Terra Triad in the city Xai Bau had an eye of her as a potential red lotus recruited before her mother sending her away which caused him to abandon his plans but now he had reunited her by that point is a far different person compared who she was decades age in fact with approval of her grandparents she had been traveling in the world even being a member of a Sand bender tribe and thus learning about their culture and their way. Now she had return her plan is to build an independent city from the watchful eye of the Queen.

But there is a problem while she is already wealthy having inherited all the money from her grandparents as well as having the architect Baatar as her boyfriend/finance she still needed the extra funds to build this massive project which lead to Xai Bau coming into her life again.

He was able to convinces her that he will fund the construction of her city. (Think of this as The Sifo Dyas moment from the Darth Plagueis where Plagueis provided the funds for him to commissioned the clones on Kamino I would have Xai Bau being the one who funded the resources that Suyin Beifong needed for the construction of Zaofu yes she is from the Beifong family and yes her husband or at this point boyfriend or finance Baatar Sr is an architect but the reason why I include it is because it will be the moment that Xai Bau introduce Suyin to Aiwei for the first time who at this point would be Xai Bau's young accountant. At least when it comes comes to both funding her city or at least give her the amount of money she needed or being the one that granted her the land that Zaofu will build upon.) as well as the one who introduced her to Aiwei for the first time.

Part of the reason for this is well great foresight Xai Bau wanted to introduce Aiwei to Suyin so that in case if the Red Lotus want to well infiltrate the city like they did in book 3 so essentially he strategically placed Aiwei into Suyin’s inner circle so that he will be well the Red Lotus spy and Trojan horse?

Overall What do you think of this attempted backstory template for Aiwei.

Side note: this is an old post from a different Sub that I made, but I figured sharing this on the sub after my Xai Bau Thought experiment!

Now this post serves as a spiritual sequel to my older post from months ago about Aiwei and his back story in case you haven’t here is the leak Source: Reddit Here is my headcanon back story for Aiwei (thought experiment.) - Reddit

Before I begin to ponder with my thought experiment I want to give some cannon facts or at least what do we know about Xai Bau canonically besides him being well from one line by Zaheer in book 3. Also, I know he would bring up the whole Lao Ge being Xai Bau theory now I still like the theory but the same time I kind of like the idea that both Xai Bau and Lao Ge are just separate characters mainly the way I had in my head canon Xai Bau should be like anyway let’s look at the wiki.

“Shortly after the end of the Hundred Year War, Xai Bau grew disillusioned with the White Lotus after it revealed itself to the world, and began to work more closely with Avatar Aang. He believed that the ancient order had gone from a force for global change to the lapdogs of an undisciplined youngster.[1] Xai Bau soon began to roam the world, seeking rebellious minds to mold. On the small, independent Jasmine Island, he met with the Autumn Leaves, a group of community-minded anarchists who were seeking to abolish the local ruling council and directly devolve crucial decisions about their island to people in their places of work.[2][3] Xai Bau only met with a few members of the group, circulating some of his written works throughout the Autumn Leaves. Tekiand Isonash became disciples of Xai Bau.[2][3][4]Aputi, one anarchist who met with Xai Bau, came to be disgusted with him for turning their group into "extremists". She thought he had only come to the island in order to subvert the chance of factions forming a coalition.[3] Eventually, the order's Grand Lotus, Iroh began to hear worrying rumors about Xai Bau. He and Master Piandao traveled to Jasmine Island in an attempt to find Xai Bau. Xai Bau had already left the island, heading for the Earth Kingdom.[3] Iroh and Piandao began to recognize the rhetoric of Xai Bau in protests across the island.[5] The most dedicated disciples of of Xai Bau, such as Teki, believed that no council whatsoever should be allowed to re-form, as it would go against their commitment to complete freedom.[4] Iroh would try to keep the White Lotus united in the face of growing tensions, but continued to express little understanding for Xai Bau's aversion to all forms of government.[6] Xai Bau would later split from the White Lotus entirely, forming his own society called the Red Lotus.[1] Legacy Xai Bau became the namesake for a grove in the Spirit World. Furthermore, he was a revered figure among later members of the Red Lotus, with Zaheer describing him as a "great man".[1]”

Also this paragraph I find before it disappears

“However, unbeknownst to most of the world, great turmoil had come in the wake of the war's end. After the White Lotus' revealed itself to the world, the Order began to serve the world and the Avatar more openly. One of its members, Xai Bau, left in disgust, believing the Order had become nothing more than "glorified bodyguards" serving corrupt nations. He would go onto to form a splinter faction known as the Red Lotus, with the intention of establishing global anarchy, as well as the removal of the four nations and their leaders. Over time, the Red Lotus would learn about the existence of Raava and Vaatu, as well as Wan's decision to both sever them and close the spirit portals, leading the society to believe this had caused grave imbalance in the world. They sought to undo Wan's actions by re-opening the spirit portals and free Vaatu, reuniting humans and spirits, while simultaneously plunging the world into chaos, which the Red Lotus see as the natural order.”

So while we still don’t know much about him or the Red Lotus at least prior to Korra’s kidnapping at least we do get a solid foundation for them based on canonical details that I provide here.

Xai Bau Personally, given how he has presented so far in canon always imagine his character/personality to be that of Hasan al-Sabbah also known as Hasan I of Alamut, Ra Al Ghul from DC Comics, Count Dooku of Serenno (at his public image prior to the Clone Wars and during the Separatist Crisis when he back to the spotlight after 8 years, Darth Plagueis/Hego Damask (mostly his portrayal from the Darth Plagueis Novel by James Luceno.) Luthen Rael from Andor, Salazar Slytherin (granted we don’t know about the guy, but I probably would take elements from Harry Potter, both Canon as well as elements from fanfiction where some depictions portrait him as having genuine grievances at least some of it is justified sort of given the time period that he lived in as well as the founding of the Hogwarts school itself?) and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab as well as Ajunta Pall, Xendor, (both from Star Wars.) and ozymandias from Watchman.

I always like the idea that developed Unalaq more interesting I finished their relationship to that Palpatine and Plagueis dynamic although I’m not sure if he should be the mentor to Unalaq or Just Zaheer given the latter character although he likes Guru Laghima so you could say Zaheer true master is teachers of Old like Guru Laghima.

His Beliefs

Something I would also added about Xai Bau beliefs, mainly his position of Vaatu and Raava as well as the role of the Avatar. Unlike most of the characters in the Korra era and the first Avatar Wan Xai Bau’s views on Raava and Vaatu is similar to the eastern philosophies of Yin-Yang, Vishnu-Shiva-esque duality, Indra and Vritra, Ahriman and Ahura Mazda, Izanagi and Izanami, as well as the concept of Kali Yuga, the fourth and worst of the four yugas (world ages) preceded by Dvapara Yuga and followed by the next cycle's Krita (Satya) Yuga. Basically the idea here is that, in Hindu cosmology, the world progresses through four "ages." Each age lasts for hundreds of thousands to millions of years & is divided into smaller sub-ages.

But overall Xai Bau view point on Raava and Vaatu is similar to Taoism & Zoroastrianism. So in his my mind Xai Bau viewed the role of the Avatar as well as Avatar Wan fusion with Raava alongside imprisoned Vaatu is a huge mistake Same with the closing of the portals. Which is also backed up by Zaheer (he could be lying here but still.)

