Damascus
- Thread starter drakensis
- Start date
Mai was very careful not to make any complaint as she and Toph followed Piandao up to his home, which was a palatial looking castle overlooking some of Shu Jing's admittedly spectacular scenery. It was very generous of the swordmaster to offer two young women dinner while they were staying in the area - suspicious in certain ways, but Piandao's reputation on such matters was as stainless as could reasonably be hoped for - and refusing would give offense.
There was a minor concern that someone might stumble across M Bison, of course, but this late in the day it wasn't really any more likely than it had been while the two of them were in Shu Jing and if someone did... Mai shrugged slightly. Too bad for them. The dark furred sky bison was so aggressive that she sometimes half-expected him to start flying via firebending not airbending.
The gates into the castle bore a lotus symbol and the one on the left swung open as the three of them approached, revealing a dignified, rather stout man of around Piandao's age. "Ah, Fat," Piandao said brightly. "As you can see, I have guests for dinner today. I hope I'm giving you enough warning."
The man - Fat presumably - frowned but nodded and glanced up at the sun, now low in the sky. "Of course Piandao," he said with exquisite courtesy.
"Mai, Toph, this is my old companion Fat," Piandao offered in introduction. "We've been together many years and I would be quite lost without him."
The girls bowed their heads towards Fat and saluted after the Fire Nation fashion. "I am Mai, and this is my sister Toph," Mai introduced herself, glad that in their new clothes they looked reasonably respectable.
Fang returned the bow and then stepped aside to allow them all the enter. Inside it's defensive wall, the castle was clearly more residence than fortress, functional buildings lining the interior of the wall and a luxurious looking pagoda residence that probably screened the castle's private gardens from the entrance. Everything was built of the finest materials and Mai guessed that for all the huge prices charged for a Piandao sword, the man must have spent staggering sums to build a house worthy of the highest nobility.
"Wow, your house looks magnificent," Toph said in an awed tone.
"Why thank you," Piandao replied and then paused to pinch the bridge of his nose. "That's your favorite joke, isn't it?"
"It never gets old," confirmed Toph with a nod of her head. "But someone told me recently that I should keep in practise."
"Sounds like a wise man," observed Piandao with a twinkle in his eye. "So, Lady Mai. Are you also skilled with war fans, like your sister."
"It's considered ladylike," Mai answered absently. "And our mother was always very concerned that we should know how to act like ladies."
"Another weapon in your arsenal, no doubt," chuckled the man. He gestured for them to follow a path around the side of the mansion rather than up the stairs to the front door. "Perhaps the two of you would be so good as to give me a demonstration of your skills before dinner. I find that a sparring session sharpens the appetite."
Mai looked at Toph, who shrugged and tapped her new fan, where it was thrust through her belt. The message was clear: fans only. Mai nodded agreement and produced her own pair from a fold of her own dress. One disadvantage of the new clothes was that they didn't allow her to conceal dart launchers in her sleeves, but she had made up for it by hiding some thin blades in the soles of her shoes - which were much thicker than those of Toph's moccasins - so that with a little adjustment the tips would extend just past her toes. That would be a nasty surprise to anyone she kicked.
Of course, in order for it to be a surprise, she would have to keep it in reserve. Like a lot of things, it was better a secret.
The back of the mansion, as Mai had suspected and Toph had known before she even entered the gates, did indeed face a private garden, on a sunken level well below the back of the house. Between them was a paved terrace, suitable for any number of activities, including - obviously - weapons drills.
Piandao took a few steps out onto the yard and drew the sword that was so much a part of him that Mai had barely noticed he was armed when they were in the shop. "If you would be so good?" he invited, holding the scabbard of his sword in his offhand.
Three fans snapped open in unison and the two girls... did nothing else.
They were already placed closely enough to support each other, already ready to move to defend or counter-attack accordingly. Offense was not even considered: against a renowned master of the sword, they would want to know what they were dealing with first.
Piandao gave them a little lesson in that. For all his years, the man was fast and his wrist flexible. Mai's pair of fans gave her the best defenses of the two, and he came very close to breaking through them with rapid thrusts of his sword. Toph automatically closed in from the swordsman's left, trying to get inside the sweep of the sword, only to find her fan blocked by the scabbard in Piandao's left hand.
Toph's own left hand locked onto his wrist - not enough to prevent him from moving the arm, she was simply too small for that, but enough to hinder him and Mai moved to exploit the opening only to find that there was no opening when Piandao uncoiled like a serpent, the jian's pommel coming within a hairsbreadth of striking her squarely on the point of the jaw. At the same moment, Piandao forced his arm out in the simplest and most powerful of moves, a punch that Toph's grip could do no more than divert past the side of her head at the cost of losing her grip.
She spun, arm jabbing out for Piandao's belly, feeling the vibration that showed he was stepping back beyond her reach, right arm sweeping around. Toph ducked, the sword cutting a few strands of hair from her pony tail, and Mai, temporarily seperated from Piandao by her sister, flung one fan in a spinning arc over Toph's head. The swordsman brought up his sword to parry the weapon and his scabbard down to deflect Toph's foot as she rolled between his legs, one foot thrusting upwards like a spear towards his pelvis.
She rolled free of course, bounding to her feet with Piandao bracketed between the two of them. He stepped aside, towards the garden, parrying in two directions, glad that Mai was missing a fan and had elected for whatever reason, not to produce any of the other weapons that he knew she carried.
"To parry and to cut," Piandao commented as they broke, the three of them moving around, seeking opportune positioning to resume the spar. "I had expected that - also thrusting, which is not your habit, I see. I confess I had not considered the use of a fan as a thrown weapon."
"Nor do a lot of people," agreed Mai and dodged around a cut towards her leg, too low for her fan to reach down and parry. That was one problem with the weapons: lack of reach. Behind Piandao, Toph scooped up the fan Mai had thrown and ran towards the swordman's back. He wheeled right, using his sword to intercept the attack and keeping his scabbard pointed towards Mai.
The wood of the ornate scabbard cracked as Mai took the opportunity to crack a sharp blow against it., driving it aside and then lunging closer while Toph pushed Piandao's sword up above her head with one fan, slashing with the other.
The three of them all came to a halt. Mai's fan was almost touching Piandao's left eye, but she knew he had released hold of the scabbard to drive a punch that had halted just barely in contact with her throat. On the far side of him, Toph had the edge of the fan pressed into his thigh, perfectly placed to sever the major vein there, but he had recovered from her parry with such swiftness that the edge of his sword lay against her ribs.
An approving smile crossed the swordmaster's face. "Most formidable. I applaud you both." He withdrew both sword and hand, relaxing.
After a moment, Mai closed her fan, Toph following suit and stepping around Piandao to return Mai's fan to her. Both bowed to Piandao. "Thank you for the lesson," Mai told him.
"Not at all," he assured her. "Thank you both for the demonstration."
From the door leading into the mansion, Fat cleared his throat. "Dinner," he announced, "is served."
.oOo.
If the meal served for them by Fat was typical of how Piandao ate, then his diet had a great deal in common with his tates in architecture: the food was of excellent quality but rather simple fare overall. Rice, with boiled vegetables and fried beef made up the main course after a thin and heavily spiced soup starter that Toph found rather hotter than she had realised, cooling her mouth with iced tea provided by Fat, who diplomatically refrained from smirking at the girl's expression.
"Not to your taste?" Piandao asked from where he was kneeling at one end of the low table.
Toph shrugged. "I didn't each much soup when I was younger, it took a while to learn how to eat it. I didn't realise this one was quite so spicy." She took another spoonful and washed it down with more tea. "It is good though," the young earthbender admitted, nodding in acknowledgement to Fat.
Piandao chuckled. "Indeed. Cooking is one of the arts where I humbly recognise Fat as being the true master in this household. Are either of you inclined towards that particular art."
Mai's lips twitched. "I'm not particularly domestic," she admitted. "Toph seems to follow my example in that as well."
"Nor am I," the swordmaster admitted. "I'd been living of army slop for years, so eating my own cooking didn't seem like much of a sacrifice when I first moved here. But then Fat offered me his home-cooking if I'd take him on as a student. I was convinced after the first bite."
"I take it that you negotiate more forcibly over your swords," Mai observed. "Considering the prices you charge."
"Oh well," he said, giving the impression he would be waving dismissively, if he wasn't holding a bowl of rice in one hand and chopsticks in the other. "I only charge so much to try to discourage so many people from asking me for swords. It's all very well to make them, but there is only so much time in the day and after I started selling swords to pay for all this, well, I barely had time to do any of this until I set the prices to where they are." His lips quirked. "Of course, now most of my customers buy the swords as decoration or as talking points, rather than using them as weapons."
"Is that some reference to some sort of philosophy?" Toph asked.
Piandao swallowed a mouthful of rice. "I suppose it is," he said thoughtfully. "A sword is a weapon, the most versatile of weapons. Any fool could make a sword-shaped piece of metal to hang on a wall. I like to think that my swords are more than that."
Toph used her own chopsticks to feed herself some beef. "Bloodthirsty," she observed before she'd finished chewing on it. It was hard to tell, with her mouth full, but Mai suspected that there some ambivalence on her part as to whether she approved or not.
"I would rather that they were treated as weapons of war," Piandao said drily. "That is not quite the same as desiring that weapons of war be made use of. Then again, my customers are paying dearly for the privilege of not following my wishes on the matter, so I suppose that it not in my hands." He signalled for Fat, who was sitting at the bottom of the table, to refill their tea cups, the level of which was below the median point. "So, what brought the two of you to Shu Jing?"
"Trying to avoid Toph being drafted into the army," Mai lied smoothly. Since Piandao had departed the Fire Nation's army on his own terms, it didn't seem likely that he would be particularly offended by the notion of a family not wanting their younger and blind daughter to be compelled to serve the Nation, as all fire benders were unless they could obtain an exemption. Such exemptions were typically granted only to noble families concerned about keeping a line of blood descent safe from combat and almost invariably required bribes almost as great as the cost of purchasing one of Piandao's swords.
