Chapter Text

An Unannounced Visit

Chapter One (of Two):

She was standing atop the Thousand Steps when the message arrived.

Thirty thousand men had chosen to war with the Earth Kingdom.

They claimed all the reasons under Lord Agni’s blazing wrath. They were fighting corruption, fighting treachery, fighting rebellions, fighting tyranny, fighting each other. 

They came from as far as the Earth Islands, some from sister islands of her own bastion of order. They were as young as five and as old as one hundred and five. 

Their plots would have led to the desolation of villages, districts, towns, cities, commanderies, provinces.

Their plots stretched tens of thousands of li,  spanning the twenty eight states of the Earth Kingdom.

Thirty thousand men had chosen death.

For twenty nine thousand of them, death came swiftly.

They were taken in the night, some this past night, some this past week, some this past month. 

They were asked the same questions, and when all that could be learned was learned, they were processed the same. 

As she watched the water clock drip, drip, drip, she could almost hear the bodies thunk, thunk, thunk as they were hung from the great walls of the Impenetrable City. 

Those who had spoken treason with their own lips hanged next to their sons, whose crime was that of not reporting such treason. There was no excuse. Their inaction could and did lead to countless deaths in history.

Her men had a most amusing style when it came to drawing information from the stubborn.

The young feared death. She knew it well. She was young once. When the young member of a clan met his or her death, the parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, and the rest of the kinsmen who shared their clan name often lost themselves and gave up anything that was asked of them, lamenting information in exchange for their lives.

She did not care about their laments and wails. Neither did her men. The information they provided bought them a few geng of life.

If they wanted her to, they could have been loyal servants of the Earth Kingdom, same as her.

For the loyal, she would ride to their commanderies and fight alongside them. 

For a special thousand, death came in the Royal Plaza.

These were the noblemen and their clans.

Among their ranks were twenty scions of the Royal blood.

As on cue, as drilled into perfection over centuries, the herald cried forth the sentence.

“BY ORDER OF HER HOLINESS, THE AVATAR, BY THE RIGHT OF HIS ROYAL MAJESTY, THE EARTH KING, THE PRICE OF REBELLION AGAINST THE BADGERMOLE THRONE IS DEATH TO THE NINTH GENERATION!”

Off to the side, out of the sharp sunlight, the young Earth King sat upon a sedan-chair, flanked by his favorite concubines.

The King, the concubines, the attendants, and the Guard to keep him safe; all were personally picked by her for their loyalty to the Earth Kingdom. And its expansive, flourishing culture.

As one, the Royal Earthbending Guards drew their meteorite dao blades and yelled  “Ten Thousand Years!” 

Those silent and stalwart attendants of the Palace joined in with “Ten Thousand Years!”

Soon, the ground itself shook as thousands of hidden men became one quaking cry “TEN THOUSAND YEARS!”

The blades fell.

The heads rolled.

She turned to the Earth King, strode over to him, and dropped to her knees.

She performed a kowtow, as she was one of his servants.

“Your Royal Majesty, justice has been delivered to traitors. Ten Thousand Years to the Badgermole Throne and the Earth Kingdom.”

The young man who wore the emerald robes was too pale to give a proper answer. He waved his fan -a strategist’s fan- to bade her rise.

“Ten Thousand Years,” he said after a whole fen of contemplative silence.

She heel-turned away and marched back into the Royal Earth Palace. A battalion of her finest men followed her. If anyone was looking at her, they’d see only ten.

The rest… the rest weren’t meant to be seen.

When one of those unseen guards made himself present by dropping down from the vaulted ceiling, a fortress of shadow and darkness that none but her handpicked could traverse, her cadence-timed footsteps stopped.

“Agent.” She knew his name. He had no need of it.

He bowed low, presenting a scroll as a subjugated magistrate might present his magisterial seal.

She’d accepted them before… and promptly beheaded the magistrates on the spot for their collaboration with the rebels.

She took the scroll.

It read: You have a message.

She handed the scroll back to him.

He dismissed himself, skating over to one of the pillars and climbing up it, returning to his perch in the darkness.

She made her way down the sprawling hallways, briefly considering a trip to the Lake to see to the progress they were making on the outlaw king.

Instead, she made her way to the same chambers she held for the previous two centuries.

Alone among all across the Four Nations, she held no fear of unexpected visitors.

Alone among those residing in the Royal Earth Palace, she did not fear being watched.

So when the winds whistled as she was writing a Memorial to the Badgermole Throne concerning an outlaw king that did not exist, she knew to put down the brush.

“What is it?” she asked the darkness.

Thunder boomed outside. “You’ve made enemies!” 

“Enter or exit, do not dawdle in my windowsill.” 

The shutters slammed shut.

She swiveled her head to the left, to the shutters, and spotted him.

He was reclining on her bed, stretching his hands and feet like a fox-cat. 

“Talk, do not dawdle in my mortal plane,” he sighed, as his bones cracked.

“What does the Spirit of Death want of me?”

“Oh, little old me? I’m your friend!” He somersaulted to his feet and beamed at her. “Aren’t we friends?” He frowned. 

She rolled her eyes. “Who wants me dead today?”

“I’d start talking-” he chuckled, “-but I’d be here until tomorrow.”

She cast him a blank stare.