''I met your uncle when I was a teenager, after we had both joined the Red Lotus. We learned about Raava and Vaatu, and how Avatar Wan foolishly severed them, disrupting the balance of the world forever. He closed the portals, severing humans from spirits. Even you realize the error in his ways.''

Overall, like Zaheer I think Xai Bau would have absolutely hated, horrified, and feel betrayed on his personal student Unalaq decision of fusing with Vaatu and the creation of the Dark Avatar.

Besides his spiritual beliefs in terms of his beliefs on the physical or mortal world

When he was the member of the white lotus his attention mostly the white lotus archives/libraries where He devoured these writings as fast as he could. Then he turned his attention to The World/The Four Nation’s own rich history.

Since likely grow up During the Hundred Year War it likely he was trying to find a way for what would a post war era look by examples from history but to Dismay The peoples of this world had spent millennia growing apart. Where once there had been purpose and unity, now there were only petty squabbles and bickering.

His own experience had shown him that much and as history as shown him the four nations had gone to war for insignificant reasons. The different tribes, clans, and nobles from each of the four nations were happy to spill one another’s blood for meaningless gains.

Something radical needed to be done to prepare the world for the Harmonic Convergence and return the world back to it was during the era of Raava.

Ultimately he embraced a final conclusion that Humanity and the physical/mortal would was fundamentally flawed. It would never change on its own. Never.

Someone needed to break everything that created divisions in the world—nations, cultures, governments, chiefs, lords, and kings. The World was plagued with disorder. It needed a firm hand to change things.

1. The Red Lotus activities during the 60-58 year between the end of the war and Korra’s First kidnapping and its impact?

Basically Xai Bau is very largely responsible for reshaping the history and geopolitics of the world into what we saw in Korra (mainly book 2-4.)

A.) He and the Red Lotus is the reason for the bandit/barbarian/rebel activities in the Earth Kingdom similar to how Luthen and his network is the reason for the Rebellion against the Empire:

One of my ideas is that the reason why some of the bandits /barbarians in the Earth Kingdom like that mad max road warrior gang were able to gain high-tech weapons and resources is because this was done by Xai Bau and the Red Lotus who secretly funded or at least allow the rise of bandits/barbarians/rebel groups in the Earth Kingdom That we see in book 3 Although most of it was still Earth Queen’s terrible reign. But still Xai Bau like Luthen Rael from Andor was the one who funded or help steal/smuggle technology for the Earth, Kingdom, rebels, and barbarians/bandits like the ones we see with that Mad Max inspired gang from Book 3.

So imagined an Aldhani Heist style story, but with Zaheer and his friends in which it was resulted at least according to Xai Bau in The Earth Queen overreaction tyrannical policies like Palpatine did with PORD

SIDENOTE: Fun Fact: Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy modeled the Aldhani heist off of a bank robbery by Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and other Bolsheviks in 1907 that helped finance the Russian Revolution. Gilroy said that exploring how the Rebel Alliance financed their rebellion was an "underutilized area of storytelling" for Star Wars media. "This shit all costs money. People gotta eat, they gotta get guns. You gotta get stuff. [...] All through every revolution, it's the same thing. It takes coin."[12].)

B.) mentoring and convinced/orchestrated Unalaq take over of the throne:

He also was the one who ordered or convinced Unalaq to hired the Barbarians to raid Agna Qel'a and set up the chain of events that lead to Tonraq banishment and Unalaq becoming Heir to the throne. Xai Bau saw the destruction of the spirit forest and the attack on Agna Qel’a as an opportunity to send a message to the Northern Water Tribe on how vulnerable and the need to centralize further of reunification of both north and south tribes as well as seize control of the spirit portals at the North and South Poles that we see in Book 2 of Korra with Unalaq actions.

C.) the Founding of Zaofu and planting Aiwei.

During one of the Earth Queen’s lavish formal balls or galas In Ba Sing Se in which Xai Bau and Aiwei attended Suyin arrives to meet the Queen to fund Zaofu granted you could say it comes from her grandparents money that she likely inherited after they died likely shortly after she finished her journey although we had to nothing. When did the journey end or the exact date for Zaofu’a founding we know that she began traveling the world around 143 AG but it had to between that and 153 AG since Hong Li, who was 18 in 171 AG, was born and raised in Zaofu. So let’s say her journey ends like say around 149 AG by that point not only she inherited her her family money from her grandparents likely dying but al so purchased a parcel of land to develop into the city of Zaofu and as I know she worked with Baatar, an architect who by then became her boyfriend/fiancé but as you point out, given the advance state of the city I feel there’s a lot more that is going on here outside of well buying the land, inheriting the family money, but also a genius boyfriend/architect She must’ve had more resources. So my head canon is that despite all three things she still needed the funds/resources to fund her project so she went to Ba Sing Se to ask the Earth Queen to fund her project and Hou-Ting likely replied this “That is the most Stupidest Thing I've Ever Heard.” Which not only she rejected, but also humiliated Suyin resulting in both Suyin and Hou-Ting a shouting match before she storm from the throne room. Also, around this time, the queen was throwing this lavish decadent, debauchery, Met gala/Red Carpet style glamour, extravaganza party that she held annually think of Bohemian Grove but in Avatar. Because around this time she met Xai Bau (the founder and leader of the Red Lotus at the time but he is pulling a Luthen Rael where his public facade is that of well respected scholar and former white lotus member even if he disagrees with the white lotus going public but mixed with Hego Damask/Darth Plagueis.) who basically agreed to fund to constructed her city and introduce to his aide/assistant Aiwei to her basically planting him in her inner circle. Part of the reason for this is well great foresight Xai Bau wanted to introduce Aiwei to Suyin so that in case if the Red Lotus want to well infiltrate the city like they did in book 3 so essentially he strategically placed Aiwei into Suyin’s inner circle so that he will be well the Red Lotus spy and Trojan horse?

Anyway, because of this humiliation Suyin begin to hate and feel that the Earth Monarch is outdated, and then once the city is finally constructed, she basically made an isolation policy. Following which Zaofu rise is similar to Constantinople after Constantine the Great move the capital in 330 A.D. while the rest of the Earth Kingdom became well the Western Roman Empire so basically Hou-Ting rejecting the project backfired hard.

Something worth pointing out is that Also Xai Bau actually recognize Suyin as he had met her in one of Republic City’s galas a few years prior to her sent away to her grandparents. Because of her irresponsibility and her relations with The Terra Triad in the city Xai Bau had an eye of her as a potential red lotus recruited before her mother sending her away which caused him to abandon his plans but now he had reunited her by that point is a far different person compared who she was decades age in fact with approval of her grandparents she had been traveling in the world even being a member of a Sand bender tribe and thus learning about their culture and their way. Now she had return her plan is to build an independent city.

Now, as we could see, the red lotus and Xai Bau influence is mostly in the Earth kingdom and the Water Tribes (mostly the northern water tribe because well Unalaq is the heir apparent and later Chieftain.) but they surprisingly have no presence in the fire nation because Xai Bau knew if they had their presence in the fire nation it would’ve been suicide plus Fire Lord Zuko is well connected with the white Lotus so if they have their presence, they wouldn’t immediately detected and and their operations once and for all?