"I'm still not convinced that they'd bother," Toph objected half-heartedly. "What would the army want with a blind fire bender?"
"In my experience it would be less a matter of wanting you to be in the army than it would be a matter of not wanting to set a precedent of rejecting a fire bender due to a disability," Piandao explained. "Bureaucrats are generally reluctant to innovate without a significant financial incentive, in my experienced. You realise that refusing a summons to serve is a criminal offense?"
"Failure to receive a summons is not," Mai explained. "If we cannot be located, we cannot receive notice that Toph has been called to serve and therefore cannot be held to be in refusal of a summons."
Piandao nodded thoughtfully. "But no one can run forever, young ladies."
"And if no one knows where we are headed, no one can share that information with bureaucrats," answered Mai.
To his credit Piandao did not seem offended by the implied lack of trust. "It is a sad day when such caution is required between countrymen," he said simply. "But it must also be admitted that there have been many sad days of late." Before the mood could become gloomier, he proved his bona fides as a host and changed the subject. "So, do either of you play Pai Sho?"
"A little," Mai conceded.
Toph visibly weighed her options before admitting: "As long as you don't mind me touching the board to keep track of the tiles." Unsaid was the fact that most players would reasonably fear that Toph would - intentionally or otherwise - move tiles while doing so. There was a degree to which her earth sense could guide her - most tiles and boards were stone - but she would hardly admit that under these circumstances.
"Then perhaps, after we are done eating, we can play a game or two," Piandao offered hospitably. "I am sure that a warrior so skilled with a war fan will make no careless mistakes upon a mere Pai Sho table."
.oOo.
"An interesting man," Mai threw back over her shoulder as M Bison flew through the barely pre-dawn sky. They would be out of sight of land before the sun was high enough to give a good chance of spotting them, and this leg of the journey would keep them out of that sight for longer than she was entirely comfortable with. The charts that she had were either from the water tribe, relating largely to currents that she couldn't track from the air, or copies of Air Nomad charts that were a hundred years old and based on air currents that she was barely aware of when she was in them.
"Does Spiky have a crush?" asked Toph sleepily from under a blanket where she was curled up inside the arc of the saddle. She had seemed distracted during and after the walk from Piandao's castle to their campsite - while accepting the swordmaster's hospitality would have allowed them to sleep in actual beds for once, no properly brought up fire maidens would have done so - and as she had been awake when Mai roused herself, it was possible that she had yet to actually sleep. Oh well, it wasn't as if daylight was liable to keep her awake.
"I'm not the one who monopolised him all evening," Mai replied. While she had accepted defeat after two drubbings on the Pai Sho table - humblingly while Piandao was playing Toph on a second board - and accepted the offer of some light reading from Fat (who appeared to be addicted to an seemingly endless series of cliched romance scrolls that had entertained the marginally literate of the Fire Nation since Mai's mother was a girl); the younger girl had played against the swordsmaster well into the evening, apparently undeterred by his unbroken string of victories against her.
Toph grumbled something unintelligable and rolled herself over to find the edge of the blanket. Upon success, she extended one hand directly upwards, holding something small for Mai to see it. "He gave me this when we left."
With the rising sun coming from behind them, Mai had to squint a little to make it out. "A white lotus tile?" A chill went down her spine and for a moment her mind took her back to a tower cell in Omashu. "Little sister, for the first time I really wish Zuko was here."
"I don't think he knows anything more than we do really," Toph told her. "When he talked to Bumi he was fishing for information and I don't think he got anything significant."
"That doesn't mean that he didn't know anything specific." Mai rubbed at her face. "His uncle had a white lotus tile, Piandao gave you a white lotus tile and both Zuko and Mad King Bumi seem to consider white lotus tiles to have some significance. What, you think there's a secret society of Fire Nation Pai Sho players?"
Toph wrapped the blanket closer around her. "Maybe not just the Fire Nation." A moment later, when Mai didn't reply, the twelve year old began to snore softly.
Mai watched the sky, the sea and the compass she'd bought in a Fire Nation port as soon as they'd reached civilisation. The water tribe and the air nomads could follow currents as much as they wanted, she wanted something that reliably pointed the same direction at all times.
Half a year or so ago, she'd turned her back on her birth family and boredom in favour of an adopted sister and what promised to being interesting and possibly an adventure. She'd certainly not envisaged trying to navigate over the trackless ocean via flying bison after spending an evening sparring with and then getting trounced at Pai Sho by a famous swordmaster, but Mai had to admit: it wasn't boring.
She looked back at Toph, a surprisingly small bundle of blankets and child, long black hair spilling from one end and then thought back to the last time she seen the Fire Lord Ozai, on one of his rare public appearances. The Fire Lord had cut an imposing figure in long, heavy crimson robes and a gold-trimmed black breastplate and while his mastery of fire was known more by legend than by public demonstration, it was beyond doubt that he had years of experience wielding it.
And then there were the almost endless numbers of the Fire Nation's army, raised from it's teeming population, and the weapons of war designed by its traditional artificers before being copied in hundreds of factories.
Well, if dramatic convention required adventurers to face a seemingly unstoppable enemy, the spirits would appear to have provided such to Toph.
.oOo.
Hundreds of miles away, the Fire Lord had risen with the sun and was now breaking his fast over reports that had arrived over night from his spies within the capital.
Ozai ate alone. His wife, Ursa, had not shared his bed in over a decade and had departed the palace entirely to enter seclusion in one of the royal family's many small lodges upon the first news that her eldest child had vanished. Her husband could not recall off-hand where she had even gone, although it would appear in reports from further afield than the capital if she had left, or done anything else of note.
Those reports would wait until later. Only events within the city that sprawled around the palace of the Fire Lord could be reported swiftly enough for him consider them in any sense urgent. All else he would either need to react to with orders that would again be delayed in transit, or anticipated and therefore covered already by the existing instructions he had given.
Ozai's orders upon the reports of Zuko's reappearance had merely been assign responsibility. The outcomes - if Zhao was reporting truly or if he was not - were equally predetermined and the notion of mitigating the death sentence of Zuko, were he a traitor, or of Zhao, were he maligning a member of the Royal Family simply did not occur to Zuko's father.
Zhao had returned to the capital the previous day and was currently ensouced in his family home, being treated for his frost burn. The prognosis was that while he was in no real risk of dying at this point, it would be most of a year before the Admiral was restored to fighting form. Ozai made a note to see if there was some tedious bureaucratic task to foist off on the man. Something to divert at least some of his attention away from politicking.
There was a discreet knock at the door and a servant entered on silent feet, carrying a tray stacked with more scrolls. Ozai didn't look up - the knock was not a request for permission to enter, it was a confirmation from one of the guards outside that the servant was recognised and not a possible assassin. Such signals were part and parcel of the Fire Lord's life.
The servant sorted the scrolls neatly into the space left by those that Ozai had already examined and collected those that had been discarded. Ozai picked up the first scroll she had brought and cracked the seal, noting that it was his daughter's. The servant flinched at the harsh chuckle behind her as she left the room.
Ozai set his dishes aside for a moment and examined the letter again, reading between the lines. So Lu Ten had shuffled more of the fleet under his own control and Azula was feeling the pressure. Good. His family did their best work when there was a threat to motivate them and it wouldn't do for his daughter to succeed in Ba Sing Se too quickly or easily. She still had much to learn and a canny opponent such as this Long Feng, would be an excellent way for her to learn.
The Fire Lord was hardly unaware of the conflict raging between his daughter and his nephew over the succession. Indeed, he approved wholeheartedly when that same contest could be turned to his own benefit. In this case, Azula would be desperate to secure Ba Sing Se and the attendant glory in order not to be overshadowed should Lu Ten succeed in capturing her traitor brother or the young Avatar.
Either one of the pair would be a notable victory for the young admiral. Not that either or even both would be enough to persuade Ozai to name Lu Ten as the heir apparent: it was bad enough that the presumption that Zuko, as his eldest child, was the heir had ruined the boy. No, as far as Fire Lord Ozai saw, there was no reason at all to make any such declaration. The two contenders could fight that out until one eliminated the other and whether they did so before or after his own eventual demise was a matter of indifference to him. For that matter, he was not an old man and if it was ever convenient to do so, some additional heirs might very well make their appearances. Twenty or thirty years from now, who could say what offspring he might have.
Not via Ursa though, Ozai thought, setting the letter aside at last. Azula was promising, but Zuko was clear evidence that Roku's bloodline could not be relied upon for strength or for loyalty. Still, there was no lack for other noble families who would be happy to receive his favour through a marriage. For that matter, maybe it was time to think about Azula's suitors... or rather, the abysmal lack thereof.
Honestly, the way that she had been pouting about Lu Ten's choice of bride, Ozai was beginning to think that his daughter batted for the other side.
There was a minor concern that someone might stumble across M Bison, of course, but this late in the day it wasn't really any more likely than it had been while the two of them were in Shu Jing and if someone did... Mai shrugged slightly. Too bad for them. The dark furred sky bison was so aggressive that she sometimes half-expected him to start flying via firebending not airbending.
The gates into the castle bore a lotus symbol and the one on the left swung open as the three of them approached, revealing a dignified, rather stout man of around Piandao's age. "Ah, Fat," Piandao said brightly. "As you can see, I have guests for dinner today. I hope I'm giving you enough warning."
The man - Fat presumably - frowned but nodded and glanced up at the sun, now low in the sky. "Of course Piandao," he said with exquisite courtesy.
"Mai, Toph, this is my old companion Fat," Piandao offered in introduction. "We've been together many years and I would be quite lost without him."
The girls bowed their heads towards Fat and saluted after the Fire Nation fashion. "I am Mai, and this is my sister Toph," Mai introduced herself, glad that in their new clothes they looked reasonably respectable.