Lao Ge produced a sky bison’s tooth. 

“I was eating one of these flying clouds the other day when little old me learned that the Air Nomads have decided to retract their support. A… protest, they call it. Your new Airbending master won’t be coming. You’ll hear about this from your men tomorrow.”

Oh. 

We can’t stop with provincial rebellions or warring claimants in the Fire Nation… no, now rebellion has spread to the Four Nations themselves.

He could read the way her eyes thinned. 

The Spirit of Death stroked his beard. “The infection, the plague of rebelliousness has spread to the Air Masters.”

She was the Avatar, the protector of the mortal and the spirit worlds. 

She was the keeper of balance. Of order.

And the Air Nomads had upturned that balance.

Avatar Kyoshi rose slowly, until she stood straight and tall. She towered over the nine thousand year old incarnate of Death, making him take three steps backwards. 

The Avatar grabbed her fans with an air whip and pulled them to her. She caught one in either hand. 

“It will be treated the same as all rebellions.”

Said her master: “Infections must be cleansed from the afflicted with iron and fire, else the whole body will wither.”

She held her departure off for a single geng, to watch her men drill. If her mission were to fail -and one day, it would- they would carry on her legacy.

They practiced on daofei, dueling to the death.

Not a single agent died.  

They were silent, precise, and feared by all. As she and the Immortal had intended, all those years ago.

The Grand Secretariat would command Ba Sing Se and the Earth Kingdom in her absence. 

Her Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, and Water Tribe retainers were never informed.

The Earth King would be fast asleep, and unable to decree his way into seeing her off in an elaborate ceremony.

Her men were the only ones to know. Those in Ba Sing Se and those beyond the walls, the eyes in every village, at every crossroads, in every valley.

Xiuping waited for her north of the Royal Earth Palace, in grounds belonging to one of the recently discontinued noble clans. It was just a week ago that they were enfoeffed here for their service, wasn’t it? Ah, it may have been twenty years. Their true loyalties made themselves clear all the same. 

She petted the fur of her latest sky bison as her companions boarded with their supplies. “Be happy, where I’m going, I can’t bring Mengshi.”

Xiuping licked her hand.

Her badgermole, Lord Mengshi, will not take kindly to being left behind for this adventure, she knew innately. He was her favorite companion. Likewise, this was not the trip for her dragon, Prince Fengbao. The heavily scarred dragon was nearly as old as she was. He did not like being roused from his stables unless it was to duel other dragons. Were he to fly to the Northern Air Temple, it would melt. 

Lady Xiuping knew the mountains. 

Mengshi being her favorite did not mean she held any dislike for Lady Xiuping. Far from it, she loved practicing airbending with her. 

After her previous sky bison was impaled by a giant earth stake, she had to find a new one. 

The Air Nomads were poisoning their sky bison against her, her men had warned her. A few whispered words to a child, man or beast, can set his gaze for the rest of his days. She did not react, as, much like the Earth Kingdom, she had no need for affection. She did have need for loyalty. 

Her affections for the bison trainers was mutual; if they were spotted leeching any food or water from her beloved Earth Kingdom, they would meet her again…

…under the Lake.

Alas, there were actions, and then there were actions. And the Air Nomads had taken an action by withdrawing their support.

It was her, the Immortal in his finest rags, and ten of her greatest agents in their conical hats and flowing robes. 

While she did not fear death, He joined her for most of her anti-rebellion campaigns; she did fear ignorance. 

Her agents were good to exchange ideas with, to recieve counsel from, to paint portraits she might not see otherwise. 

She had come to an understanding about the Avatar’s companions years past. They were not there to teach the Avatar bending, but to give the Avatar insights, act as the Avatar’s advisors, and serve as the Avatar’s council of generals.  

Who better to advise her than the men tasked with the cultural preservation of the Earth Kingdom?

The Avatar’s companions were the ink on which the Avatar would impress her legacy. 

Her next life would have a retinue of master earthbenders, firebenders, and waterbenders to call upon in his youth. Airbenders, too, once she was done with the Northern Air Temple. 

Unlike all her previous lives and her own, her next life would come into this world with an army at his disposal; provided he followed their laws. 

If only she had inherited such an army from Avatar Kuruk. There would have been no need for a Gravedigger.

Jianzhu, though long dead, was proud of her. He tried to pacify the Earth Kingdom his whole life. She played it exactly to the tune of his pipa. She did not play on his weiqi board , she created a new one and placed the Earth Kingdom on it. 

Her final wish would be that her successor would let her weiqi masters bring the board to the Fire Nation. 

She did not bring any of her other order with her. The Warriors, while devout in their protection of their Avatar, were liable to hesitate when it came to a rebellion on this scale. If the Elders were in her Kingdom, or in her city, then it would be a different story. They would cut down whoever she asked of them. 

She recalled a common saying, ‘a bow may strike your enemy down at range, a bow is useless if your enemy meets you in an alley.’ Such were her Kyoshi Warriors; a clarion with which the Royal Earth Army could follow into battle. They were symbols and sages before they were warriors. 

The Dai Li, meanwhile, were eager for, according to the Grand Secretariat, ‘a chance to duel airbenders on unfavorable terrain. It will make good training for the men.’ They left their lives in the Lake; their cultures, the spirits they worshiped, the ancestors they venerated, the clans they came from. They exited the Lake in black robes bearing the green coin of the Earth Kingdom, of singular mind and body.  