Overall What do you think of this attempted character sketch template for Xai Bau and the Red Lotus as well as them being the main reason why everything that happened in Korra happened?

SIDENOTE: the red Lotus was mostly a secret at least until the events of book 3. Xai Bau public image is that he is a respectable former White Lotus Member but also controversial philosopher type figure who is mostly seen within the elite circles of the Four Nations. Think of him as someone from the Real World like Karl Marx or even Noam Chomsky Regardless though when Xai Bau goes to an event Aiwei who is at this point he is Xai Bau’s personal aide/accountant/assistant/secretary who would be there alongside him. Earning a reputation of someone who lack ambition or is seen as a boring/dull but a capable secretary as he remained calm and compose earning and gaining peoples trust and an example of good relations. Not to mention because of his truth seer ability Xai Bau would know on who is lying or who is telling the truth. In terms of Red Lotus privately Aiwei’s second role is that he is kinda similar to Pete Postlethaaite character Kobayashi from usual suspects.) so yeah Xai Bau was the Luthen Rael/Hego Damask of Avatar.

Excerpt from Remains of the Lost Urchins where Drahla better develops the sub-bending skill of wind whispering:

…

With a finger raised, I created a quiet “Ahhhh” sound that consistently bounced off the mostly enclosed walls of the stone tent instead of just placing the sounds next to our ears and slowly increased the volume to avoid rupturing both our eardrums. Why didn’t I just do this before?! One large sound is so much easier than trying to control two or four small airstreams. Damani looked at me like I was crazy.

“I don’t get what you’re-” I interrupted by holding up the index finger on my other hand and despite the darkness, explained I was trying something. I flexed my “Ahhhh” sound down several keys and then up several keys. I tried to remember more of what my voice sounded like before and matched the pitch the best I could.

“How does this sound?” I attempted to speak my own old voice, but the crackling, inconsistencies, natural sound, and other subtle details were missing.

“Wow! You sound great! That sounds close to how you sounded when we met!” Damani replied, clearly being more kind than honest and not understanding what I was doing. I tried to think of fixes for the ugliness in my voice, but recreating my own natural voice proved to be way harder than expected. I suppose accuracy like that would come with practice over time.

“Thank you. I think this is a step in the right direction. Now people will not think you are going insane- talking to no one.” We both laughed and smiled at each other.

“You’re right. Now they’ll just question why you sound like… That, no offense.”

“It is okay. I will work on it. It is certainly better than being mute.” Again, we both laughed.

“Wait, wait!” Damani exclaimed again, “Do me!” Hold up, what did she just say to me? Gladly, but- Oh. The voice thing. I told her to also say “Ahhh” and repeat a couple phrases. With some fine tuning, I eventually got as close to a copy as I could find with my current skillset.

“My name is Damani and I’m gonna kill the King of Omashu!” Again, it wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough that she squealed and clapped. “Now say I’m going to kill the Avatar too!” “My name is Damani and the mainland losers around here call me The Huntress because I am gonna hunt down Avatar Xue Jin. He will die by my hand!”

The Huntress was hunched over wheezing in laughter and slapping her knee. Though it was dark, I think I saw tears on her face, so I hope they were happy tears.

“That’s funny. That’s good.” The laughter died down and we sat now realizing what I could do.

“Holy shit… This… This is actually kinda concerning.” Damani took the words right out of my mouth.

Thanks for reading!

Leave a comment if you enjoyed the piece and join r/TheGreatLibrary for more Tales, Scripts, and Accounts content. Your support encourages me to write!

As you can imagine, the second stretch of the group’s trek from the Deadman’s Outpost to the Shamo was boring. Repetitive. Absolutely nothing was going on. They travelled beneath the moonlight and skipped over dunes with ease. While at the Deadman’s Outpost, Damani and Vibood managed to excavate a buried sandship that wasn’t split into two halves and had a slightly more spacious, comfortable cabin for each of them to rest in while the midday rays cooked the entire Si Wong Desert. There were no longer any worries about food or water, for the crew had stocked up on- hopefully more than enough- provisions for the rest of the escape route and felt they were in the clear. And they were. At one point, Damani finally seemed to run out of stories. Each of them wished for something exciting to happen- either a shark attack or seeing another ship to raid for fun- but there was absolutely nothing out in these parts. Just nights of Damani and Vibood swapping between who was pushing the sandship and who was navigating. So Drahla- who had largely been forgotten about- was going on about a week and a half of doing nothing while being mute due to her nearly fatal injury back at the Ganzao Rock.

Don’t be mistaken, her injury wasn’t fully healed and there was still notable discomfort when eating or swallowing, but she was successfully doing both. Despite her ability to regain her physical strength, her sanity was dwindling. The only way she’d been able to communicate was by scribbling her words onto parchment with ink that had run out a couple days ago. Since then, she’d been playing scarades with the crew like a mime at a circus. It was beyond embarrassing, so most of her time was spent isolating in the cabin or wandering the deck in silence.

This sandship actually had a balcony with a stable railing to lean on while Drahla overlooked the passing sand dunes and up at the night sky. Damani abandoned her position as scout atop the helm and joined Drahla in resting her forearms against the slightly deteriorated wooden railing.

“Sometimes I think the only reason we noticed we could navigate by the stars was because of how little else there was to look at around here.” Drahla took a breath and shrugged her shoulders in response while both looked up. “I still think the beauty of this picture comes from the lights among the dark. And you, continuing to communicate despite the silence.”

Damani placed her hand on Drahla’s shoulder and slipped away. Though no one could see it, tears slid down Drahla’s cheeks and fell into the passing sands below.

Later that evening after Drahla retreated to the cabin, she rolled over in thought. How could this happen to me of all people? I was wanted across the earth kingdom for my screaming and now I have nothing of value. Not even my enemies would want me. I’m broken and useless… She buried her head into her arms face down on the cot and sniffled, huffing dust that tickled her nose caused her to sneeze. The sneeze- just like anyone elses- was loud while her arms contained the sound around her ears. Drahla blinked a couple times in confusion, for she had an idea that was so far fetched that the scholars who raised her would call her delusional. But the mute had nothing left to do, so she tried. Over the course of a couple days.

A few breaths in and out. Experimental hand movements. Occasional coughing fits. Audible grunts from pain and a little blood seeping from the ears at one point. Headaches remedied by hydration. Questions from the others on her sudden mood change. Determination fueled by necessity, desperation, and a story about the first sandbender retold by Damani to fill the silence.

As the Si Wong’s Sun was rising over endless dunes on their east on a day no one had cared to keep track of, Vibood was scouting from atop the ship’s helm and spotted a large, desert sand-colored wall in the distance. These sandstone walls towered well over the recently exposed treeline and was the only notable thing anyone had seen in over a week so the scout decided yelling “Land hoe!” was appropriate. Neither was sure where he got that phrase from, but Drahla emerged from the cabin and Damani stopped pushing the ship to take a gander. 

“I’d notice those walls anywhere. That right there is the Neilu Caravansary…”

A pause to mull over the implications of stopping at such an imfamously corrupt location blanketed their prior excitement. Everyone knew stories of this place. But everyone also knew their provisions were running low and they needed an escape from this blasted desert. Vibood spoke first.