Fang returned the bow and then stepped aside to allow them all the enter. Inside it's defensive wall, the castle was clearly more residence than fortress, functional buildings lining the interior of the wall and a luxurious looking pagoda residence that probably screened the castle's private gardens from the entrance. Everything was built of the finest materials and Mai guessed that for all the huge prices charged for a Piandao sword, the man must have spent staggering sums to build a house worthy of the highest nobility.
"Wow, your house looks magnificent," Toph said in an awed tone.
"Why thank you," Piandao replied and then paused to pinch the bridge of his nose. "That's your favorite joke, isn't it?"
"It never gets old," confirmed Toph with a nod of her head. "But someone told me recently that I should keep in practise."
"Sounds like a wise man," observed Piandao with a twinkle in his eye. "So, Lady Mai. Are you also skilled with war fans, like your sister."
"It's considered ladylike," Mai answered absently. "And our mother was always very concerned that we should know how to act like ladies."
"Another weapon in your arsenal, no doubt," chuckled the man. He gestured for them to follow a path around the side of the mansion rather than up the stairs to the front door. "Perhaps the two of you would be so good as to give me a demonstration of your skills before dinner. I find that a sparring session sharpens the appetite."
Mai looked at Toph, who shrugged and tapped her new fan, where it was thrust through her belt. The message was clear: fans only. Mai nodded agreement and produced her own pair from a fold of her own dress. One disadvantage of the new clothes was that they didn't allow her to conceal dart launchers in her sleeves, but she had made up for it by hiding some thin blades in the soles of her shoes - which were much thicker than those of Toph's moccasins - so that with a little adjustment the tips would extend just past her toes. That would be a nasty surprise to anyone she kicked.
Of course, in order for it to be a surprise, she would have to keep it in reserve. Like a lot of things, it was better a secret.
The back of the mansion, as Mai had suspected and Toph had known before she even entered the gates, did indeed face a private garden, on a sunken level well below the back of the house. Between them was a paved terrace, suitable for any number of activities, including - obviously - weapons drills.
Piandao took a few steps out onto the yard and drew the sword that was so much a part of him that Mai had barely noticed he was armed when they were in the shop. "If you would be so good?" he invited, holding the scabbard of his sword in his offhand.
Three fans snapped open in unison and the two girls... did nothing else.
They were already placed closely enough to support each other, already ready to move to defend or counter-attack accordingly. Offense was not even considered: against a renowned master of the sword, they would want to know what they were dealing with first.
Piandao gave them a little lesson in that. For all his years, the man was fast and his wrist flexible. Mai's pair of fans gave her the best defenses of the two, and he came very close to breaking through them with rapid thrusts of his sword. Toph automatically closed in from the swordsman's left, trying to get inside the sweep of the sword, only to find her fan blocked by the scabbard in Piandao's left hand.
Toph's own left hand locked onto his wrist - not enough to prevent him from moving the arm, she was simply too small for that, but enough to hinder him and Mai moved to exploit the opening only to find that there was no opening when Piandao uncoiled like a serpent, the jian's pommel coming within a hairsbreadth of striking her squarely on the point of the jaw. At the same moment, Piandao forced his arm out in the simplest and most powerful of moves, a punch that Toph's grip could do no more than divert past the side of her head at the cost of losing her grip.
She spun, arm jabbing out for Piandao's belly, feeling the vibration that showed he was stepping back beyond her reach, right arm sweeping around. Toph ducked, the sword cutting a few strands of hair from her pony tail, and Mai, temporarily seperated from Piandao by her sister, flung one fan in a spinning arc over Toph's head. The swordsman brought up his sword to parry the weapon and his scabbard down to deflect Toph's foot as she rolled between his legs, one foot thrusting upwards like a spear towards his pelvis.
She rolled free of course, bounding to her feet with Piandao bracketed between the two of them. He stepped aside, towards the garden, parrying in two directions, glad that Mai was missing a fan and had elected for whatever reason, not to produce any of the other weapons that he knew she carried.
"To parry and to cut," Piandao commented as they broke, the three of them moving around, seeking opportune positioning to resume the spar. "I had expected that - also thrusting, which is not your habit, I see. I confess I had not considered the use of a fan as a thrown weapon."
"Nor do a lot of people," agreed Mai and dodged around a cut towards her leg, too low for her fan to reach down and parry. That was one problem with the weapons: lack of reach. Behind Piandao, Toph scooped up the fan Mai had thrown and ran towards the swordman's back. He wheeled right, using his sword to intercept the attack and keeping his scabbard pointed towards Mai.
The wood of the ornate scabbard cracked as Mai took the opportunity to crack a sharp blow against it., driving it aside and then lunging closer while Toph pushed Piandao's sword up above her head with one fan, slashing with the other.
The three of them all came to a halt. Mai's fan was almost touching Piandao's left eye, but she knew he had released hold of the scabbard to drive a punch that had halted just barely in contact with her throat. On the far side of him, Toph had the edge of the fan pressed into his thigh, perfectly placed to sever the major vein there, but he had recovered from her parry with such swiftness that the edge of his sword lay against her ribs.
An approving smile crossed the swordmaster's face. "Most formidable. I applaud you both." He withdrew both sword and hand, relaxing.
After a moment, Mai closed her fan, Toph following suit and stepping around Piandao to return Mai's fan to her. Both bowed to Piandao. "Thank you for the lesson," Mai told him.
"Not at all," he assured her. "Thank you both for the demonstration."
From the door leading into the mansion, Fat cleared his throat. "Dinner," he announced, "is served."
.oOo.
If the meal served for them by Fat was typical of how Piandao ate, then his diet had a great deal in common with his tates in architecture: the food was of excellent quality but rather simple fare overall. Rice, with boiled vegetables and fried beef made up the main course after a thin and heavily spiced soup starter that Toph found rather hotter than she had realised, cooling her mouth with iced tea provided by Fat, who diplomatically refrained from smirking at the girl's expression.
"Not to your taste?" Piandao asked from where he was kneeling at one end of the low table.
Toph shrugged. "I didn't each much soup when I was younger, it took a while to learn how to eat it. I didn't realise this one was quite so spicy." She took another spoonful and washed it down with more tea. "It is good though," the young earthbender admitted, nodding in acknowledgement to Fat.
Piandao chuckled. "Indeed. Cooking is one of the arts where I humbly recognise Fat as being the true master in this household. Are either of you inclined towards that particular art."
Mai's lips twitched. "I'm not particularly domestic," she admitted. "Toph seems to follow my example in that as well."
"Nor am I," the swordmaster admitted. "I'd been living of army slop for years, so eating my own cooking didn't seem like much of a sacrifice when I first moved here. But then Fat offered me his home-cooking if I'd take him on as a student. I was convinced after the first bite."
"I take it that you negotiate more forcibly over your swords," Mai observed. "Considering the prices you charge."
"Oh well," he said, giving the impression he would be waving dismissively, if he wasn't holding a bowl of rice in one hand and chopsticks in the other. "I only charge so much to try to discourage so many people from asking me for swords. It's all very well to make them, but there is only so much time in the day and after I started selling swords to pay for all this, well, I barely had time to do any of this until I set the prices to where they are." His lips quirked. "Of course, now most of my customers buy the swords as decoration or as talking points, rather than using them as weapons."
"Is that some reference to some sort of philosophy?" Toph asked.
Piandao swallowed a mouthful of rice. "I suppose it is," he said thoughtfully. "A sword is a weapon, the most versatile of weapons. Any fool could make a sword-shaped piece of metal to hang on a wall. I like to think that my swords are more than that."
Toph used her own chopsticks to feed herself some beef. "Bloodthirsty," she observed before she'd finished chewing on it. It was hard to tell, with her mouth full, but Mai suspected that there some ambivalence on her part as to whether she approved or not.
"I would rather that they were treated as weapons of war," Piandao said drily. "That is not quite the same as desiring that weapons of war be made use of. Then again, my customers are paying dearly for the privilege of not following my wishes on the matter, so I suppose that it not in my hands." He signalled for Fat, who was sitting at the bottom of the table, to refill their tea cups, the level of which was below the median point. "So, what brought the two of you to Shu Jing?"
"Trying to avoid Toph being drafted into the army," Mai lied smoothly. Since Piandao had departed the Fire Nation's army on his own terms, it didn't seem likely that he would be particularly offended by the notion of a family not wanting their younger and blind daughter to be compelled to serve the Nation, as all fire benders were unless they could obtain an exemption. Such exemptions were typically granted only to noble families concerned about keeping a line of blood descent safe from combat and almost invariably required bribes almost as great as the cost of purchasing one of Piandao's swords.
"I'm still not convinced that they'd bother," Toph objected half-heartedly. "What would the army want with a blind fire bender?"
"In my experience it would be less a matter of wanting you to be in the army than it would be a matter of not wanting to set a precedent of rejecting a fire bender due to a disability," Piandao explained. "Bureaucrats are generally reluctant to innovate without a significant financial incentive, in my experienced. You realise that refusing a summons to serve is a criminal offense?"
"Failure to receive a summons is not," Mai explained. "If we cannot be located, we cannot receive notice that Toph has been called to serve and therefore cannot be held to be in refusal of a summons."
Piandao nodded thoughtfully. "But no one can run forever, young ladies."
"And if no one knows where we are headed, no one can share that information with bureaucrats," answered Mai.
To his credit Piandao did not seem offended by the implied lack of trust. "It is a sad day when such caution is required between countrymen," he said simply. "But it must also be admitted that there have been many sad days of late." Before the mood could become gloomier, he proved his bona fides as a host and changed the subject. "So, do either of you play Pai Sho?"
"A little," Mai conceded.
Toph visibly weighed her options before admitting: "As long as you don't mind me touching the board to keep track of the tiles." Unsaid was the fact that most players would reasonably fear that Toph would - intentionally or otherwise - move tiles while doing so. There was a degree to which her earth sense could guide her - most tiles and boards were stone - but she would hardly admit that under these circumstances.
"Then perhaps, after we are done eating, we can play a game or two," Piandao offered hospitably. "I am sure that a warrior so skilled with a war fan will make no careless mistakes upon a mere Pai Sho table."