Others might say ‘I pray to the Avatar it does not come to that.’ The Avatar turned to the Immortal and said “May the worth of my finest men be tested.” 

The Immortal replied with a smile. “Those without intrigue will have their necks broken. The wise will break necks.”

Intrigue. Not bending strength. 

What was such strength? 

When she had the time to, she would fly to the untouched lands and test herself on them. At dawn, she would rise atop a mountain. The mountain might be scorched, flattened, battered with thunderstorms, and raised to the heavens before the sun sets.

And after all that, a few drops of poison might leave her writhing in bed, insensible. She would know. In front of the first generation of Dai Li, she drank different poisons to show that their brews were able to cripple an Avatar for long enough to subdue, or kill. 

The sun rose in the northeast. 

It sat low as it crossed the entirety of the southern sky. 

Hundreds of li of cities, towns, and fortresses, atop rolling farmlands and forests, cut by winding rivers and reinforced by a massive web of roads able to field million-man armies. 

It sank into the northwest. 

Xiuping needed to eat and rest. Kyoshi was not hungry, let alone tired. The Spirit of Death was passed out, drunk. If the agents were tired, they did not say it.

Kyoshi knew the name of every village in the Earth Kingdom and its thousand commanderies. 

She was not in the mind of setting down in any of them, let alone one of the Royal Earth Army’s forts. Avatars drew crowds and feasts, and the both cost time. She could not refuse an honor such as a feast, else questions would be raised about her. Questions that took agents to find time in their busy days to address. 

Better off to avoid any questions or answers, and get to where she meant to be.

She set down in a small bowl valley. There might’ve been a hundred living in the entire valley, and if they were superstitious enough, they would watch her from behind the gray tree trunks, praying that her presence was a blessing.

It was a blessing.

She was going to make sure they did not have to have any airbenders show up, unpromptedly, and impose themselves upon the locals. 

For the past few incarnations, the Air Nomads had decided to take advantage of the other three nations by coming to their lands and requisitioning their goods and time to help the Nomads. In return, the Nomads promised them boons in the mortal and spiritual realms.

Then they went on to the next village over and repeated the process.

It would come to an end, and it would come to an end now. 

The Immortal was left passed out where he laid, slumped in the middle of Xiuping’s saddle. The last mortal to lay a hand on his ‘sleeping’ form was punished. 

She would know. 

She was out walking with him a year after the incident transpired when the mortal form of a mountain spirit descended upon them both.

It was a tiger-moose, with the agility of a falcon-fisher. And as tall as the Fire Lord’s Palace. 

It took half a day to kill the beast. 

Three mountains were leveled, a fourth had its top half shorn off, and thousands died. 

The whole fight, she heard his amusement. It rolled down from the peaks of the mountains. 

‘Please do not bother me when I am thinking,’ he said as she stood up to her neck in boiling blood, wading out of the new lake.

He, of course, was perched atop the beast’s antler like an owl-cat. 

She’d managed to land a fatal strike to the joint in its right hind leg. The blood the spirit lost in its death throes, and ensuing death, created a new lake. 

That night, she was summoned to the Heavenly Court of Emperor Jinshan in her meditations.  

The Spirits knew better than to ask her summons.

You did not refuse a summons from Emperor Jinshan, the Spiritual master of the largest of the Nations.

The Avatar kowtowed in the Hall of Ten Thousand Years before the Lord of the Mandate and explained that her master had ambushed her with the spirit.

The Lord of the Mandate scoffed. “That you slew my unfilial son, I can forgive. That you laid your hand upon Tieguai? I cannot. You interfere in our lives, we shall interfere in yours.”

And so they did, for the miao her mortal fingertips grazed the slumbering Immortal, they brought a week of stars falling across the Earth Islands. 

Thousands and thousands died from that fingertip-grazing.

It took another whole day of flying for the Sky Peaks of the State of Xishan, those mountains the Air Temple had labeled ‘Taihua’ to rise on the horizon as a bed of jagged spikes.

The night of the second day, as her men camped in the rolling foothills, she took Xiuping and went and made contact with agents stationed in a nearby trading post. 

As regiments of the Royal Earth Army were mustered to set locations, her own men were called to meet at a trapping post in the mountains fifty li from the Northern Air Temple.

By noon on the third day, the bed had become a palisade, the tips white, the shafts a deep green. They were sailing through the narrowest valleys, avoiding the peaks lest they be spotted by their query.

Many an army under many a king, some styling themselves Wielder of the Mandate of the Spirits, most conceding themselves as petty usurpers whose ambitions were a sliver of autonomous rule from the Badgermole Throne, had failed to breach this palisade.

Yet, they, and the tribes in their valleys, were sworn to the Badgermole Throne. The chiefs and high chiefs came down from their horn halls to kowtow before the Earth King. 

Under previous Avatars, the Xishan were able to declare their rebellious intents.

Under her, the Xishan tried, too. 

The tribes that still lived in these valleys were those with the wisdom to surrender.

The Four Nations were four. Not forty. Not four hundred. Not four thousand.

There were a thousand commanderies in the Earth Kingdom and five hundred feudatories in the Fire Nation.