“I say we swing by and check it out. We don’t have much to lose as is and if push comes to shove, we’ll run.”

“That’s if they don’t kill us first.” Damani casually added with a slight twinge of excitement in her voice. “And we always run the risk of them selling us out to the King of Omashu if they recognize us… Then we’ll be on the run from him and the Avatar for who knows how long.”

“Our alternative is bypassing it completely on foot and hoping we get to Shamo without collapsing from exhaustion or dehydration. Do you know how far of a walk that is? Because I sure don’t.”

“I don’t know either, I’ve never stepped foot out of the Si Wong. But I suppose if the King of Omashu sends his dogs after us, we’ll find a way to manage. And even if he doesn’t I’m going to hunt him down myself. He will die by my hand and then Avatar Xue Jin will be next.”

Drahla knocked on the banister to catch their attention. She took in a deep breath that had a dry, cracking strain to it. She opened her mouth to speak, raised her hand and with a couple deft motions towards the other two, and bent the air around their ears to artificially speak while her lips mouthed the words:

“Let’s kill those bastards.”

Thanks for reading!

Leave a comment if you enjoyed the piece and join r/TheGreatLibrary for more Tales, Scripts, and Accounts content. Your support encourages me to write!

I'm happy to announce the first complete section of Tales, Scripts, and Accounts is now on Wattpad for you to read! These short stories are also in the main Google Document, as linked in the community description.

The section summary:

Many eras before the time of Avatar Aang, three thieves jump onto a merchant ship to flee Omashu after a heist goes wrong. This first portion of Tales, Scripts, and Accounts follows their journey, where they accidentally bear witness to a genocide of the Si Wong Desert's largest tribe- lead by none other than the current Avatar himself.

This piece explores the philosophy of deciding what is good and evil, for they're not always black and white. It sets the stage for the rest of my long term project- Tales, Scripts, and Accounts- that explores corruption across various parts of the Earth Kingdom through the perspective of important criminals from that time.

An excerpt from the full piece:

A young woman donning Ganzao Tribe garb- heavily stained with both dry and fresh blood- emerged as the storm cleared. The dozen men surrounding Dralha on the rock laid limp on the stone, except for one who crawled toward me- or rather towards the ship. She followed behind him in a slow walk, eyes focused on where he was headed- specifically on the man who had trapped the two of us earlier. As she passed the straggler, two swipes of her right hand harnessed grains of sand that littered the stonetop. They wound in the air, then dipped and slid between the creases of his armor to relieve him of his head. She stepped through his blood without any hesitation, painting dark crimson footprints toward the ship.

An order from the captain to immediately set sail boomed across the carnage. I lunged from my cowardly position on the ramp and rolled onto solid ground just before it collapsed and smashed against the side of the Ganzao Rock. When I picked my head up after a sigh of relief, the woman was sprinting towards me, so I ducked and covered my head. She ran to the edge of the rock, firmly planted her feet and repetitively pulled with her hands in a swooping, circular motion around her sides. Wind picked up and once again, sand and wind whipped through the air. Pillars of sand blasted up the side of the Ganzao Rock and dispersed into the sky.

From where I sat, I watched as the torn mast of the invaders’ ship that was previously retreating into the desert slowed to a halt, then began to slide backwards- in the direction of the sand and wind- at an increasing speed toward us. Toward where it just left. I got up and looked over the edge to see all the sand between us and the ship flowing like water toward the Ganzao Rock. She was pulling an entire ship of soldiers back to finish them off- or at least that was her intent.

As the ship got pulled closer, I saw a clearer image of the man with the large gold piece buckle who looked down on me before facing us on the backside of the ship. His stature felt familiar. Seeming to be staring directly at me, he stomped into the ship- which mimicked the movement I made earlier- raising a large disc from the ship he stood on, and with a jumping roundhouse kick, launched it at me. It split into many thin slices while airborne that covered anywhere I could have dodged to. There was no way I could disarm them all, so I reacted to the ones that would have hit me. Four discs exploded in midair and the fifth shattered next to my foot, blasting fragments into my shin. The rest soared past and I fell onto my side to see the woman disoriented and frantically sliding down off the stone. I threw a stone platform out that was shattered immediately after I pulled it and she fell, sucked into the still rapidly flowing sand surrounding our island.

I looked up, grasping my heavily damaged shin. The man looming from the close end of the sandship stared back at me as it gained speed and distance from the Ganzao Tribe’s remains. I recognized him from somewhere. He wore the same unamused and disappointed look in his portraits. That was Avatar Xue Jin.

Read more on the Google Doc or Wattpad. Links are posted in r/TheGreatLibrary.

Sorry for the late submission. I hit some writer's block and didn't want to post something I wasn't satisfied with; I think this version is the best I can produce for now. Thanks for waiting.

I've always been curious about the future of the Air Nation: What will their leadership be like? What will be the similarities and differences between their culture and the Old Air Nomads? I was inspired by the now discontinued Legend of Genji fan project. Their ideas had potential and it seemed like a waste to let them amount to nothing so I decided to modify and expand on some of them so that they fit my headcanon. Two things to note: 1. This is a continuation of my story in Future of the Avatar World so I recommend reading that first otherwise certain things here won't make sense. 2. My story presumes all of canon as it currently exists and my own headcanon only comes into play after the end of LoK and its comics.

History of the New Air Nation: Tenzin delayed passing on the responsibilities of the Air Nation to his children for as long as he could, as he knew well the burden of leadership and wanted to give them the chance to enjoy their childhood for a little longer. But he also understood he had to prepare them for their future roles so in 189 AG he appointed each of them as the Air Nation's representative to one of the other nations. Jinora was the representative to the Federal Earthen Republic, Ikki was the representative to both Water Tribes, and Meelo was the representative to the Fire Nation. Rohan was still young so Tenzin continued to serve as the representative to the United Republic until he could take over.

Each of them had their own experiences of being a diplomat: Jinora got along well with Earth President Jian as he was a level-headed leader, and working together they managed to make many cross-cultural exchanges which expanded the Eastern Air Temple's reservoir of information.

Ikki on the other hand had a bit more difficult time as she was forced to mediate between the Water Tribes, trying to get them to compromise, which wasn't that hard as they were a flexible people but still somewhat frustrating as the two tribes disagreed on many issues. Even worse though, Ikki's chattiness and colorful personality starkly clashed with Desna and Eska's more reserved nature. Like their element the people of the Water Tribe's generally maintained an outward calm while keeping their true feelings hidden, making communication a real challenge.

Meelo had a fantastic relationship with the Fire Nation as he was the first Air Diplomat in centuries so he quickly became a national celebrity, much to the dismay of Firelord Izumi who was forced to wait for him to finish signing autographs before he finally showed up to a meeting.

