"Wait! Who are you!" The others were right. This swamp sucked.
Aang trod through the murky water, goopy mud clumping thickly around his feet with each step. Although the swamp was wide and mostly open, the humid air and dark canopy above made him feel a little trapped. He didn't get the sense that this place was evil, but nor did he feel like it was inherently good either. It was ancient, beyond caring for humans and their ideas of morality, and though Aang would not begrudge that he also had no desire to stay here any longer than he had to.
But he couldn't leave yet. Every so often he'd see a small girl in a fine dress standing a short distance away, accompanied by a flying pig. He could hear her laughing, yet whenever he tried to get close she would disappear, and reappear elsewhere. She'd tried chasing her through the treetops at first, but even he couldn't airbend forever; particularly in a place like this, where the very air felt sluggish and heavy to move.
The sound of giggling caught his attention again, and this time Aang spotted the girl standing among a set of strangely shaped rocks. "Wait up!" he cried and ran over to her. Yet to nobody's great surprise before he could get close she ran around the back of one of the rocks.
Aang made to follow, but stopped as something caught his attention. The rocks had seemed oddly-shaped before, but now he was closer, he could pick out why: they were all unusually rectangular. They were old, and covered top to bottom in moss and muck, yet Aang had never seen naturally occurring rocks take such a shape before.
He walked over to the nearest one, brushing away some of the dirt that covered it, and found stone underneath. Not natural stone though: cut stone, chiselled into bricks. These were buildings! Was he in some sort of village?
"RRRRWWWAAAAAAAAAGGGHHH!"
Suddenly the very ground beneath him began to rumble and quake, almost throwing Aang off his feet! The leaves from the trees above came tumbling down like heavy green rain, and the buildings cracked and crumbled beneath the force of it! It was an earthquake, but one unlike Aang had ever heard of before. He could swear that alongside the rumbling he could hear the voice of a girl screaming with rage, the sound of her voice synchronising perfectly with the shaking of the earth.
"Where is that coming from?" He muttered to himself, heading in the direction of where the earthquake felt stronger. As he ran, the crumbled ruins of the ancient buildings around him grew larger and most closely packed together, changing from a small rural village to a fully grown city. From the style of them, Aang guessed that they were Earth Kingdom buildings.
Finally Aang arrived at the epicentre of the earthquakes. Right in the middle of the city was a perfectly round circle of clear, barren earth: as if a force of unimaginable strength had blasted everything around it to smithereens. And right in the epicentre of the blast stood a cave, from out of which howled the voice of rage. Painted on the upper lip of the cave in big, bold red letters was a single word.
BERSERKER.
Aang didn't like this. Not one bit. Everything about this cave, and air of wrath that oozed from it, set his hairs of end. Quickly he turned and fled, keen to find his friends and get out of this place as quickly as possible.
...
"And this is… what exactly?"
"Zhao's trove." Tanya replied dutifully, digging through the messy box filled with old scrolls and folded sheets of parchment. "It's where he kept all his strategies, notes and other documents relevant to his plan to invade the North Pole. After his passing it came into my possession."
Azula raised an eyebrow in a small sign of interest. "Including the scroll that detailed the identities of the Ocean and Moon spirits?"
"Yes, but for once that's not the important part. What we need is this!" Tanya grasped a plain book bound in brown leather that had the faded colour of something regularly sandblasted, and held it aloft as if it were made of solid gold.
"Ooh! What is it?" Ty Lee asked, not at all following what was happening but apparently just happy that Tanya was so active again.
Tanya cracked the book open, revealing pages upon pages of sloppy handwriting within. "Zhao's field journal from way back during his campaigns in the Earth Kingdom. It was around this time that he discovered the spirit scroll in the first place."
She flicked through the pages, eyes scanning the dates written as heading for the one she needed. "A lot of it is pontificating over his thoughts on destiny and his early ideas for The North, but some of his earlier entries reference how to get… here!"
Tanya slapped the open page down on the table, gesturing for the others to have a look. Azula, Ty Lee and Mai peered in at it curiously, quickly devouring its contents. "A library in the desert?" Mai deadpanned.
"Not just any library! A spirit library!" Tanya declared passionately. "One that, according to Zhao's entries, has been owned and run by spirits for longer than recorded history, and contains secrets that even humanity has yet to unlock. Normally I'd be doubtful, but I confirmed for myself that the scroll he stole from there was the real deal, so why not the rest of the library too?"
Mai glanced between the journal and a map of the Earth Kingdom posted on a nearby wall, quickly narrowing down the area Zhao claimed that library was located at.