They served their monarchs, their monarchs served her. 

There was balance. 

She was personally fond of the Xishan, Xisenlin, and the other former confederations of tribals.

It took great courage to stand before the badgermole. 

It took even greater courage to know when to surrender. Surrendering meant internal conflict - death from their own brothers, even. To surrender was to defect.

Those who defected, regardless of origin, that the Earth Kingdom may be stabilized, would be rewarded.

She selected a few of their finest earthbenders and hunters for permanent cultural preservation, that her own men may learn all that they knew, and learn from them. 

The Xishan had been fighting the Water Tribes for at least ninety five generations. Their knowledge gained did not deserve to be lost.  

The Air Nomads had a different story. The whole range was theirs, by the decree of her predecessor Yangchen. The resources of the mountains were theirs. 

The Xishan had other ideas, and rekindled their old art of sky bison hunting. 

Yangchen stopped their chiefs and protected the lands the Air Nomads called ‘Taihua.’ 

The Chief of the North and the Earth King both diplomatically disagreed; warring over the valleys whose ‘Avatar-mandated rulers’ dwelled on the peaks and had no understanding of administration or tax collection. Her predecessor had to put an end to that, as well. Twenty times. 

Not counting the peasant rebellions caused by the Royal Earth Army’s expenditures on their Great Xishan Expeditions. 

Or the duels and poisonings that came from the dishonor the Water Tribes sustained in having to cede the territories.

Under Kuruk, the lands were under the Northern Air Temple. It helped that he won their submission to the Air Temples the old way, challenging their chiefs to hunts and duels, claiming to act as representative of the Air Nomads while gutting moose-lions with his bone knife. 

Under her, the first time the Chief of the North contested the ruling was the last time he contested it. The Xishan were Earth Kingdomers. 

She could hear the ice palace bubbling and boiling even now. You call out for an Avatar to save you, while breaking the peace she tirelessly forged? No, I am preoccupied: Rangi's playing her liuqin and the Dai Li need to practice their Fire Nation style dancing. 

Xiuping set down in a narrow forested valley. In place of a river, there was a marshy pond fed by a stream. There were a hundred such valleys within her eyesight. Unless the rebel trackers had shirushus, they weren’t finding her. That assumed the rebels were awake and tracking her. Her own men were. 

Had the rebels been informed of her approach, they’d be scouring every valley for any sign of her coming; much like they scoured every farmstead and orchard they pass over for food on their travels.  

No command to raise a camp was given.

They were not to raise a camp there. 

The Immortal was retrieving supplies from his sack and setting them down on the saddle-platform.

“Your choice, Avatar. Who first, the Spirits of Xishan, or the Airbenders of the Northern Air Temple?”

“The men are not negotiating with spirits.”

“The right choice, Avatar,” he said, retrieving a green cloth bearing the symbol of a golden mountain peak. He bound it and tied it around his head. “The best jian is worthless if it has forgotten how to swing. We will seek out the Spirits after.” 

“Agreed.” 

Drilling would come first.  

The men had drilled against airbenders before. Much as they had drilled against waterbenders. And firebenders. And earthbenders. And charioteers, and heavy riders, and shield walls. In cities, in alleys, in caves, on islands, on wooden roofs. 

The day her men stopped drilling was the day they would die.

Besides, how often could she say of the generation standing before her that airbenders were a common enough theat outside of the drilling rooms? One day, she would not be here. They needed to be prepared to subdue the Air Temples  when future rebellions arose. 

“I will see to the men,” she stated, dipping her head.

The Immortal withdrew a bundle of incense sticks. 

The ten men stood at attention.

Lao Ge sat upon a tree stump, picking at a pinecone.

“Do I have any volunteers to present the strategm for fighting earthbenders?”

One of the agents raised his head.

“Second Lieutenant Yanlin?”

“As set down in Grand Secretariat Daiyu’s On Warfare, we must scare the badgermole from its den,” said the Agent. “Put pressure upon an earthbender, that he is unable to root his stances. A fleet footed earthbender is a dead earthbender.”

“Correct, Second Lieutenant.”

The officer lowered his head, matching his brothers.

“And yet,” the Immortal continued, “the Order of the Dai Li is as agile as a herd of fox-cats, why is that?”

A different agent raised his head, his eyes peering out from under the conical hat.

“Colonel Jiang?”

“We were trained to root ourselves anywhere,” said the Colonel. “We, too, suffer the weaknesses of the art of earthbending. If we can be deprived of our element, we must resort to other, less efficient means.” 

The Immortal rolled his hand, calling the dirt around him to it, forming a rock glove. “Correct, Colonel.”

The Colonel lowered his head.

He pointed at the Avatar. 

“Please demonstrate how an airbender roots himself, Master Kyoshi.” 

The Avatar snapped her fans open. With a spin and a whirl, her Earth Islander-style clothing was fluttering in the localized gale she contained around herself.

“An airbending master can stand still and match your strength finger for finger. What is an airbender’s ideal fighting style, Master Kyoshi?”

The Avatar tipped her head in obeisance, and rose to stand on the balls of her feet. 

She used her fans to draw and release the air.

“Watch the currents, men. They are strings, bound in tension.” 

She drew a stream of air above her head, swirling it around. 