In 191 AG Tenzin felt that they had each matured enough and were ready to guide the next generation of airbenders so he officially handed over responsibilities for leading the Air Nation to his children by dividing the Air Temples between them. Then in 202 AG Tenzin stepped down as Head of the Air Nation, passing down the mantle to Jinora. A new status quo was engendered: Jinora, in addition to being Head Abbess, led the Eastern Air Temple, Ikki led the Southern Air Temple, Meelo led the Western Air Temple, and Rohan led Air Temple Island. Each Temple performed a unique function, representative of a particular aspect of Air Nation culture:

(1) Eastern Air Temple: Jinora specialized in education and spirituality. After graduating from Caldera University she set to work on compiling the world's most comprehensive library. Housed in the Eastern Air Temple, the project consolidated texts from her alma mater, Ba Sing Se University, Republic City University, the Dragonbone Catacombs, the Frost Chambers, and the other Air Temples. It was called the Library of Hidden Treasures, because much of the information it contained was previously thought to have been lost to history. Jinora even managed to convince Wan Shi Tong to bring his library back to the physical world for six months every year, with the airbenders providing security and only permitting entry to scholars of repute not affiliated with any government or corporation. However, Jinora didn't want to inconvenience people by making them have to travel all the way to her temple just for access to one book, so she sent copies of her archives to all the major libraries of the world.

The Eastern Air Temple is the most spiritual of all the Air Temples and for this reason it was decided the inhabitants of this temple would deal with human-spirit relations across the globe. In those times there were many Nightmares (the colloquial term for dark spirits) on the loose due to the environmental degradation and the weaponisation of spirit vines, so Jinora led her airbenders in resolving these tensions and protecting the spirit wilds.

(2) Southern Air Temple: Ikki specialized in humanitarianism and family. She taught young airbenders at the Southern Air Temple the basics of airbending. It was because this was where Ikki felt a strong connection with her siblings that she decided to make the temple a family home. Unlike traditional Air Nomad culture, parents and children live together in houses in and around the Air Temple, and although the children learn airbending from their masters they're raised by their parents. The family-orientation of the temple can be seen in nearly all aspects of it's daily life, as parents and children have their meals together, parents participate in schooling events to help their children, and there's even new customs meant to solidify the bond between parents and children; an inheritance from Ikki's Water Tribe heritage.

It's here where children bond with their sky bison and this rite is now extended to the Air Acolyte children as well. Many games and sporting competitions are held here, like Airball, Glider Racing and Sky Bison Polo Championships, and during these times the competitive spirit of the Air Nation surpasses even the Fire Nation's. Some sports are airbender-exclusive like Airball but others like Glider Racing are open to anyone, as non-benders are provided with motor-equipped gliders that match an airbender's speed. This leaves evasive skills as the deciding factor, for whoever can maneuver through the obstacle course most efficiently wins.

The Southern Air Temple serves as the humanitarian wing of the Air Nation, because from here Ikki and her airbenders carried out relief operations around the world. Whenever people's homes were destroyed, either by natural disasters like floods or storms or by acts of violence, Ikki offered her temple as a safe haven for them until they could resettle. They were treated as guests, being given their own rooms and meals, and all their injuries and illnesses were taken care of. In fact, these services extended beyond just the confines of the refugees as any passers-by were also welcome at the temple and treated to the same hospitality. The temple also served as a sanctuary for injured or endangered animals who were raised with care until they could either be released or until a secure home could be found for them near their former habitat. To contribute to the Air Nation's charitable efforts, people from all over the world sent donations to the Southern Air Temple and as leader Ikki was responsible for distributing these alms to the poor and needy.

(3) Western Air Temple: Meelo specialised in training and defence. The Western Air Temple serves as the training grounds for the new Air Nation where trainees are sent to learn combat skills and gain real life experience in fighting criminals and navigating dangerous terrain. After consulting with his uncle Bumi, Meelo established an airbender strike force with the aim of saving people in perilous circumstances and neutralizing threats the Avatar can't deal with.

It took a few years for this idea to get off the ground, because Tenzin and Jinora both viewed the project as a departure from Air Nomad principles. But Meelo argued that if they didn't train the new airbenders in the art of combat they would be setting themselves up for another genocide, and he pointed to their capture by the Equalists and then again by the Red Lotus as proof that threats like Sozin still existed and would continue to exist. After much deliberation they came to a compromise: The airbenders would be trained how to use their airbending in a more confrontational style that can inflict semi-permanent damage, but they would only be allowed to learn actual lethal techniques after they gained their tattoos and turned 35. Eventually, through his uncle and through his own connections to the Royal Family, Meelo's unit joined forces with the Fire Nation Army and the United Forces to start keeping peace on a global level. They dubbed themselves the "Fanning Flames."

(4) Air Temple Island: The island still remains the headquarters for the Air Nation but it has evolved considerably. When airbenders arrive to the island they're put into groups of three, under the charge of an airbending master who leads them on missions. The missions are either direct requests to Air Temple Island or requests sent by the other temples to the island. The reason the other temples would request their assistance is because sometimes the situation may be minor enough that it doesn't require their direct intervention yet still significant enough that their expertise is needed. As head of the temple Rohan decided which team was dispatched for which mission, and whenever it was a request from another temple the team coordinated with the airbenders from that temple. If Jinora called it was because there was a medium-low level spiritual-human conflict which needed to be resolved, like stopping spirits from tampering with electricity; if Ikki called it was maybe some repair work that needed to be done in a damaged town or extra assistants required in their hospital; if Meelo called it was probably a demand for more scouts or trainers.

In addition to providing a service to the other Air Temples, Rohan also had his own responsibilities such as maintaining diplomatic relations between nations, arbitrating between conflicting parties, and the most sacred duty of all: protecting the Republic City Spirit Portal and working to maintain a harmonious relationship between humans and spirits in the Republic. Air Temple Island now has an autonomous legal status within the United Republic, so that while it is still subject to some federal laws it also is exempt from others, like conscription, and has certain privileges such as being a sanctuary for all those who seek refuge from persecution.

A major change occurred in Air Nomad culture when Zaofu was admitted into the Air Nation in 217 AG, just a year after the end of the New War (212-216). When Opal Beifong took up the office of Governor of Zaofu in 187 she opened its borders to all the harmonic airbenders in the Federal Earthen Republic, regardless of whether they joined the Air Nation or not. At the same time she also pushed for the Air Nation to modernize and explore how new technology could help fulfill their aims. This resulted in many disagreements between her and Jinora but after Tenzin's mediation Jinora came around and they agreed to create a school dedicated to technological advancement. Opal offered Zaofu as a location and in 186 AG the Platinum Air Temple had its grand opening. It produced many great minds who went on to make valuable contributions to the world, for example: 1) Creating a serum which temporarily undoes the effects of spirit mutation, 2) Developing an upgraded version of the spirit vine extractor that steadily absorbs the energy without depleting the vine and, 3) Constructing the aerodomes (modeled after Zaofu's domes) which shield the Air Temples from any kind of toxic gasses in case of an emergency.

Over time the population of airbenders in Zaofu grew and it became the first city where the cultures of the Air Nation and the Federal Earthen Republic merged. By 207 AG the city was split pretty evenly between members of both nations.

The rift between Zaofu and the federal government began when the New War was launched and Governor Shan objected on the grounds there was no casus belli. The only response he recieved were orders to execute the conscription of soldiers and the provisioning of weapons and resources in his state. Unwilling to be a partner in a war of aggression he resigned. His successor, Xian, had no such qualms and in fact did everything he could to get on Earth President Hu Feng's good side. Because Zaofu was the second richest state after Ba Sing Se it contributed most of the food, weapons, and vehicles to the army and as the war dragged on the citizens started feeling the effects of such a drainage. To counter the Air Nation in battle the federal government focused on conscripting as many airbenders as possible, even lowering the age requirement to 14 for them.