.oOo.
"An interesting man," Mai threw back over her shoulder as M Bison flew through the barely pre-dawn sky. They would be out of sight of land before the sun was high enough to give a good chance of spotting them, and this leg of the journey would keep them out of that sight for longer than she was entirely comfortable with. The charts that she had were either from the water tribe, relating largely to currents that she couldn't track from the air, or copies of Air Nomad charts that were a hundred years old and based on air currents that she was barely aware of when she was in them.
"Does Spiky have a crush?" asked Toph sleepily from under a blanket where she was curled up inside the arc of the saddle. She had seemed distracted during and after the walk from Piandao's castle to their campsite - while accepting the swordmaster's hospitality would have allowed them to sleep in actual beds for once, no properly brought up fire maidens would have done so - and as she had been awake when Mai roused herself, it was possible that she had yet to actually sleep. Oh well, it wasn't as if daylight was liable to keep her awake.
"I'm not the one who monopolised him all evening," Mai replied. While she had accepted defeat after two drubbings on the Pai Sho table - humblingly while Piandao was playing Toph on a second board - and accepted the offer of some light reading from Fat (who appeared to be addicted to an seemingly endless series of cliched romance scrolls that had entertained the marginally literate of the Fire Nation since Mai's mother was a girl); the younger girl had played against the swordsmaster well into the evening, apparently undeterred by his unbroken string of victories against her.
Toph grumbled something unintelligable and rolled herself over to find the edge of the blanket. Upon success, she extended one hand directly upwards, holding something small for Mai to see it. "He gave me this when we left."
With the rising sun coming from behind them, Mai had to squint a little to make it out. "A white lotus tile?" A chill went down her spine and for a moment her mind took her back to a tower cell in Omashu. "Little sister, for the first time I really wish Zuko was here."
"I don't think he knows anything more than we do really," Toph told her. "When he talked to Bumi he was fishing for information and I don't think he got anything significant."
"That doesn't mean that he didn't know anything specific." Mai rubbed at her face. "His uncle had a white lotus tile, Piandao gave you a white lotus tile and both Zuko and Mad King Bumi seem to consider white lotus tiles to have some significance. What, you think there's a secret society of Fire Nation Pai Sho players?"
Toph wrapped the blanket closer around her. "Maybe not just the Fire Nation." A moment later, when Mai didn't reply, the twelve year old began to snore softly.
Mai watched the sky, the sea and the compass she'd bought in a Fire Nation port as soon as they'd reached civilisation. The water tribe and the air nomads could follow currents as much as they wanted, she wanted something that reliably pointed the same direction at all times.
Half a year or so ago, she'd turned her back on her birth family and boredom in favour of an adopted sister and what promised to being interesting and possibly an adventure. She'd certainly not envisaged trying to navigate over the trackless ocean via flying bison after spending an evening sparring with and then getting trounced at Pai Sho by a famous swordmaster, but Mai had to admit: it wasn't boring.
She looked back at Toph, a surprisingly small bundle of blankets and child, long black hair spilling from one end and then thought back to the last time she seen the Fire Lord Ozai, on one of his rare public appearances. The Fire Lord had cut an imposing figure in long, heavy crimson robes and a gold-trimmed black breastplate and while his mastery of fire was known more by legend than by public demonstration, it was beyond doubt that he had years of experience wielding it.
And then there were the almost endless numbers of the Fire Nation's army, raised from it's teeming population, and the weapons of war designed by its traditional artificers before being copied in hundreds of factories.
Well, if dramatic convention required adventurers to face a seemingly unstoppable enemy, the spirits would appear to have provided such to Toph.
.oOo.
Hundreds of miles away, the Fire Lord had risen with the sun and was now breaking his fast over reports that had arrived over night from his spies within the capital.
Ozai ate alone. His wife, Ursa, had not shared his bed in over a decade and had departed the palace entirely to enter seclusion in one of the royal family's many small lodges upon the first news that her eldest child had vanished. Her husband could not recall off-hand where she had even gone, although it would appear in reports from further afield than the capital if she had left, or done anything else of note.
Those reports would wait until later. Only events within the city that sprawled around the palace of the Fire Lord could be reported swiftly enough for him consider them in any sense urgent. All else he would either need to react to with orders that would again be delayed in transit, or anticipated and therefore covered already by the existing instructions he had given.
Ozai's orders upon the reports of Zuko's reappearance had merely been assign responsibility. The outcomes - if Zhao was reporting truly or if he was not - were equally predetermined and the notion of mitigating the death sentence of Zuko, were he a traitor, or of Zhao, were he maligning a member of the Royal Family simply did not occur to Zuko's father.
Zhao had returned to the capital the previous day and was currently ensouced in his family home, being treated for his frost burn. The prognosis was that while he was in no real risk of dying at this point, it would be most of a year before the Admiral was restored to fighting form. Ozai made a note to see if there was some tedious bureaucratic task to foist off on the man. Something to divert at least some of his attention away from politicking.
There was a discreet knock at the door and a servant entered on silent feet, carrying a tray stacked with more scrolls. Ozai didn't look up - the knock was not a request for permission to enter, it was a confirmation from one of the guards outside that the servant was recognised and not a possible assassin. Such signals were part and parcel of the Fire Lord's life.
The servant sorted the scrolls neatly into the space left by those that Ozai had already examined and collected those that had been discarded. Ozai picked up the first scroll she had brought and cracked the seal, noting that it was his daughter's. The servant flinched at the harsh chuckle behind her as she left the room.
Ozai set his dishes aside for a moment and examined the letter again, reading between the lines. So Lu Ten had shuffled more of the fleet under his own control and Azula was feeling the pressure. Good. His family did their best work when there was a threat to motivate them and it wouldn't do for his daughter to succeed in Ba Sing Se too quickly or easily. She still had much to learn and a canny opponent such as this Long Feng, would be an excellent way for her to learn.
The Fire Lord was hardly unaware of the conflict raging between his daughter and his nephew over the succession. Indeed, he approved wholeheartedly when that same contest could be turned to his own benefit. In this case, Azula would be desperate to secure Ba Sing Se and the attendant glory in order not to be overshadowed should Lu Ten succeed in capturing her traitor brother or the young Avatar.
Either one of the pair would be a notable victory for the young admiral. Not that either or even both would be enough to persuade Ozai to name Lu Ten as the heir apparent: it was bad enough that the presumption that Zuko, as his eldest child, was the heir had ruined the boy. No, as far as Fire Lord Ozai saw, there was no reason at all to make any such declaration. The two contenders could fight that out until one eliminated the other and whether they did so before or after his own eventual demise was a matter of indifference to him. For that matter, he was not an old man and if it was ever convenient to do so, some additional heirs might very well make their appearances. Twenty or thirty years from now, who could say what offspring he might have.
Not via Ursa though, Ozai thought, setting the letter aside at last. Azula was promising, but Zuko was clear evidence that Roku's bloodline could not be relied upon for strength or for loyalty. Still, there was no lack for other noble families who would be happy to receive his favour through a marriage. For that matter, maybe it was time to think about Azula's suitors... or rather, the abysmal lack thereof.
Honestly, the way that she had been pouting about Lu Ten's choice of bride, Ozai was beginning to think that his daughter batted for the other side.
Despite being hairer than anything Mai had ever come across before, M Bison did not appear to be particularly bothered about the tropical heat of the island that - as best she could tell - was the one Zuko had marked on the map. The sky bison had shed an astonishing amount of hair as they flew through the equatorial regions, but had made not the least complaint more than he had done at the south pole. Then again, sky bison had apparently travelled the world routinely with Air Nomads back in the day, so perhaps that indifference came naturally to his kind.
"This place reminds me of the swamp," Toph said as they set up camp on the beach. "Something about the trees..."
Mai glanced around and then nodded. There were some similarities between these trees and the mangroves of the Foggy Swamp. Fortunately, the ground seemed to be considerably more reliable. "If you get the chance, perhaps you can figure out Huu's trick of bending plants," she suggested. "It could be useful if the buildings I saw from the air are this overgrown."
"That bad?" the younger girl asked. She could trace the roots of the trees through the soil inshore of the sands, but the leaves and branches were far harder to make out at this distance.
"Bad enough." Mai finished unstrapping the saddle and stepped back to let M Bison work his way out of the heavy leather assembly. Normally he would sleep while saddled allowing for a swift departure at need, but where possible Mai had been encouraged to give him the chance to rest or even graze without it. Whatever they wound up doing on this island, the lack of population made it unlikely that they would need to depart in any sort of haste. "I'm astonished the buildings were even visible, now that I get a closer look at these trees."
Toph used her earth bending to steepen the dunes around their campsite, sheltering them more from any winds. Between that and the mass of M Bison, the only real risk was that of rain and Mai had brought canvas for that very reason, along with bamboo poles that could be used to suspend it above them, warding that away from where they would sleep.
"What do you think you'll find here?" Mai asked as she laid out a fire pit. Tonights supper would not be as fine as that Fat was no doubt serving to Piandao at this hour, but it would be warm and probably more edible than military rations in the armies of the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation.
"I'm not sure," admitted her sister. "Scrolls would probably have rotted away long ago, or simply be taken. But there will be something here that will help with my fire bending."
Mai nodded, not voicing further doubts. "And then?"
Toph sat quietly for a moment. "Then I make war. It's summer now, not much more than two months before Sozin's Comet is in the sky. When that happens, I need to have the Fire Lord and his soldiers focused entirely on something other that obliterating another nation. And the only thing more pressing than that will be the Avatar."
"You've been thinking about it then?"
"Ever since I was playing Piandao at Pai Sho. Strategy, tactics, call it what you will. I need a plan that beats the Fire Lord's plan and all the timing rests on -" and here Toph's voice grew amused "- something I'll be hard-pressed to notice without someone to tell me it's in the sky."