“Air has water’s freedom without its restraints. Air has fire’s precision without its effects.”

On cue, she stabbed both fans forward and upward.

The condensed blast of air struck the nearby pines tree, trimming it of its leaves and many smaller brances. 

“Master Kyoshi was controlling herself. An airbending master can snap a tree over with only a few seconds of drawing the bow.”

He knocked his rag off his shoulder and stood up. His skin clung to his bones. His ribcage was nearly see-through. His chest was covered in scars, some from blades, some from impacts, some of unknown cause.

“A brief demonstration,” he announced to the group. “Master Kyoshi, Abbess.”

Kyoshi closed her fans and bowed low to the Immortal.

He laid one hand over the other and bowed in the Fire Nation style of officer-to-officer. 

He raised a row of earth spikes, their jagged tips sharp as the points atop the agents’ helmets. 

She danced above their tips, swirling around, gliding left, right, left, as she waved her fans, sending air blasts at him.

He performed a trio of middle blocks, shielding himself from the blasts with thin earthen shields that took the brunt of the blast, crumpling into dirt that was sent flying back at -and past him- but otherwise harmless. 

As she bobbed back and forth, left and right, sometimes forward, sometimes backwards, the Immortal held his exact stance.

He shouted at the agents “An airbender is always airborne! They drink the air, its essence is theirs! Yet! Like the master bowman of Dongfang, they need their bow!” 

He jabbed a series of fists skywards. 

Rows of earthen pillars jutted up, one nearly hitting the Avatar in the right foot. That one, she clove the top off of with a swing of the fan.

The air slice cut through other pillars in their way, sending five of them toppling inwards, into others that in turn caved inward. 

The Avatar perched above the cloud of dust, atop a high pillar. 

She called air to her and jabbed both fans at the Immortal.

He raised a slope of earth. The arrow of air struck the slope and went off towards the south.

It sent a flock of birds flying, and made the forest rain leaves.

“Let the airbender free, and he will skirmish with you from afar! From the range he is happy in!” 

Lao Ge raised his left foot and set it down in front of his right. As he did, he spread his fingers and clawed at the sky.

Pillars rose up to meet the Avatar, but these weren’t as stable as the previous. They began to collapse as soon as they stopped rising.

The Avatar was, pillar by pillar, herded forward.

He cut forward with a slashing strike. 

A wall of earth rose behind her.

“You must trap an airbender!”

He tapped the ground lightly.

The wall came down on her.

The Avatar let the house-sized wall collapse on her.

With only airbending, she coiled up air and punched it at the falling wall. 

The wall was sent flying into a neighboring commandery. 

The Avatar ambled forward to be where she was when the duel began, set her fans together, and bowed low. 

He bowed to her in return, officer-to-officer. 

As she cleaned up the arena, he addressed the men.

“A badgermole must be flushed from his den. A sky bison must be driven back into his. An airbender can do little in a cave. As it happens, the ten of you spend your free time in caves.” 

He was the only one legally allowed to laugh, which he took great pleasure in doing.

The men said nothing. They waited and listened and understood.

“I must see to the rituals. Avatar?”

The Avatar took his place as the Immortal darted off, as fleet-footed as an airbender -or as one of the agents- towards Xiuping, minding her own business trudging up grasses to nourish herself with. 

The Avatar took his place. 

“Any questions, men?”

After a beat, there came one. 

“If battle comes upon us in the Temple, the airbenders need only open their doors.”

“Very good question, Agent.” She set her glare upon each’s conical helmet, where their eyes would be were they not hidden. “As we are accompanying you on this assignment, Master Lao Ge and I will divine the weather. However-” she raised a long tekko-garbed finger, “-that will not always be the case. You will not act on the presumption that we are able to accurately divine the weather. Ageless beings are not reliable.”

“Neither are Avatars!” shouted a distant Immortal. 

She nodded. “The next Air Avatar may well be your foe. The Fire Lord and I have talked at great length about the threat of a tyrannical Air Avatar who tries and imposes his ridiculously untenable Air Nomad beliefs upon the more sensible parts of the Four Nations. The Fire Lord vows that the Fire Nation will do all in its power to make sure these air-headed tempests and their childish tantrums are kept in check.” 

She swiveled the other way. “You will approach the Northern Air Temple by the ground. You will entrap the Council of Elders in their own high temple. Raise walls and collapse sections of the centeal temple to make reinforcement impossible. As for the airbenders outside; as the stratagems say, start a fire in the stable to draw the lord’s retainers away. Two of you will hit their bison stables. I will meet you in the elder’s chamber.”

She faced the ten. “Understood, men?”

The ten men knelt, heads tilted over that their helmets present a line of shields. 

It reminded her of designing the helmets.

They must be fireproof, and able to dissipate any blasts, air or fire. 

The men were sent to drill in pairs. 

She had laterally important matters.

She spread her fans and whirled up a gust in five miao . The men knelt and tipped their heads, presenting the row of helmets to her.

An act of submission and a salute from them to her. It was their form of kowtow.

Also an act to root and brace themselves for her sudden tempestuous departures and arrivals.

Which one was it, originally? She forgot.

She sent herself spiraling thousands of feet into the air. 

She spotted the wafting gray-white trail of incense climbing up above the trees.

She found him.