"I can't say the idea of crossing the desert thrills me, but we should be able to manage it fairly easily in this vehicle. And if The Avatar is heading to Ba Sing Se, as his trail suggests, then we should still be able to get back on track to intercept him so long as we aren't at the library for very long. What would be the point though? Are you hoping to look for the identity of another spirit to slay?"
"Maybe another day, but we have a more pressing topic to cover at the moment." Tanya replied seriously. "Everything has a beginning, and I do not believe The Avatar simply popped out of a hole in the ground one day. There must have been a first Avatar, or some kind of precursor. If we can find out how The Avatar cycle began, we can understand how it works. And if we can understand how it works we will know how to end it. Permanently."
Ty Lee hummed thoughtfully. "I don't think anybody really knows much about The Avatar, other than that they can bend all the elements and become scarily powerful. Even if we miss our opportunity for an ambush and the Avatar gets to Ba Sing Se, I think the Firelord would be happy to know more about their weaknesses. What do you think, Azula?"
Azula, usually an outspoken supporter of gaining dangerous intelligence on her enemies, had been worryingly quiet so far. She wore a frown, but Tanya couldn't tell if it was a thoughtful one or disapproving. There was a pause as the other girls waited for their leader to give her judgement.
"I think-…" Azula finally answered, "that your insistence on blaming your failures on yet more spiritual nonsense is getting out of hand."
It took Tanya a second to process what Azula had said. Then another to assume that she must have misunderstood, and process it again. Not in her wildest dreams had she expected Azula, the master manipulator and future Firelord, to pass on the opportunity for useful intel. "Wha-…"
"Every time The Avatar has escaped you so far you've given the same excuse: that it's all been the spirits doing." Azula sneered.
"But I didn't see any of them trampling around Omashu. All I saw was you throwing your rank around, taking command without any regard for the chain of command, and then getting outsmarted.
The Avatar slipped through our fingers because you weren't good enough, not because of any divine providence. And now you want to waste more time, give up on more opportunities to catch our target, chasing a mythical solution to your fantasy problem. Absolutely not!"
Ty Lee and Mai, seeming to sense the spiking tension in the air, took a step back as Tanya stood up, her expression's incredulous. "Azula, you cannot be serious! The Avatar-…"
"Can be beaten, with enough skill." Azula interrupted. "Skill that I possess, but that you clearly do not. Which is why we will be following my plan and continue to track The Avatar."
"It's not a question of skill!" Tanya shot back, frustration leaking into her voice. "I did all I could back at Omashu, better than anyone else could have been expected to! You don't understand-…"
"I understand well enough!" Azula snapped angrily. "I understand that after so long being hailed as some sort of prodigy, you have trouble accepting such a repeated string of failures!"
Tanya stormed forward, and for a moment she well and truly lost control of her temper. Her face was a rictus of fury as she prodded Azula in the chest. "This isn't about me! This is about you! Ever since we were given this mission you've taken issue with everything I do! It feels to me like you're rejecting this plan just because I'm the one suggesting it!"
"Hey, maybe we should all take a second to calm down?" Ty Lee suggested meekly, but neither Azula nor Tanya even acknowledged that she'd spoken.
"You continue to ignore my authority and do whatever the hell you want, in spite of the fact that you were specifically ordered to serve me!" Azula shot back, squaring her shoulders as if preparing for a fight.
"I am serving you! By advising you on The Avatar and utilising my skills as a commander!"
"I don't need your advice, and your much-vaunted command has been severely lacking so far!"
"Umm… girls?" Ty Lee tried to interject.
"Everything else I've done, I've done perfectly!" Tanya roared. "The Avatar is the only exception, which I keep trying to tell you is because of spiritual interference! If you don't listen to me we'll be doomed to keep missing him by a hair's breadth!"
"I will not fail just because you have!" Azula shouted back. "How dare you assume that, because the task is beyond your abilities, it must be beyond mine as-..."
"Girls! Stop! Please!"
Suddenly Ty Lee was between the two of them, and both firebenders became aware that they'd drawn closer to the other without realising, fists clenched and ready to throw. The atmosphere between them was thick and dangerous, and quite possibly would have broken out into genuine violence if not for Ty Lee's timely intervention. Quickly they both stepped back and forced themselves to relax, trying to pretend the near slip in control had never happened.
"This-… discussion, shall we call it, has been more trouble than it's worth." Azula growled out, swiping a single stray strand of hair out of her face. "I am the commander of this mission, and I have made my decision. We will continue to track The Avatar as planned. I won't hear another word about it. Do I make myself clear?"
Tanya grit her teeth, a thunderous scowl flashing across her expression.
"Crystal." She hissed, and stormed away.
...
if you want to read ahead of the public release you can join my p atreon :
p atreon.com/Rimanovi