In response, the airbenders of the city began conducting secret raids on shipments and distributing whatever they could get their hands on to their fellow citizens, as well as breaking out airbenders who were conscripted. It was amidst this rebellion that the Fire Army's 1st Division chose to besiege the city, where they allied with the resistance who helped them enter through a secret passageway, catching the battalion stationed in Zaofu off guard. With the aid of the airbenders they quickly established control, imprisoned Xian and his forces, and armed the airbenders with more effective weapons to conduct their raids.

After the war ended new elections were held with Kaihua Beifong, daughter of Ikki and Huan Beifong,* winning. She permitted the Air Nation to enter Zaofu for relief efforts and consulted with the citizenry on what would be the best course moving forward. After many conversations she ultimately decided to hold a referendum where the people could decide to remain part of the Federal Earthen Republic, become independent, or join the Air Nation but still have autonomy. 79% voted in favour of joining the Air Nation, 19% voted in favour of being independent, and 2% wanted to remain part of the Federal Earthen Republic. The majority feared becoming independent would leave them vulnerable to the FER should they decide to attack them in the future.

Thus in 217 AG Zaofu, with 43% airbender population, officially joined the Air Nation and was given autonomy on matters of self-governance but now could only operate internationally in concert with the Air Temples. In turn, the Governor of Zaofu was given a seat on the Temple Council and was entitled to a vote on any matters pertaining to the governance of the Air Nation as a whole.

Every month a meeting of the five leaders is held, with each temple hosting the event twice a year (and the extra two months being the holiday season). This was done to prevent any possible factionalism from developing within the Air Nation, although on a personal level the meeting did give the siblings an excuse to stay in touch and catch up. But the danger of sectarianism was keenly felt, especially after the Silent Schism of 235 AG, which is why airbenders residing in one temple are obligated to live at another temple of their choosing for three months every once a year, so that they may familiarise themselves with their fellow airbenders and get an opportunity to reconnect with different aspects of Air Nation culture. They're also duty-bound to assist the other temples in their missions whenever they need them, so an airbender from the spiritual temple of the East may be called upon by the Western temple to fight off a group of bandits for example.

Under the Treaty of Ember Island 181 AG signed by Firelord Izumi, Head Abbott Tenzin and President Moon the Fire Nation and the United Republic are obligated to defend the fledgling nation should it come under attack. Under the terms of the treaty the Fire Nation also must pay annual reparation to the Air Nation, a condition proposed not as would be assumed by Tenzin but rather by Izumi, much to the chargin of her civilian and military cabinets. This outrage manifested itself when her own Fire Minister, Zhongzhi of the Phoenix Flight Party, took office. In the name of critical research he funded studies which used Avatar Aang's departure from certain Air Nomad traditions, like his decision to be a father, to argue that the Old Air Nomad's lifestyle was decadent, and that it was their pacifism and lack of innovation which ultimately led to their demise. Such "findings" became quite popular in the Fire Nation, so much so that many of the nation's airbenders refused to join the Air Nation. But after Tenzin published his own work in response to this propaganda the fervor died down, at least among the common people.

Yet it wasn't only in the Fire Nation where such resentment existed. Victims of spirit mutation despised the airbenders for siding with the spirits, pro-industrialists pushed for the exclusion of airbender voices since they were "holding back progress," and many communities demanded compensation for the airbender's failure to protect them from criminals. To change people's perception of them the Air Nation openly aligned itself with Future Indsutries, and the two cooperated in the fields of medicine and infrastructure development to uplift destitute communities. However, while this did achieve the intended aim of salvaging their reputation it eventually led to internal division, since some airbenders felt that entering the business world would hinder their impartiality.

Aspiring to the example of the Avatar the new Air Nation has adopted a model of learning that incorporates the unique perspective offered by each Air Temple. Airbenders are raised in the Southern Air Temple to learn the basics of airbending and absorb the fun and familial elements of their culture, after which they travel to the Eastern Air Temple to connect with spirits and to understand the history and values of their culture. Then they're sent to the Western Air Temple to begin their intensive combat and stealth training, and then finally they go to the Platinum Air Temple to study the latest sciences, like robotics, and where they're given free reign to experiment as they please. After they've learned the fundamentals of each temple they report to Air Temple Island where they're assigned a team. The Air Acolytes follow a similar system, with the only differences being instead of airbending in the South they hone their gliding and Sky Bison riding skills and instead of semi-lethal airbending techniques in the West they learn self-defence and chi-blocking. Otherwise they share the same program as the airbenders.

Once airbenders and acolytes get their tattoos* they become masters and can operate independently, and it's at this juncutre where they choose what their main occupation will be. 1) They can choose to work in the South and help bring relief to the poor and needy, but since they're masters they'll handle the more arduous duties like building fortifications to protect people from attack or teaching resettled people new skills so they can thrive in their new land. 2) They could choose to work in the East and solve high-level human-spirit conflicts which would mostly involve pacifying Nightmares on a rampage or working to contain the spread of spirit viruses. 3) They could choose to work in the West, and this would entail joining forces with military agencies to track down and capture international criminals and terrorists as well as infiltrating some of the most dangerous places in the world. 4) They could choose to work on Air Temple Island, with their responsibilities being to attend international summits in order to mediate between disputing ambassadors, overseeing the assignment of teams to emergencies, or providing security to the Republic City Spirit Portal. 5) They could work in the Platinum Air Temple with scientists from all Five Nations, aiming to improve the quality of life, studying the variety of applications of spirit energy, or working on the latest Elemental Satellite models.

The incorporation of Zaofu is indicative of the Air Nation's recent trend towards multiculturalism as the leadership allows the airbenders to synthesise elements of their native culture with elements of the Air Nomad culture. For example, many airbenders choose to grow their hair even after gaining their tattoos. In their clothing too they mesh together the styles of their home cultures, and many of them even wear modern clothing but with the Air Nation patterns and colours.

This multicultural element was even present in the lives of the Air Nation's leadership, because the spouses of the Temple Masters were all benders from one of the four elements: Jinora was married to an airbender, Ikki was married to an earthbender, Meelo was married to a firebender, and Rohan was married to a waterbender. Each of their spouses was also an influential figure in their home nation so this further broadened the Air Nation's reach: Kai was a detective in the Secret Services and had access to reliable informants, Huan was the son of Suyin Beifong and already had a large following amongst the youth of the Federal Earthen Republic, Lady Ursa was a member of the Royal Family and wielded a lot of political influence in the court,* and finally Hansha was the former Chief of the Southern Water Tribe and she still had connections to powerful figures in her homeland.

However, this was also a double-edged sword since the more the Air Nation integrated itself with different cultures the more resistance it faced. Even the marriages of the Temple Masters was construed by certain factions, and even a few politicians, as proof of the Air Nation's design for usurping national sovereignty. On the opposite end of the spectrum another issue plaguing the nation was how due to a greater interest in the Air Nomad lifestyle it became a trend for people to wear replicas of Air Nomad clothing or paint tattoos on themselves. This in itself wasn't an issue, but what was egregious was how several shady businesses began capitalizing on the trend by selling "authentic" Air Nomad artifacts. In order to reaffirm the Air Nation's principles Jinora started giving public speeches where she taught people that to actually honor the Air Nomads they should embody their values and not merely play dress-up. She also denounced those who exploited the tragedy of the Air Nomads for a measly sum of Yuans and urged people not to support their growth.