She let herself glide, twisting and bending the air as she fell to help prepare her landing.

She waved a pillar up to meet her as she landed, striking it with one foot and kicking off it with another, sending her flying over the treetops.

Her master set himself up in a naturally forming clearing in the forest. It was no more than twenty feet in width. It was just wide enough that sunlight would hit the bases of the trees, illuminating the forest floor. In the rest of the pine forest they were in, the forest floor was dark throughout the day.

He set up a small stone shrine and a ring of incense sticks around it and he. The pungent incense filled the clearing. 

There was a space to his left. 

She grabbed the incense sticks he left unlit, lit it with a pinch of firebending, and went to the set-aside spot.

She went to her knees, sat back on her feet, and closed her eyes.

The process was as easy as putting on as dressing in her Earth Islander-style armor.

She opened her eyes in a dark bog. It was as if her form moved over, over into the woods where the sunlight did not reach.

She knew by two centuries of training that this was no mortal forest.

She found her master in a fen.

He was talking to one of the denizens of this domain.

The figure in question was unlimbering his mount, that the mount could drink from the river.

The figure looked like a man. He was of the complexion of the Water Tribes, long hair tied back, yet dressed in the brown and gray furs of Xishan Tribals, those called ‘barbarians’ by many. The lone exception was his cloak, a short cape made of fire ferret. 

It clicked in her head.

A bow was slung over his back.

Bronze arrowheads poked out of his quiver. 

A horn hung from one hip, a dagger the other.

His beast looked like a moose-lion.

He rode in a chariot with wings.  

“Liewangzi.” 

The self-styled Lord of the North Winds and Son of the North Star broke off his conversation with the Immortal.

The Immortal smiled as the Spirit approached her and bowed his head in respect. 

“Avatar. It has been, what, thirty of your mortal years? Yet you are as fair as the sun of winter.”

She let herself blush in honor. “I do apologize, for I cannot accompany you on a hunt this day.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Yet it is I you seek, and not my brothers. Any Son of the North Star is as strong as the others.” 

“I have come to ask a boon of you.”

Instantly, his voice molded from that of a young man to that of an old grandmaster. “Name it, my child, and it can be yours.”

She could not do as he bade, else he would refute her. For assistance, there needed to be a reason. She would not be given whatever she asked. Same as in the Earth Kingdom. The Air Nomads, on the other hand… “The Air Nomads have rebelled against my authority.” 

“All of them? But they’re such lovably insufferably pious vegetarians.” He eyed the Immortal. “If they would but partake in the hunts I offer them, I would like them.” He eyed her.

“They protest my choices in maintaining balance," she explained, "Today’s malcontents are tomorrow’s rebellions. If they do not support me, how long until they give refuge to my enemies?”

“You want me to bring the thunder down upon them?”

“Those peaks are your domain. I come to ask your blessing to shed blood upon those sacred peaks if it comes to it.”

“And if I say no?”

She met his look and narrowed her eyes. “I will do it anyway. I must restore balance. The Air Nomads cannot become a fortress for Earth Kingdom or Fire Nation rebels to hide behind, or a base for Water Tribe pirates to sell their wares to.”

Liewangzi’s moose-lion stopped drinking, raising its head to gaze at the pair of visitors.

“I can make your adventure a short one, Avatar.” 

“Maybe when you next talk to your starry father, he can shine some wisdom upon your head,” said her companion. “Stop acting like a child, Liewangzi.”

“This isn’t your domain to defend, Tieguai.”

“The Avatar is under my protection” he whispered back.

He slapped his chariot wheel rim and laughed. “I’m going hunting soon. You’ll be on my mind this hunt, Avatar. Your heart is that of one of my followers in Xishan. You sing with fan as they do with spear.”

She needed it in words. “Do I have your blessing, Liewangzi?”

“Much as I hate those who fight my beloved hunters, we must do our duties to keep balance. You have my blessing to bring order to the peaks under my eye.” He hitched the moose-lion to the chariot. “Might I make a request in return?” he asked as he made his way to the back of the chariot.

“You may,” the Avatar permitted.

“A shrine to my image, in your Jade City. There are those among my followers who would make good servants in your order.” 

“The Warriors or the Dai Li?”

“The Dai Li. Are they not hunters of men?” He winked.

She exchanged a wordless glance with the Immortal before saying “It shall be done.” 

He snapped his reins. The moose-lion reared up.

“Praise the North Star’s greatest son for all His blessings! Sing to Him, sing to the Hunter! Sing to the Hunt!" He sang of himself as he trotted off into the mists, his moose-lion’s feet clopping along. 

As his form vanished, the lands they were in were rocked with thunderclaps.

The claps happened to match the cadence of his moose-lion’s clopping.

They set off soon after.

The Northern Air Temple was not one structure, but a city spread out over the peaks of nearby mountains, a ring roughly twenty li in width. For every stone they saw above the mountain, the temple had ten more underneath. 

Thousands of airbenders garrisoned the temple.

Tens of thousands could be found atop peaks in the surrounding five hundred li.  

Those temples fell under the rule of the Northern Air Temple, but were distant enough that they’d be deemed different commanderies by Earth Kingdom law.

They were in different commanderies by Earth Kingdom law.