"Do you have any candidates for that someone, little sister?" drawled Mai. She stepped back from the fire pit and Toph blew a plume of fire over the driftwood that they had gathered. It lit up almost immediately and Mai placed the pot, already half filled with clean water from their waterbags, on the fire to heat.
Toph grinned. "Let's keep it in the family," she proposed. "Older sister."
"What did you call me?" Mai asked, raising the ladle menacingly.
"The hearing is often the first thing to go. Have any of your hairs turned grey yet?"
.oOo.
It wasn't hard to believe that the city was thousands of years old, Mai thought as she and Toph entered its streets. Paving was cracked and worn more by the elements than by human feet. The buildings, built to a somewhat truncated pattern, the walls angling in towards each other, wider at the ground than the ceilings, suggested ancient building practises, as did the lack of any mortar holding them together. Nothing more than stones piled upon each other. Mai suspected that any Sunwarriors not killed in the wars as they expanded their empire had migrated to more civilised settlements the first chance they got, leaving nothing more than an empty capital when uprisings tore that nation apart.
Toph liked it, of course.
Rather than risk flying over something important, the two of them had elected to walk through the overgrown streets of the ruined city. Toph had experimented with the trees as Mai hacked her way through the outer layers of the jungle, finding that under the canopy layer of the trees, there was much less undergrowth. By the time they crossed the nebulous boundary between city and jungle, she was able to move aside at least the lighter growth, although they still had to work around the heavier, more established trees.
"This place is a wreck," Mai observed.
Toph pushed another tree branch around so that they could progress further down an alleyway between two small buildings that were almost certainly houses. "Let's be fair. Your room back in Omashu probably looks this bad and we've not even been gone a year."
The thought of her room in Omashu - a room that she'd hated the whole time she was there - sent an entirely unexpected pang of guilt through Mai. Her mother had kept putting potted flowers there as id they would make it better. Of course, for all her supposedly love of plants, Mai's mother didn't exactly have a green thumb. It wouldn't be at all unlike her to have forgotten all about them, leaving a maid to water them while they grew until the entire room was consumed by green.
They crossed into a wider street and Toph turned towards the centre of the city. "There's something larger down that way."
Mai squinted, trying to see past the trees. The buildings did seem higher there, although it might simply be a hill. "That would be fairly near the centre of the city. I suppose important buildings would be there, and probably larger than these ones."
They turned and started walking down the street. For whatever reason, it seemed to be less cluttered. While trees still occupied parts of the road, having forced their way through the paving, but unlike the narrower routes, there was almost always enough space for the two of them to go past without Toph having to force the branches away or - as she had twice so far today - level a building to create a path.
"Stop." Toph held out an arm to block Mai from continuing.
The older girl looked down at her. "What's the matter?"
"I wondered what these were," Toph murmered, kneeling and pulling on a section of vine that crossed the road. Now that Mai saw it, the way it hung was suspicious - just off the ground, around ankle height. A tripwire?
Toph yanked on it sharply and a sizeable section of paving immediately in front of her bare toes sank promptly, by about six inches. The metal spikes that had been hidden between the paving didn't sink though. Mai could envisage someone tripping on the vine and tumbling face first into the spikes. It wasn't a pleasent vision.
"That worked rather smoothly for something centuries old," she observed.
Toph exhaled slowly and made a pushing gesture before standing. "It's been maintained," she guessed. "Someone else is here. Or has been, in the last few years." She stepped down, carefully placing her feet between the spokes as she crossed the depression. "I've blocked this one, it's safe. But keep your eyes peeled. Where there's one trap -"
"- there are bound to be more."
.oOo.
The building at the centre of the city was further away than it had looked. It was also larger than Mai had realised at first, rearing up over the city. Rather than a smooth, or at least regularly stepped exterior, it was a profusion of terraces and stairways. Every vertical surface was carved and ornamental dragons were everywhere, interspersed in some depictions with firebenders but predominantly alone.
"Impressive," Toph conceded. "This must have taken forever to do."
"The great earth bender is impressed? Now I have seen everything."
Toph shook her head. "Sure, I could build something like this. But this isn't the work of an earth bender. Not even of an army of earth benders. This was done by hand. That's quite a project. This must have been a palace or a temple of some kind."
Mai nodded. That made sense. She couldn't think of anything else that would occupy such a central and clearly important location. "Let me guess. Anything important will be right at the top?"
"Either that or underneath it," Toph agreed. "And I can't feel any catacombs down there." She stamped her feet and frowned.
"What's wrong?" A knife dropped into Mai's hand from sheer reflex.
"Something - maybe someone, maybe just an animal - moving in the distance." Toph sighed. "It's the right size for a human... of course, I wouldn't be surprised if a place like this had giant monkeys wandering around."
"Apes."
"What?"
"Not giant monkeys, apes."
"Whatever." Toph set off up the steps and then paused as she felt another vibration through the stone. "That was human feet. Lots of human feet. Up near the top of this thing!"
She set off running. Up the stairs, of course.
Mai smiled thinly and followed. She didn't let go of the knife though. Humans here might represent a link to the long dead sunwarriors, to whatever secrets of firebending lore Toph had been directed here to find... but they were far more likely to represent a threat to her little sister. Or, the world being what it was, both.
Toph's pace slowed as she came closer to the top. Not from exhaustion, although the climb - carried out under the sweltering heat - would be wearisome for someone less energetic. Her concern - and that of Mai, whose longer legs made up for the fact that being post-pubescent she no longer had limitless energy to work with - was of stealth.
The front of the pyramid projected forwards, creating a seperate building linked to the main structure by a bridge. The bridge was guarded. The main structure - specifically the area at the other end of the bridge, previously shielded from their view - was occupied by firebenders. Quite a number of firebenders, evenly divided between male and female. The latter was easy to tell, even at this distance, because -
"Does every hidden tribe in the world abhor clothing?" Mai asked under her breath, knowing that Toph would hear the words easily. "First those swamp rats and now this lot."
"Well at least Yue's people wear clothes. I don't care how warm my island makes their city, they'd freeze without them."
Mai chuckled, taking the measure of the two warriors at the near end of the bridge. Young and to judge by the spears, probably not fire benders. Most benders didn't see the need for weapons other than their elements. "I imagine Zuko would be very happy if Yue did adopt the practise." And that possibility didn't hurt any more, how about that?
"Why?" Toph asked with feigned innocence. Then again, nudity probably meant very little to her, Mai admitted privately.
Instead of answering, Mai looked at the benders. They were standing in a circle, passing flames - each in a stylised shape - around it. There was presumably some significance in their eyes and Mai wondered who they were. Some long lost remnant of the Sunwarriors or a more modern cult who merely imagined that they were? "What are they doing?"
"I'm not sure." Toph placed one hand against the stones, fingers spread. "I think we can get closer it we approach from below the bridge."
Mai looked at the guards, neither of whom could possibly see anything that was directly beneath the bridge that they were standing upon, and the firebenders, who seemed entirely absorbed in their ritual. "Alright. I take it that you have a route down to the base of the bridge?"
Toph smirked and placed her hands together before drawing them apart sharply. A pit opened directly beneath her and the girl dropped silently through it. Mai sighed and hopped into it, what she hoped was a safe distance behind, discovering that the pit was actually the entry to a chute that seemed to spiral around the inside of the pyramid. It was also very fast, reminding Mai entirely too much of Omashu's mail system, and pitch black. By the time she reached the bottom, which thankfully levelled out a bit slowing her to the point that the landing at the bottom - on the paving beneath the bridge - wasn't too noisy. Which wasn't the same as it being painless. Mai shot an irritated look at the back of Toph's head as the other girl opened a hole in the first pillar supporting the bridge for them to walk through.
It only took a few moments to cross the divide, with Toph neatly closing up the holes behind them as leaving evidence of their presence would be almost as bad as being spotted themselves. The murmer of voices above above them was clearer but Mai still couldn't make out any words.
"Do you think we should introduce ourselves?" Toph asked.
The corners of Mai's lips curved upwards. "I don't think they'd appreciate the interuption," she said. "And if we do approach them, it might be best to be above them."
Toph nodded, a grin appearing her face. "Let's take the stairs," she suggested, slapping the wall in front of them. "They're right here." The wall opened smoothly, revealing stairs that led a few yards up and inside the pyramid to bare earth. Once they were inside, the wall closed up behind them and Mai followed her sister up the stairs, not concerned when they didn't walk into the earth she'd seen at the head of the stairs as Toph extended the stair upwards ahead of them, closing it behind them as they ascended.
"Earth bending has it's uses," the knife-wielding fire maiden noted.
"It does," Toph agreed. "It's definitely the greatest of all four bending arts."
"Isn't the Avatar supposed to be about balance, and fairness between all four elements?" Mai asked.
"And that's why you know I'm being fair and unbiased."
Mai rolled her eyes in the darkness. "Of course you are. Well, sneaking around like this and avoiding a fight probably counts as helping you with airbending philosophy at any rate. Now if you can figure out how to sense vibrations in the air, you'll be all set."
Toph chuckled from a step ahead of her. "Not really practical. Air's just too unstable for that to work."
"That's a shame," Mai conceded.
"It isn't totally useless," admitted Toph, "It's just too easily distorted to be relied on for anything more than generalities." She stopped walking and Mai, unwarned, took another step upwards before she halted. Two steps ahead of them, the stairs halted, this time against a stone wall she disovered, reaching forward to touch it with one hand. "Someone's sneaky."
Mai frowned. "What's on the other side of this?"
"A mechanism of some kind," Toph told her. "Pressure balanced stones, very complicated. I'm not sure what all of it does but if I try to go through that I could set something off without meaning to."
"Such as?"
"Well," and Mai could have sworn she could hear Toph grinning, "There's a vat of some kind of gluey liquid. Enough to fill a good-sized room. If that starts flooding into a confined space like this..."
Mai shuddered. "I take your point. So, do you think we can work around it?"
Toph started walking again and Mia followed up the last two stairs and then into a tunnel that led off to the right. "Probably the simplest way is just to go around it," the earth bender decided. "There isn't anyone around the back of the pyramid right now, so we can just go up onto the back terrace and climb up that side."