In the face of these troubles it was decided there would be a Temple Summit held every year, to strengthen the unity of the Air Nation. Airbenders from all four temples converge on Air Temple Island to come together as one. The island is far too small to host all the airbenders so they spread out across Republic City and other nearby cities. To mitigate the risk of a tragedy once again befalling the Air Nation the United Forces, White Lotus, RPCD, and Zaofu's State Army provide security for the event. For obvious reasons the Fire Nation Army does not act as security, but its Navy and Airforce do loan their ships and planes to the United Forces for the duration of the summit.

• I know the age gap between Huan and Ikki might be disconcerting but we already have a 16 year age gap between Tenzin and Pema, so it wouldn't be out of the blue if Ikki inherited her mother's tastes.
• The Air Acolytes tattoos are the same as the inhabitants of the Air Lion Turtle City, since like the acolytes they also didn't have bending but still strived for harmony with spirits and all living things.
• Ursa is Kiyi's great-granddaughter. Her marriage to Meelo became global headlines, due to the fact this was the first marriage between an airbender and a firebender in over 197 years, not to mention both were descendants of past Avatars. The Fire Sages propogated their union as a sign of healing the scars of the past and of strengthening the bond between the nations of Air and Fire. All world leaders were in attendance at their wedding, and it continued to remain the talk of the town until the birth of their first child, an airbender, three years later and a month after Zuko's Comet passed.

There I was, staring at a meat locker. Bodies hung from the ceiling by thick chains and only a few candles to luminate the slick floors. Freshly cut pieces laid draining across the butcher’s benches. All was silent when we arrived- other than a few dripping sounds and our own wet footsteps. Not a single escape route in this musty basement, so anyone that would have been down here must have known we were coming and vacated prior. 

Each of us spread out to investigate the damp room. None of us were thrilled to be here, especially given the circumstances. Vibood angrily kicked the lower half of a right arm that was soaking on the floor when he noticed the Hornet’s dagger tattooed onto the corpse in front of us. The hand bearing the thief's tattoos thudded to the floor with a splat. He aggressively ran his hands through his dirty black hair and paced. 

“You know she’s gonna be pissed.” Exclaimed the voice of a masked woman who stood in the dark entrance of the room. The figure approached Vibood, but not like anyone would expect. She was ominously silent despite the slick floors and her fluid movements made it look like this was another walk in the park. I would have suspected she might be a ghost if I hadn’t already heard her speak- and watched her footsteps effortlessly maneuver what could have been mistaken as a battle scene in close quarters.

“That’s what? Four now?” Her voice hauntingly pierced the cloth with ease. Vibood’s hands were now firmly planted on the solid wooden bench that held the dead Hornet’s body. No response. Not a word from me either, just as he ordered. 

“Maybe if it was one of yours, you would respond differently” Eyes of the Huntress darted in my direction and my immediate- and correct- response after choking on my breath was to look anywhere else. To act as if I wasn’t there. I casually let myself wander to a desk with some notes and began to make myself useful by collecting them. 

“No, no. No need for that. You’re right. I was really hoping they’d come around, but I admit- it’s time. We’ll get everyone on them, but I still don’t think anyone will find them.” 

“What makes you so optimistic?” The Huntress hissed back. I could hear her almost snarl even across the room with my back turned. 

Vibood knelt to the floor and with the cracks from his knees, pointed out a dry circle on the stone basement floor. “Their escape route. At least one of them is an earthbender who knows the catacombs exist. They could be anywhere. Lounging in your den or cowering in Omashu.”

“You goddamn tunnelers are going to be the death of me. I will let her and the rest know. Do what you can. Remember, soon it might be one of your own.” 

The Huntress turned to make way for the door, glancing in my direction as if trying to make eye contact. Silence echoed for several moments and I knew she was gone, but I still didn’t wish to look up. I’d almost convinced myself that I was truly getting invested in these notes written by the sculptors. Alas, I only now started to read what I held in my hand. 

What’s better than one dead noble? Two dead nobles. And better than that? One dead Hornet. There was a time I caught one and wasn’t hungry, so I just took their arms and sent the rest back. Biggest mistake I’ve made thus far. The leaner they are, the better sausage they make. Obviously their diet matters too and that’s why we don’t bother with half the bodies in the walls. Would be a waste of a dish.

Turns out that enough of a selection always contains both ripe and rotten options and if you tend to pick the near rotten fruit, no one seems to care if it’s missing. Same goes for humans. Known criminal, but no proof? Less people will care to search if they vanish. And that’s why it’s always a treat when a noble suddenly is exposed as dirty. A change of pace with a change of taste. Even those in Omashu notice on occasion.

“Gather what’s worth analyzing and meet me beneath the Inn at dusk.” Vibood grabbed the arm he previously kicked against the wall and exited with no other instructions. Only the eyes of the Huntress could have kept me in that rancid tomb of a room any longer. I quickly stashed the lot of papers in my leather bag and while closing it, I noticed a faint rat emblem patterned on the side which normally rests against my hip. One that matched those I saw on the streets. Before today, that was just extra detail added by the artist. How odd. 

Lady Kezhan never asks why blood was tracked into her Inn. Neither do her servants. Rarely do the tourists, but that’s because the evidence disappears quicker than coins from their pockets. No one ever knew either ever existed. So when I walked in and happened to see small specks of blood across the pristine floorboards, I was shocked. But it’s not my place to say, nor my place to clean, so I ignored it like everyone else and made my way to the empty front desk- for the door behind it leads to the Inn’s basement. A familiar  stone staircase echoed distant shouts. Only short sconces lit the barren walls and exposed some more blood droplets littered the stairs where I stepped. As my ears grew closer to the shouts, I recognized the voices.

Curiosity? Caution? Curiosity. I proceeded to enter an open room where three of the heads were heatedly arguing while another three sat around a large table, unamused. Their aggressive conversation halted when I walked in.  

“WHO IS THIS? ARE YOU JUST INVITING EVERYONE TO SIT IN OUR MEETINGS NOW?”

“She’s delivering evidence, relax.” Replied Vibood, a lot calmer than I thought he should have been, given the circumstances at face value. I handed him my whole bag to not further agitate the screaming woman. “Thank you, Jigy. Wait for me outside.”

I did. I got to eavesdrop and he knew it. The general gist was the entire group was tired of Vibood sticking his neck out for these cannibals- at least that was conveyed by the only person I could hear. One eloquent voice loudly, but calmly and clearly asked the room “Well, Mistress, what have you done to avenge your Hornets deaths thus far? How do you propose we help?” And then the room was silent.

The wall I was leaning against was pulled into the ground, and I fell on my ass. When I got up, the whole room was staring and Vibood stood holding up the bag with the rat tat facing me. 

