Chapter Text
The sand yielded a bit too easily beneath their feet, making each step a struggle. Behind them, just out of bending range, were their pursuers, drawing closer and closer with every instant that their feet failed to find proper purchase. They were all too well aware of what an earthbender could do to them when surrounded by their own element, and so they continued onward. No one wished to meet their death by being swallowed by the ground.
For not the first time since he had arrived at the city six hundred days before, Prince Lu Ten regretted insisting on coming to war. As heir to the throne, he was never meant to see active combat, a role typically delegated to others further removed from the line of succession. But Ozai had no talent for battle outside of one-sided duels, and Lu Ten had thought it his duty to his people to share in their experience of war. After all, it would one day be his responsibility to rule, and he would need to understand battle to know what he was willing to sacrifice to extend the glory of their nation.
Now, as he was being chased across the unending expanse of a desert he’d only ever seen on maps, Lu Ten was beginning to doubt that he’d survive long enough to rule after all.
After six hundred days as a soldier, Lu Ten now saw that there was no glory in war—no purpose beyond the countless deaths on both sides. He had been taught that they were meant to share the greatness of the Fire Nation with the rest of the world, but Lu Ten saw no greatness in this purposeless siege that had stretched on for far too many days. Grandfather had directed it, of course, but Lu Ten now knew it was far easier to command such a thing from the back of a gilded throne in the safety of the palace than it was to live through its horrors.
As his feet chafed raw inside his boots where sand had worked its way in, and his chest heaved with the effort of drawing enough air, Lu Ten wished he’d listened to tradition and stayed at the palace. He would have lacked the titles and honors reserved for royals who had seen battle, but he would have lived long enough to rule. Now, he was beginning to doubt that he would survive long enough to see the next sunrise.
“Over there!” shouted Tenko, one of his men.
Suddenly, in the space between one blink and the next, a tower seemed to emerge from the dunes. If they weren’t being pursued, Lu Ten might have thought it some sort of mirage, but one hardly had time for logical thoughts in a situation so dire. Structures provided a reprieve from an enemy with a limitless source of bending material. They had all been trained to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the ground during such battles. And so they sacrificed the precious seconds to change direction, and the struggle against the sand suddenly seemed much easier now that they had a goal to reach.
Their mission had never been supposed to go this awry. It had been a simple scouting expedition, an inquiry to determine whether any portion of Ba Sing Se’s outer walls possessed weaknesses that might benefit their campaign. Lu Ten had thought they’d return with little to report at worst.
But they hadn’t expected to find soldiers using the walls to conduct drills.
And they’d never expected to find soldiers who could bend sand.
There was not a single report in the history of their nation suggesting that earthbenders possessed any talent for manipulating sand. Yet within seconds, half of their unit had been engulfed, drowning in the dry heat of the desert before they’d even had time to scream.
Lu Ten had hardly been able to process it before he was ordering the remainder of his men to retreat, choosing the unknown expanse of the desert rather than continuing along the wall, where more damned sandbenders were likely waiting in ambush.
The chase, if one could even call it that, was something out of a horror story.
Within minutes, five more of their remaining group had been swallowed by the unrelenting sand—two lagging behind because of their wounds, the others collapsing from sheer exhaustion. Their screams would haunt Lu Ten for the rest of his—presumably limited—days.
There were only three of them left now: Lu Ten, Tenko, and an officer whose name he had never learned. Judging by the lower quality of his uniform, Lu Ten suspected he was a commoner.
It was funny then, how little rank seemed to matter in war. All that remained was the determination to keep moving—to survive.
As they drew closer to the tower, Lu Ten saw there were no discernible doors, half-buried as it was beneath the sand. But there were windows higher up, easily within reach if he applied a bit of fire-enhanced force to his jump.
The sandbenders were still chasing them as they came to a stop at the base of the tower. The ground was harder here, easier to find purchase upon—a welcome reprieve from the treacherous dunes.
Lu Ten’s lungs burned with the need for air, his muscles still acrid with exertion, but they were too close to safety to stop now.
“The window!” he ordered when it became clear the others were beginning to hesitate. “Use your fire to boost yourselves up.”
The others exchanged a look.
Lu Ten was far too frantic to be annoyed. Perhaps he’d misjudged the distance, but it was still attainable.
Tenko gave him a look that sent something cold through his spine.
“You go first, Your Highness.”
The soldier behind him echoed the sentiment.
Later, Lu Ten would remember the sadness in their eyes with startling clarity, and he would wonder how he had failed to see it.
But now, with his mind consumed by survival and the desperate effort to stave off the numbing fear of being alive, Lu Ten could focus only on making the jump.
If his fire burned more red than its usual blue-white, and if his technique was far sloppier than anything his instructors would have approved of, they weren’t there to witness it.
He crouched.
Then he launched himself into the air, just managing to catch hold of the bricks beneath the ledge. Another kick, another burst of flame, and he hauled himself onto the windowsill, shattering the glass with little remorse.
He barely registered the moment.
He didn’t feel the cuts left by the broken glass scattered across his skin, nor did he notice how the library exhaled an unnatural coolness that should have been impossible this deep in the desert at the height of summer.
Instead, he turned toward the last of his men.
“Jump! I’ll pull you up!”
Despite his trembling limbs and the exhaustion threatening to overwhelm him, Lu Ten knew he would do it. Knew he could still fulfill his duty as their commanding officer.
But the men weren’t looking at him.
They had turned away from the tower, lowering their stances as they readied their spears and finally stood their ground against the approaching enemy.
Lu Ten was too panicked to understand why the sight felt wrong.
Then, as though struck by lightning, he remembered.
Only the officers in his division were firebenders.
The common soldiers often carried those very spears, fashioned from cheaper, more flammable wood. And Tenko and the other soldier, despite whatever fortune had allowed them to survive this long, were not firebenders.
Horror struck Lu Ten then, greater than anything he had ever known.
“No!” he shouted, already knowing his plea was useless as the sandbenders drew closer. “I’ll come back! I’ll help you—”
Tenko cut him off, raising his voice into a shout loud enough that even the sandbenders were certain to hear.
“Long live Fire Lord Lu Ten!”
The other soldier echoed the cry, though he turned so that his eyes met Lu Ten’s as he spoke.
“May his reign finally bring an end to this accursed war, and may our nation finally live in peace.”
Those words would have been treason in any other context.
But Lu Ten accepted them as prophecy, each syllable driving jagged barbs into his skin.
And then there was nothing he could do except watch in horror as the last remaining men of his scouting unit were swallowed by the sand.