"It sounds like more traps like the one you found earlier," Mai observed. "Which raises the question of what's behind them. Does this fill up all of the top of the pyramid?"
"No, there's a room up above," Toph told her. "Sealed up tight, stone doors and everything."
Mai considered. "Let's see what's up there," she suggested. "It could be important."
A few moments later Toph opened up the ceiling of their route, leaving Mai blinking at the sudden sunlight pouring through the opening. Toph closed up the hole by simply raising the ground beneath them until they were standing on the terrace behind the upper levels of the pyramid. True to Toph's words, there was no one in sight, which seemed odd to Mai, given the guards on the bridge leading to the Pyramid.
"The stairs are all on the other side," Toph told her when the older girl voiced her concerns. "They probably haven't seen an earth bender in generations, as far away from everywhere as you told me this island is, and anyone else would find the sides of the pyramid almost impassable." She raised steps leading up to the next terrace for the two of them, careful to use stone from the floor, not from the walls which might suffer damage to their intricate carvings.
There were similar carvings upon the uppermost level of the pyramid. The apex was as large as a good sized house and capped by a dome, the rear wall marked by two huge dragons carved in reliet, breathing fire towards the centre of wall where the shape of a human had been carved, engulfed in the fiery wrath of both.
"How are you going to avoid damaging that?" Mai asked wryly.
Toph smirked and set her feet, taking a deep breath. A moment later and she swung the entire rear wall open like a huge door. "After you, Spiky."
"Show off," Mai murmered and obediently walked inside, with Toph closing the wall behind them. The room within was lit via an opening at the top of the dome that was covered only by a metal grid and while it was dimmer than the light outside, Mai found that a relief, her eyes still adjusting from the darkness inside the pyramid. As it was, she almost gasped at the menacing shapes positioned around the room before realising that they were merely statues and restrained herself from open reaction. "I'm not sure what I was expecting, but this isn't it," she admitted.
Toph stalked around the room's floor of interlocking red marble stones until she reached the opening in the circle of statues, by the door. "The stones that move as part of the mechanism are all inside the circle," she told Mai as she entered the area, making it obvious that she was avoiding certain slabs.
Mai looked at the statues. Each was of a man, face obscured by an gruesome mask, wearing the garb of an ancient Sun Warrior and probably one of high stature to judge by the elaborate nature of the clothes and mask that had been sculpted. The two sides more or less mirrored each other, as far as she could tell, each statue positioned in unstable looking poses that were either intended to look as foolish as possible or... well, it could be something to do with bending perhaps. That looked fairly silly when there wasn't fire involved, and sometimes when it did.
"What do you think these are for?"
Toph looked up. "Some sort of fire bending form perhaps. It's also a key."
"A key?"
"The pressure plates are all aligned with where the statues stand. I'm pretty sure that it's activated by having two people execute out the form at once, standing on each pressure plate in turn." Toph frowned and then pointed to the centre of the chamber. "Opening a compartment there although I think there's more to it than that. Whoever came up with this was a mad genius."
Mai shrugged. "Well, are you going to open it up or do you want to approach the celebrants of that little festival outside?"
"They're heading up the pyramid now," reported Toph before answering: "Let's wait for them. I wouldn't like someone going through my super secret hiding places if I had any and we might be asking them for favours."
"Are you learning diplomacy, little sister?" asked Mai.
"I can be diplomatic when I want to. I just don't bother much," Toph said and shrugged.
.oOo.
Ham Ghao was proud to lead the procession of Sunwarriors up the pyramid towards their destination. Every year, a member of the tribe who had distinguished himself was allowed the honour and this was the second summer solstice that he had been granted the right.
It didn't occur to Ham Ghao that the leader of the procession was the only man amongst them who didn't walk next to anyone. Or that the rest of the tribe considered his smugness over the honour to be an entirely acceptable excuse not to have to walk alongside him for upwards of an hour, listening to what the most sympathetic of ears in the tribe labelled as 'whining and bitching'.
They were nearing the end of the climb now, coming up on the archway that marked the top of the stairs, and the self-absorbed fire bender noticed that the light from the sunstone was now tracking across the keystone to the ancient door that led into the Great Pyramid. Hastening his pace, Ham Ghao led the procession towards the door, each line of Sunwarriors breaking away to form a circle around the lines laid out on the stones.
As they took position, the keystone reacted to the carefully focused and redirected sunlight; the stone doors slowly sliding open. Because Ham Ghao had lingered to saver his position at the head of the group, he was the first one to see inside the sanctum.
There were two girls inside, facing the doors. Alive, in a chamber that had not been opened for a year. They were alike in appearance - pale skinned with long dark hair in high ponytails, wearing burgundy dresses. Trespassing where even the sunwarriors, the heirs to the legacy of a thousand years of the sacred art of firebending would hesitate to walk. One was clearly still a child in years, the other young but evidently a woman.
"Intruders!" Ham Ghao shouted in warning, calling fire to his hands.
But for the moment he did not attack. He was not unreasonable: the trespassers would be given a chance to surrender themselves.
Behind him, he heard gasps and the fire around his fingers wavered. Turning to look back Ham Ghao saw the light of the day begin to dim. In the sky a black arc of the sun began to vanish, as if being devoured by some terrible beast.
"They've desecrated the sanctum!" he shouted, appalled and pointed through the door. "Kill them!"
Fire lashed out towards the startled pair.
"This place reminds me of the swamp," Toph said as they set up camp on the beach. "Something about the trees..."
Mai glanced around and then nodded. There were some similarities between these trees and the mangroves of the Foggy Swamp. Fortunately, the ground seemed to be considerably more reliable. "If you get the chance, perhaps you can figure out Huu's trick of bending plants," she suggested. "It could be useful if the buildings I saw from the air are this overgrown."
"That bad?" the younger girl asked. She could trace the roots of the trees through the soil inshore of the sands, but the leaves and branches were far harder to make out at this distance.
"Bad enough." Mai finished unstrapping the saddle and stepped back to let M Bison work his way out of the heavy leather assembly. Normally he would sleep while saddled allowing for a swift departure at need, but where possible Mai had been encouraged to give him the chance to rest or even graze without it. Whatever they wound up doing on this island, the lack of population made it unlikely that they would need to depart in any sort of haste. "I'm astonished the buildings were even visible, now that I get a closer look at these trees."
Toph used her earth bending to steepen the dunes around their campsite, sheltering them more from any winds. Between that and the mass of M Bison, the only real risk was that of rain and Mai had brought canvas for that very reason, along with bamboo poles that could be used to suspend it above them, warding that away from where they would sleep.
"What do you think you'll find here?" Mai asked as she laid out a fire pit. Tonights supper would not be as fine as that Fat was no doubt serving to Piandao at this hour, but it would be warm and probably more edible than military rations in the armies of the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation.
"I'm not sure," admitted her sister. "Scrolls would probably have rotted away long ago, or simply be taken. But there will be something here that will help with my fire bending."
Mai nodded, not voicing further doubts. "And then?"
Toph sat quietly for a moment. "Then I make war. It's summer now, not much more than two months before Sozin's Comet is in the sky. When that happens, I need to have the Fire Lord and his soldiers focused entirely on something other that obliterating another nation. And the only thing more pressing than that will be the Avatar."
"You've been thinking about it then?"
"Ever since I was playing Piandao at Pai Sho. Strategy, tactics, call it what you will. I need a plan that beats the Fire Lord's plan and all the timing rests on -" and here Toph's voice grew amused "- something I'll be hard-pressed to notice without someone to tell me it's in the sky."
"Do you have any candidates for that someone, little sister?" drawled Mai. She stepped back from the fire pit and Toph blew a plume of fire over the driftwood that they had gathered. It lit up almost immediately and Mai placed the pot, already half filled with clean water from their waterbags, on the fire to heat.
Toph grinned. "Let's keep it in the family," she proposed. "Older sister."
"What did you call me?" Mai asked, raising the ladle menacingly.
"The hearing is often the first thing to go. Have any of your hairs turned grey yet?"
.oOo.
It wasn't hard to believe that the city was thousands of years old, Mai thought as she and Toph entered its streets. Paving was cracked and worn more by the elements than by human feet. The buildings, built to a somewhat truncated pattern, the walls angling in towards each other, wider at the ground than the ceilings, suggested ancient building practises, as did the lack of any mortar holding them together. Nothing more than stones piled upon each other. Mai suspected that any Sunwarriors not killed in the wars as they expanded their empire had migrated to more civilised settlements the first chance they got, leaving nothing more than an empty capital when uprisings tore that nation apart.
Toph liked it, of course.
Rather than risk flying over something important, the two of them had elected to walk through the overgrown streets of the ruined city. Toph had experimented with the trees as Mai hacked her way through the outer layers of the jungle, finding that under the canopy layer of the trees, there was much less undergrowth. By the time they crossed the nebulous boundary between city and jungle, she was able to move aside at least the lighter growth, although they still had to work around the heavier, more established trees.
"This place is a wreck," Mai observed.
Toph pushed another tree branch around so that they could progress further down an alleyway between two small buildings that were almost certainly houses. "Let's be fair. Your room back in Omashu probably looks this bad and we've not even been gone a year."
The thought of her room in Omashu - a room that she'd hated the whole time she was there - sent an entirely unexpected pang of guilt through Mai. Her mother had kept putting potted flowers there as id they would make it better. Of course, for all her supposedly love of plants, Mai's mother didn't exactly have a green thumb. It wouldn't be at all unlike her to have forgotten all about them, leaving a maid to water them while they grew until the entire room was consumed by green.
They crossed into a wider street and Toph turned towards the centre of the city. "There's something larger down that way."
Mai squinted, trying to see past the trees. The buildings did seem higher there, although it might simply be a hill. "That would be fairly near the centre of the city. I suppose important buildings would be there, and probably larger than these ones."