There were millions -maybe tens of millions- of Air Nomads in the Four Nations. They did not like gathering in their actual land, prefering to make themselves guests of everyone else’s. This made her task easier. It was ten against hundreds or thousands, not ten against tens of thousands.

She patted Xiuping as she flew through the gorge beside one of these peaks.

Xiuping was a major part of why it would be ten against hundreds.

The Air Nomads didn’t know they were coming. With her and her master’s stratagems, they would reduce the garrison from hundreds to tens.

Not that her men couldn’t take on hundreds, or thousands. They did it monthly in Ba Sing Se. 

This wasn’t about laying siege. 

This was about healing. 

The infected area was to be cleaned, failing that, cut out and cauterized. 

They swept low over the valley floors.

They spotted other sky bisons, wild sky bisons roaming free in the mountains.

They had not been nearly caught, not once.

She had these valleys committed to memory. The gorges were roads to her friends. The caves were their homes. 

Her own island was a testimony to the Four Nations to her love of the mountains.

Mountains were earth in their most powerful form. Stubborn and unyielding and unbreakable. Jutting to the heavens, defiant of the winds and rains. Able to slow the mightiest armies. A weak man, a weak general, a weak kingdom can and will break on the cliffs of a mountain. 

Only the Avatar had a chance of fighting a mountain and winning.

Atop the tallest peak of Yokoya she realized herself.

Atop the tallest peak, now named for her first firebending companion, she planned to take her final breath. 

It was in one such narrow gorge, twenty li from the center of the Northern Air Temple, that she set down Xiuping to unload her mortal passengers and their mortal supplies.

She sat atop Xiuping when she called out “Subdue this rebellion, or the clans of all involved perish, mine included. Allow the Air Nomads to become ideals of refuge, and the next generation will live in an age of chaos. One master airbender can end a dynasty.” She raised her reins. “No rest for the rebels. No retreat for the Dai Li!”

“No rest for the rebels!” They shouted back, one voice, one body, one mind, one spirit, “No rest for the Dai Li! Ten Thousand Years!”

She acknowledged their zeal with a tipping of her head, the sunlight streaming through her fan headdress, casting her giant shadow across the ten of them.

She snapped the reins and took off, heading back the way she came, that she may encamp further away from the Northern Air Temple. A few additional li would be enough to save her allies from being unmasked by Xiuping’s scent, should any rebels in Ba Sing Se have messenger hawks to send to dynasty-ending airbenders atop shirshus in these lands. 

Lieutenant Sun was accustomed to commanding -or assisting in the commanding of- squads, units, entire contingents of Dai Li.

Nothing in our lives should ever become a custom, but those customs which our order is sworn to protect. 

He had been as surprised as the rest of his barracks when the summons came that night - “The Avatar summons you to the Royal Earth Palace.”

He was honored to accept her invitation. 

No, honored was an understatement. 

He was to the point of tears. That time of night? After word had come from the Air Nomads? 

Of course she found out before we did. They found out only a dian before the summons came.

The Air Nomads were not going to provide her with an airbending master to be her companion, her advisor, her asset sworn to tell her the whims and wishes of the Council of Elders . 

She did not need an airbending companion to know what the Elders had for breakfast. She had them, men of their order tending to the temples disguised as lowly attendants and commoners. Outsiders whose lack of airbending would prohibit them from training, let alone being in any position of governance over the Air Nation.

Who needed to govern when those in power conducted their affairs inside places with walls? 

Where there were walls, there were the Dai Li to hide inside.

Where there were rafters, there were Dai Li perched atop, sipping tea and eating hardbread.

Where there were floors, there were Dai Li underneath, playing weiqi and painting while taking notes on the talks over their head. 

Everyone knew what the Air Nomads’ sudden refusal meant.

There was simply no such concept.

The Dai Li did not ask once for something. That the Avatar so much as wrote a request to them was a sign of her mercy.

She had given that mercy to rebels in his native Minquan. Two of his cousins, a fourth and a seventh, came to Ba Sing Se, along with a score of other possible plotters. 

They were processed and hanged from the Walls that very day. 

Their prayers to the Mistress of Minquan, the Moon Spirit, were in vain.

As he reminded his cousin Tao while the latter was entrapped in a stone chair for processing, “We are under a Lake, traitor. The Moon is not watching. I am.”

His cousin would never find out it was he under the helmet. He would never let Tao know, besides. His loyalty was not to a state, a commandery, a location that birthed men who hated culture.

He was sworn to the Dai Li. They were his family, his uncles, his brothers, his cousins. The other agent he often worked alongside, Jingyi, he had gone so far as to partake in a neck-cutting oath with.

Eighty men toasted his name as he dressed for departure. 

He could not so much as sip a refreshment from the mess hall without a fellow agent coming up to strike him on the shoulder and praise the earth itself.

He and the others had an audience with the Grand Secretariat.

Grand Secretariat Daiyu stood before the assembled ten before their departure, his hands behind him, tucked into the sleeves of his robe. 

“You have the honor of seeing that every boy and girl in the Air Nomads knows our name. All men should. We are the order that guards their peace. We are the order that preserves their lands. We are all that stands between justice and anarchy. We are all that stands between tradition and madness.”

He paused. “My son fancies a collection of trinkets. An airbending master’s staff. Beads. A sky bison whistle. Toys. Airbending manuals. I trust all of you to sympathize with a boy’s fond heart.” 