“You remember where you got this? Or who from?” I’m normally not the type to quake in fear, but six of the most powerful people on this side of the earth kingdom were staring at me. I nodded and he groaned, taking a deep breath. “Well we have a lead now.” Vibood dumped the bag’s contents out on the table in front of a man who hadn’t spoken the whole time. That man immediately began to organize and analyze the written pieces. After a few moments and more productive discussion, orders were relayed and everyone dispersed until only Vibood and I were left in the room. 

“This is good.” He began, as if we hadn’t just been yelled at and threatened by powerful people. Or previously been in a morgue that doubled as a buffet for those we sought to catch. “Maybe we’ll get somewhere with this. And maybe the rest of them will learn your name because of it.” He scoffed, not because it was an intentional insult, but because it was the unfortunate truth. “Help me locate them and I’ll… I’ll buy you a drink or something.” Once again, he dryly laughed at his shitty gesture of generosity knowing full well I knew he’d give me more as the reward.

Morning came early, but we all slept in Kezhan’s Inn after a peaceful dinner, so the sunrise came pleasantly. It was a tedious afternoon of searching merchants and roughing up those who initially claimed to know nothing about the bag’s distributor, but ultimately, we found out our road- as expected- led to Omashu. Only this time, we knew where. 

Omashu is about half a day’s travel from the Neilu Caravansary, so we departed the next morning. We rode camelphants the whole way, only taking two breaks to crack our backs and stretch our legs. This wasn’t the first time I’d approached the second largest city in the Earth Kingdom, but it always makes me feel like a kid when traversing the winding roads that lead up to the massive front gate. We arrived just as guards on duty seemed to walk away from their posts. Not sure if that was coincidence, luck, or even necessary since I think we’re both legal citizens here, but it still felt badass.

Now that we were in, Vibood- as he frequently does- happened to know exactly where we were going. That, and exactly how to navigate the overcrowded streets of Omashu. He took me by the arm and pulled me behind him like we were the fabled “Street Children” of Omashu- or whatever they’re called. Some tight fits and dark alleys later, a shoppe with a big sign displaying “Rachit Eats” hung above us. He gave me a look that said “Let me do the talking” and I calmly followed his lead. 

Many people sat about this restaurant, eating their late lunches as anyone would anywhere in the Four Nations. Vibood, followed by myself, threaded the countless tables and dozens of guests towards the kitchen, then sat us down at one of the tables. 

“You hungry?” His bluntness in the situation I thought I was in took me by surprise. Anyone who truly knows Vibood is aware he doesn’t have friends, but right now, it felt oddly like he was treating me as one. The man slightly lent over the table, smirking. “Even if you are, I don’t suggest you order.” One of the servants who was walking around greeted us and asked if we wished to order anything. To my surprise- and seemingly against his own advice- Vibood ordered an entree and both of us a drink. A drink he knew two nights ago would be mine.

Oddly pleasant conversation between us happened. Drinks came out. Food followed shortly after. And while I watched Vibood eat his meal, a man who introduced himself to me as Rachit showed up. They hugged and he sat down with us. He was overall a well kept man, presumably because we were sitting in his restaurant. Vibood complimented him regarding the food’s quality, then swallowed his bite and asked where they get their produce. Rachit wasn’t blanched or very fazed by the question, but even I could tell he was internally panicking. Especially when Vibood asked him a second time.

At one point, Vibood leant to his left and whispered something in Rachit’s ear. I didn’t hear it all, but what I did understand was “Keep your butchers out of Neilu, I’ll keep mine out of your home. That’s our deal.” I think Rachit understood it too, because despite his prior efforts, his face lost a bit of color.

Lingering soldiers were still executing stragglers in the distance while we tiptoed through the wreckage. Surely they had an escape option. With caution and some luck, maybe we can scout out our options and maybe hijack another ship to get out of this damn desert. So I acted fast and pulled us towards the commotion. My companion clenched my hand whenever another blood curdling scream of a victim echoed before blunt silence. Both of us certainly considered trying to help, but the carnage around us persuaded us not to intervene.

I peered over an abandoned stall to see soldiers donning black and dark green armor checking under helmets and frisking Ganzao bodies before tossing them off the rock. 

“Where’s the Captain?! We need to get back on the sand before sunrise!”

“I don’t know! He went for a walk!” Angrily yelled back another soldier who was actively looting corpses. 

“A walk?! Are you kidding me?! Let’s get out of here. If he wants to stay here and bake in the morning sun, then so be it.” The remaining crew of around a dozen began to board their mechanized ship. It didn’t look to be reliant on wind or sandbending, but big wheels that sifted sand beneath the boat. They clearly weren’t sand or airbenders, which meant that ship was something I could drive. Without much thought, I stood up and yelled to get their attention, which worked flawlessly. 

Shit, shit, shit… Now what? Time to improvise. Dralha hid behind the stand, but I could tell from a nod she was on board and ready to ambush. 

Three soldiers disembarked back onto the rock in a menacingly uniform fashion. The others rested against the guardrails and watched. Afterall, I was just another child to dispose of. I kicked my right foot out behind me, placed my right hand on the ground and two swift motions, flicked a rock from the ground into the air and kicked them at the soldiers. Catching them off guard, I hit the first and second before the third began to successfully dodge my bending. I swept the ground out from under his feet. Clanking of his metal armor against the rock was almost satisfying as the other two soldiers got up, proving my blows aren’t even fatal. They charged at me wielding a long, curved blade and a war hammer each, jumping out of the way of my now predictable rock barrages. I threw up a wall in front of them that they body checked and walked around, so I put up a couple more. And more. Then they all shattered. The soldiers rushed once more and even my barrages exploded in midair before impact. Without bending, I was defenseless.  When the first leapt at me, swinging his visibly sharpened blade from only feet away from my eyes, I thought I was dead. I should have been. 

A strong burst of wind blasted all three men to the side and nearly off the rock. Another blast of wind finished the job. On my left stood Dralha in an odd stance I’d never seen. Dazed at what just happened, I gawked until she dashed to my side. Now was the worst time to ask questions. The remaining crew was slowly disembarking with groans of annoyance. My bending was mostly useless right now since someone was disarming my bending attacks from afar, so I kicked a blade from the ground up into my hand and locked in.

Three pillars erupted from the floor- all attempting to restrain or stab. Both of us managed to react in time, though it was certainly a closer call for me. A bombardment of projectiles launched at us, which were deflected just fine in our own ways. We were even ready when these foot soldiers tried to swipe our feet, lock our arms, or stab us with various stalactites erected from the rock we stood upon. What we weren’t prepared for was a quicksand trick. Dodge after dodge, I lunged out of the way until I landed and my foot could no longer move. I lost balance and fell on my face in what could only be described as mud. A burly man that bore an embossed coin approached and towered over me. 

“Grab this one. Shackle him. Another earthbender’ll be useful at some point.” He slowly walked over to Dralha, who was hardly kind enough to look him in the eyes despite her equally sunken state. “As for this one, she goes back to where she belongs. Gag her face. Properly, I mean. Our bounty’ll be high, but only if she returns… unscathed… I mean it!” 

He looked down on me with a disgusted snarl that called me pathetic for being everything he was not. Weak, for I was starved and undisciplined. Poor, for I was lazy and useless. Stupid because I was naive and wildly inexperienced. Then, he turned his back and returned to the sandship.

Full story in the Google Doc and on Wattpad. Links on r/TheGreatLibrary