They turned and started walking down the street. For whatever reason, it seemed to be less cluttered. While trees still occupied parts of the road, having forced their way through the paving, but unlike the narrower routes, there was almost always enough space for the two of them to go past without Toph having to force the branches away or - as she had twice so far today - level a building to create a path.
"Stop." Toph held out an arm to block Mai from continuing.
The older girl looked down at her. "What's the matter?"
"I wondered what these were," Toph murmered, kneeling and pulling on a section of vine that crossed the road. Now that Mai saw it, the way it hung was suspicious - just off the ground, around ankle height. A tripwire?
Toph yanked on it sharply and a sizeable section of paving immediately in front of her bare toes sank promptly, by about six inches. The metal spikes that had been hidden between the paving didn't sink though. Mai could envisage someone tripping on the vine and tumbling face first into the spikes. It wasn't a pleasent vision.
"That worked rather smoothly for something centuries old," she observed.
Toph exhaled slowly and made a pushing gesture before standing. "It's been maintained," she guessed. "Someone else is here. Or has been, in the last few years." She stepped down, carefully placing her feet between the spokes as she crossed the depression. "I've blocked this one, it's safe. But keep your eyes peeled. Where there's one trap -"
"- there are bound to be more."
.oOo.
The building at the centre of the city was further away than it had looked. It was also larger than Mai had realised at first, rearing up over the city. Rather than a smooth, or at least regularly stepped exterior, it was a profusion of terraces and stairways. Every vertical surface was carved and ornamental dragons were everywhere, interspersed in some depictions with firebenders but predominantly alone.
"Impressive," Toph conceded. "This must have taken forever to do."
"The great earth bender is impressed? Now I have seen everything."
Toph shook her head. "Sure, I could build something like this. But this isn't the work of an earth bender. Not even of an army of earth benders. This was done by hand. That's quite a project. This must have been a palace or a temple of some kind."
Mai nodded. That made sense. She couldn't think of anything else that would occupy such a central and clearly important location. "Let me guess. Anything important will be right at the top?"
"Either that or underneath it," Toph agreed. "And I can't feel any catacombs down there." She stamped her feet and frowned.
"What's wrong?" A knife dropped into Mai's hand from sheer reflex.
"Something - maybe someone, maybe just an animal - moving in the distance." Toph sighed. "It's the right size for a human... of course, I wouldn't be surprised if a place like this had giant monkeys wandering around."
"Apes."
"What?"
"Not giant monkeys, apes."
"Whatever." Toph set off up the steps and then paused as she felt another vibration through the stone. "That was human feet. Lots of human feet. Up near the top of this thing!"
She set off running. Up the stairs, of course.
Mai smiled thinly and followed. She didn't let go of the knife though. Humans here might represent a link to the long dead sunwarriors, to whatever secrets of firebending lore Toph had been directed here to find... but they were far more likely to represent a threat to her little sister. Or, the world being what it was, both.
Toph's pace slowed as she came closer to the top. Not from exhaustion, although the climb - carried out under the sweltering heat - would be wearisome for someone less energetic. Her concern - and that of Mai, whose longer legs made up for the fact that being post-pubescent she no longer had limitless energy to work with - was of stealth.
The front of the pyramid projected forwards, creating a seperate building linked to the main structure by a bridge. The bridge was guarded. The main structure - specifically the area at the other end of the bridge, previously shielded from their view - was occupied by firebenders. Quite a number of firebenders, evenly divided between male and female. The latter was easy to tell, even at this distance, because -
"Does every hidden tribe in the world abhor clothing?" Mai asked under her breath, knowing that Toph would hear the words easily. "First those swamp rats and now this lot."
"Well at least Yue's people wear clothes. I don't care how warm my island makes their city, they'd freeze without them."
Mai chuckled, taking the measure of the two warriors at the near end of the bridge. Young and to judge by the spears, probably not fire benders. Most benders didn't see the need for weapons other than their elements. "I imagine Zuko would be very happy if Yue did adopt the practise." And that possibility didn't hurt any more, how about that?
"Why?" Toph asked with feigned innocence. Then again, nudity probably meant very little to her, Mai admitted privately.
Instead of answering, Mai looked at the benders. They were standing in a circle, passing flames - each in a stylised shape - around it. There was presumably some significance in their eyes and Mai wondered who they were. Some long lost remnant of the Sunwarriors or a more modern cult who merely imagined that they were? "What are they doing?"
"I'm not sure." Toph placed one hand against the stones, fingers spread. "I think we can get closer it we approach from below the bridge."
Mai looked at the guards, neither of whom could possibly see anything that was directly beneath the bridge that they were standing upon, and the firebenders, who seemed entirely absorbed in their ritual. "Alright. I take it that you have a route down to the base of the bridge?"
Toph smirked and placed her hands together before drawing them apart sharply. A pit opened directly beneath her and the girl dropped silently through it. Mai sighed and hopped into it, what she hoped was a safe distance behind, discovering that the pit was actually the entry to a chute that seemed to spiral around the inside of the pyramid. It was also very fast, reminding Mai entirely too much of Omashu's mail system, and pitch black. By the time she reached the bottom, which thankfully levelled out a bit slowing her to the point that the landing at the bottom - on the paving beneath the bridge - wasn't too noisy. Which wasn't the same as it being painless. Mai shot an irritated look at the back of Toph's head as the other girl opened a hole in the first pillar supporting the bridge for them to walk through.
It only took a few moments to cross the divide, with Toph neatly closing up the holes behind them as leaving evidence of their presence would be almost as bad as being spotted themselves. The murmer of voices above above them was clearer but Mai still couldn't make out any words.
"Do you think we should introduce ourselves?" Toph asked.
The corners of Mai's lips curved upwards. "I don't think they'd appreciate the interuption," she said. "And if we do approach them, it might be best to be above them."
Toph nodded, a grin appearing her face. "Let's take the stairs," she suggested, slapping the wall in front of them. "They're right here." The wall opened smoothly, revealing stairs that led a few yards up and inside the pyramid to bare earth. Once they were inside, the wall closed up behind them and Mai followed her sister up the stairs, not concerned when they didn't walk into the earth she'd seen at the head of the stairs as Toph extended the stair upwards ahead of them, closing it behind them as they ascended.
"Earth bending has it's uses," the knife-wielding fire maiden noted.
"It does," Toph agreed. "It's definitely the greatest of all four bending arts."
"Isn't the Avatar supposed to be about balance, and fairness between all four elements?" Mai asked.
"And that's why you know I'm being fair and unbiased."
Mai rolled her eyes in the darkness. "Of course you are. Well, sneaking around like this and avoiding a fight probably counts as helping you with airbending philosophy at any rate. Now if you can figure out how to sense vibrations in the air, you'll be all set."
Toph chuckled from a step ahead of her. "Not really practical. Air's just too unstable for that to work."
"That's a shame," Mai conceded.
"It isn't totally useless," admitted Toph, "It's just too easily distorted to be relied on for anything more than generalities." She stopped walking and Mai, unwarned, took another step upwards before she halted. Two steps ahead of them, the stairs halted, this time against a stone wall she disovered, reaching forward to touch it with one hand. "Someone's sneaky."
Mai frowned. "What's on the other side of this?"
"A mechanism of some kind," Toph told her. "Pressure balanced stones, very complicated. I'm not sure what all of it does but if I try to go through that I could set something off without meaning to."
"Such as?"
"Well," and Mai could have sworn she could hear Toph grinning, "There's a vat of some kind of gluey liquid. Enough to fill a good-sized room. If that starts flooding into a confined space like this..."
Mai shuddered. "I take your point. So, do you think we can work around it?"
Toph started walking again and Mia followed up the last two stairs and then into a tunnel that led off to the right. "Probably the simplest way is just to go around it," the earth bender decided. "There isn't anyone around the back of the pyramid right now, so we can just go up onto the back terrace and climb up that side."
"It sounds like more traps like the one you found earlier," Mai observed. "Which raises the question of what's behind them. Does this fill up all of the top of the pyramid?"
"No, there's a room up above," Toph told her. "Sealed up tight, stone doors and everything."
Mai considered. "Let's see what's up there," she suggested. "It could be important."
A few moments later Toph opened up the ceiling of their route, leaving Mai blinking at the sudden sunlight pouring through the opening. Toph closed up the hole by simply raising the ground beneath them until they were standing on the terrace behind the upper levels of the pyramid. True to Toph's words, there was no one in sight, which seemed odd to Mai, given the guards on the bridge leading to the Pyramid.
"The stairs are all on the other side," Toph told her when the older girl voiced her concerns. "They probably haven't seen an earth bender in generations, as far away from everywhere as you told me this island is, and anyone else would find the sides of the pyramid almost impassable." She raised steps leading up to the next terrace for the two of them, careful to use stone from the floor, not from the walls which might suffer damage to their intricate carvings.
There were similar carvings upon the uppermost level of the pyramid. The apex was as large as a good sized house and capped by a dome, the rear wall marked by two huge dragons carved in reliet, breathing fire towards the centre of wall where the shape of a human had been carved, engulfed in the fiery wrath of both.
"How are you going to avoid damaging that?" Mai asked wryly.
Toph smirked and set her feet, taking a deep breath. A moment later and she swung the entire rear wall open like a huge door. "After you, Spiky."
"Show off," Mai murmered and obediently walked inside, with Toph closing the wall behind them. The room within was lit via an opening at the top of the dome that was covered only by a metal grid and while it was dimmer than the light outside, Mai found that a relief, her eyes still adjusting from the darkness inside the pyramid. As it was, she almost gasped at the menacing shapes positioned around the room before realising that they were merely statues and restrained herself from open reaction. "I'm not sure what I was expecting, but this isn't it," she admitted.
Toph stalked around the room's floor of interlocking red marble stones until she reached the opening in the circle of statues, by the door. "The stones that move as part of the mechanism are all inside the circle," she told Mai as she entered the area, making it obvious that she was avoiding certain slabs.