“On my life, the lives of my brothers, and the lives of my clan” they answered as one, heads bent. 

They may have forgone their clans when they joined. That did not preclude their clans from being punished for their failures. 

He may well have begun weeping for joy when he found out what the assignment was. 

We are to travel to the Northern Air Temple and smother these rebellious elders in their home. 

We are to make an example to the Four Nations - pacifism is no protection from the law. 

To war with the protector of culture is to dance with death. And Death doesn’t like losing.

He was partnered with one Colonel Jiang.

The two had crossed paths, all agents did; that night was the first time they exchanged more than courtesies.

And as it happened, Jiang, though his elder in rank and age, was as famished as he was.

The older man flipped back his hat and scratched his mustache. “They will sing stories of our brothers, of our order, until the end of time.”

Sun laughed. “If there are any of them left to sing it.”

“We will see about that,” came the answer. 

The ten of them shared a bottle of the Avatar’s personal recipe for spirits.

They could not drink too much of the strong beverage or they’d be of no use.

Colonel Jiang led the toast.  “I wish to toast to Master Lao.” 

The men -their hats removed, their hair messy- raised their stone cups, fashioned from the slate of the small cave that became their camp for the night.

“Master Lao writes, ‘You serve each according to his work, and each according to his needs.’ Our foe, he lacks for work, and he cries for needs. Once, the Air Nomads were diligent. Now, they have grown fat and lazy. Every village they visit, they demand of. They claim to be our spiritual guides. They claim to protect us. They come, they eat, and they insist they know better. How many of us here have had to read writings of Air Nomads, claiming to know how to rule the Earth Kingdom better than her own flesh, her own blood, her own stone? In their eyes, we should give them everything, abolish all our rules, and let them command us as they command the winds. I say, fear not, for they cannot command themselves! The man who lacks tradition is a man who lacks himself. They write and write, and they demand that the world see to their every need. They do not strike the earth, they do not build, they do not tend fields, nor tend rivers. They have never arrested a man, nor tried him, nor questioned him, nor executed him. They do not fear what befalls their mothers should their villages be unguarded. They do not fear how their father’s lands will wither as he advances in age. They do not fear for their brothers’ and sisters’ lives, for their families are the loyal ones whom every rebel strikes first. They do not fear for their sons and daughters, that they will grow up in times of war should they fail in their missions. No! They offer nothing and ask for everything. Tomorrow, we have the honor of teaching these Air Nomads what befalls the decadent.”

He raised his cup. “To the preservation of culture! To tradition!”

The Dai Li shouted the toast as one: “Tradition!” 

He grinned. “Let the last thing the airbender hear be our beloved motherland’s song! How long shall she last, my brothers, how long?”

“Ten Thousand Years!”

“Ten Thousand Years!”

“Ten Thousand Years!”

The excitement made sleeping a challenge. 

The Avatar and the Immortal rose on the fourth day. The Avatar knelt and prayed to her ancestors. They were the Supreme Ancestors of the Earth Islands.

To the Supreme Ancestors, for guiding every step she took.

To the Supreme Ancestors, for reminding her of her duties.

To the Supreme Ancestors, for instilling in her the need to protect the Earth Kingdom and preserve its culture from all daofei and rebels.

All that she was, she was because of them. 

Her death would see her become worshipped across the Earth Islands. She prayed that the coming generations venerated not her but her ancestors.

At her side, the Immortal, older than her Supreme Ancestors, donned his white robe and green headband.

He raised burning incense and danced, singing in low clapping rumble, such that his voice could resound across the Four Nations.  

“Cry out unto your mothers, for the Gravedigger’s Discliple draws near! Hear her footfalls! Thunder be her voice, lightning be her strike!”

It was a clear day when Xiuping crested a ridge of the Sky Peaks. The Northern Air Temple was a grand complex, a town crowning a mountain. The Elders resided in the highest tower.

That we may be the closest to the Spirits, they told her once.

You will be.

“Master Lao Ge.” They were the first words she uttered on the whole flight. 

The man was gone, replaced by the figure that met her two hundred and twelve years earlier. “Young Master.” He ran his hand through his long beard. 

“Any final advice?” the student asked.

“No man,” answered the master, “not even those the Xishan Tribes call the sky-tamers, is above the law. Without order, there is nothing.”

“Yes, master.” She let go of the reins, stood up, and made her way to the center of the saddle.

The old master took the reins and repeated a line he had told her for the past two hundred and twelve years. “Only justice can bring peace.” 

Kyoshi knelt, closed her eyes and drew her fans.

The winds battering the sides of the sky bison were drawn into her. They circled around her, enveloping her, covering her. The winds became her cloak. 

She inhaled and exhaled.

She reached out… out, out to the horizon. To where her eyes could not see beyond. 

She felt the water in the air. From as low as the earth to as high as the heavens, the air was full of water drops.

She called upon it. 

She closed her fan, and every drop of water hardened to stones.

She slashed her fan.

The skies above the Northern Air Temple blackened. The winds converged from three directions, black clouds swirling inwards towards the Northern Air Temple and its surrounding mountains.

The Sun was blotted out as millions of hailstones rained down upon the entire range.

Either the rebels would break, or their temples would.