Mai looked at the statues. Each was of a man, face obscured by an gruesome mask, wearing the garb of an ancient Sun Warrior and probably one of high stature to judge by the elaborate nature of the clothes and mask that had been sculpted. The two sides more or less mirrored each other, as far as she could tell, each statue positioned in unstable looking poses that were either intended to look as foolish as possible or... well, it could be something to do with bending perhaps. That looked fairly silly when there wasn't fire involved, and sometimes when it did.
"What do you think these are for?"
Toph looked up. "Some sort of fire bending form perhaps. It's also a key."
"A key?"
"The pressure plates are all aligned with where the statues stand. I'm pretty sure that it's activated by having two people execute out the form at once, standing on each pressure plate in turn." Toph frowned and then pointed to the centre of the chamber. "Opening a compartment there although I think there's more to it than that. Whoever came up with this was a mad genius."
Mai shrugged. "Well, are you going to open it up or do you want to approach the celebrants of that little festival outside?"
"They're heading up the pyramid now," reported Toph before answering: "Let's wait for them. I wouldn't like someone going through my super secret hiding places if I had any and we might be asking them for favours."
"Are you learning diplomacy, little sister?" asked Mai.
"I can be diplomatic when I want to. I just don't bother much," Toph said and shrugged.
.oOo.
Ham Ghao was proud to lead the procession of Sunwarriors up the pyramid towards their destination. Every year, a member of the tribe who had distinguished himself was allowed the honour and this was the second summer solstice that he had been granted the right.
It didn't occur to Ham Ghao that the leader of the procession was the only man amongst them who didn't walk next to anyone. Or that the rest of the tribe considered his smugness over the honour to be an entirely acceptable excuse not to have to walk alongside him for upwards of an hour, listening to what the most sympathetic of ears in the tribe labelled as 'whining and bitching'.
They were nearing the end of the climb now, coming up on the archway that marked the top of the stairs, and the self-absorbed fire bender noticed that the light from the sunstone was now tracking across the keystone to the ancient door that led into the Great Pyramid. Hastening his pace, Ham Ghao led the procession towards the door, each line of Sunwarriors breaking away to form a circle around the lines laid out on the stones.
As they took position, the keystone reacted to the carefully focused and redirected sunlight; the stone doors slowly sliding open. Because Ham Ghao had lingered to saver his position at the head of the group, he was the first one to see inside the sanctum.
There were two girls inside, facing the doors. Alive, in a chamber that had not been opened for a year. They were alike in appearance - pale skinned with long dark hair in high ponytails, wearing burgundy dresses. Trespassing where even the sunwarriors, the heirs to the legacy of a thousand years of the sacred art of firebending would hesitate to walk. One was clearly still a child in years, the other young but evidently a woman.
"Intruders!" Ham Ghao shouted in warning, calling fire to his hands.
But for the moment he did not attack. He was not unreasonable: the trespassers would be given a chance to surrender themselves.
Behind him, he heard gasps and the fire around his fingers wavered. Turning to look back Ham Ghao saw the light of the day begin to dim. In the sky a black arc of the sun began to vanish, as if being devoured by some terrible beast.
"They've desecrated the sanctum!" he shouted, appalled and pointed through the door. "Kill them!"
Fire lashed out towards the startled pair.
Well... Not like the eclipse really did anything in canon, in the long run anyways. Sure, they wrecked the defenses around the fire capital during the original invasion, but in the long run it didn't do anything to help Aang beat Ozai.
It did give the signal for Bumi to break out and take back Omashu, which was pretty awesome...
It did give the signal for Bumi to break out and take back Omashu, which was pretty awesome...
It just occurred to me that the timing isn't tight if you go for a darker before the dawn plot style. Toph could easily hide while the comet passes, allowing the Fire Nation to achieve total victory and fall into a false sense of security. While her own strength continues to increase, they would grow rusty.'
The loss of life would be catastrophic, but perhaps not culture ending.
The loss of life would be catastrophic, but perhaps not culture ending.
"Very diplomatic," Mai noted as fire hurtled towards them from a half-dozen of the angrier looking firebenders. She watched impassively as the flames guttered away before reaching them. "Good reaction."
"That wasn't me," Toph said bluntly. "There's something happening to their firebending." She paused. "And mine, I think. Something bad."
Mai nodded and stepped forwards to look out of the door where more than twenty sun warriors were trying to force fire from their hands. "So I see," she said, and then her composure cracked as she glanced up at the sky. "Oh Spirits."
"What?"
"The Day of the Black Sun," Mai whispered. "It's happening again!"
"That... doesn't explain anything," complained Toph, joining her sister at the doorway. "Although I guess by their abject panic, we aren't going to be talking to you guys?" she asked the nearest of the sun warriors, the one who had shouted led the attack.
"Die, outsider!" he shouted, and tried to grab hold of her.
A pillar of rock smashed up from the ground and hurled him back. "No," Toph replied dismissively.
The blackness had consumed almost a fifth of the sun. Mai forced her attention away from it and reached into her dress, pulling out a whistle that the bison herders of the Water Tribe had given to her. "Don't try anything," she warned the fire benders, holding the knife in her other hand to remind them that without their fire bending she and Toph were the only ones armed. She blew into the whistle, creating no sound that she could detect although annoyance flickered across Toph's face as her sharper ears picked up a sound right on the edge of her ability to hear it.
"It's a solar eclipse," Mai explained hurriedly. "For fire benders it's the worst possible omen. We'd better leave and come back when it's all over and they've calmed down."
Above this conversation, the spot of light above the doorway faded as the sunlight being focused upon it was no longer sufficient and the stone doors responded by closing up behind the two girls.
"Over?" Ham Ghao shouted as he scrambled to his feet. "Your meddling with the sunstone is destroying the sun, outsider!"
"Not if this is the Black Sun," his Chief corrected him grimly, stepping forwards. "Such has happened before and the sun has always recovered swiftly. Which does not explain why the two of you were inside the sanctuary. It's clear from your clothes that you are from the southern cities."
Mai relaxed slightly as reason seemed to be breaking out. It seemed lighter as well, the sun not having shrunk any further.
"We came from there, anyway," Toph admitted. "As for being in there, it seemed as good a place as any to wait until your ceremony was over. We didn't know -"
There was a mighty bellow from above and M Bison plunged down onto the little plaza, diving out of the sun in response to Mai's earlier whistle. Unfortunately for all concerned, this resulted in him landing directly in front of Mai and Toph... more or less on top of the sun warrior's chieftain, who was bowled over and left stunned on the ground.
In fairness to Ham Ghao, it wasn't him who screamed: "It's a monster!" In reflex however, he did try to bend fire at the new arrival and to his delight sparks responded. Up in the sky, the darkness that had touched the sun was now moving away from it, never having covered more than a quarter of the disc, and his fire bending was returning.
"Drive the beast away!" the sun warrior shouted, "Capture the intruders!" And absent any other idea of what to do, the rest of the celebrants obeyed, hurling what little flame they could manage at the bison, setting fire to his fur. Annoyed, but not yet hurt M Bison whirled upon them, not waiting for the girls to climb aboard him and threw himself into a short climb that scattered the greatest bulk of his tormenters, flinging several of them down to the next level of the pyramid with bonecracking force.
Mai groaned. "They made him angry," she complained, fanning throwing knives between her fingers.
"Let's just try not to kill anyone," Toph suggested. "Maybe we can still sort this out."
Her sister looked at the sun warriors, now hurling fire with abandon as the sun resumed it's full strength, and then at M Bison, who was roaring down on another cluster of the sun warriors. "Sometimes I really wish you could see what you're talking about," she said, putting her knives away and producing her war fans in time to deflect a punch which was thrown at her by one of the more muscular sun warriors. Bringing up the other fan she managed to sweep the man off balance and hurl him face first into the wall beside her.
The sun warrior rebounded off, blood spilling from his face. Not killing anyone still left her with a considerable scope for mayhem.
Toph raised up a wall to deflect fire being directed at her. "I don't think I want them getting reinforcements up here," she decided and gestured towards the steps. With a crunch, the stairs tilted to form a steep slope and there were startled cries and yells of pain as a half-dozen men trying to make their way up it tumbled back to the next level.
Ham Ghao gestured for two of the other sun warriors to flank him as he forced his flames to concentrate to greater heat. "Ha!" he shouted, driving his hands forward and sending a fiery column up at the rampaging mass of M Bison. Unlike the previous attacks, between the sun being uncovered and Ham Ghao's concentration, this was enough to cause more than incidental scorching to the sky bison and he roared in pain... and even more anger.
"Wow. I didn't realise that he could actually get angrier," Toph said calmly as she sank a pair of sun warriors almost knee deep in the stone slabs.
"Just get out of the way!" snapped Mai and pressed herself back against the wall as M Bison barrel-rolled across the plaza still on fire. Ham Ghao and his companions were swept aside easily and then the aggressive sky bison turned around for another pass. The fire benders seemed to be somewhat at a loss as to what to do about this: he was already on fire, what more could they do?
The sun warrior Chief, spared because he was already on the ground, crawled towards the wall, not far from Mai and Toph. "If that is your creature, then call him off!" he demanded.
"He'll calm down in a while," Toph said and reached out with both hands for a moment before drawing them suddenly backwards, the flames leaping away from M Bison's fur - which was now noticeably darker and thinner than before - and coalescing into a globe between her hands. "I'd suggest having your people play dead until he does." She hurled the fire out over the city, causing it to burst like fireworks.
"You're a fire bender?" he gasped. "But..." His eyes looked at where two of his warriors were lying on their backs, unable to flee due to their feet and calves being embedded in the paving. "The Avatar!"
Toph smirked. "Yep. I didn't come here to fight you guys." There was a howl from the level below and M Bison swooped up above the lip of the plaza with a triumphant bellow. "...although I guess that he did."
The Chief glared at her and then raised his voice. "Everyone lay on the floor and play dead until the beast has calmed!" he shouted, his words laced with such authority that not even Ham Ghao, then clinging desperately to the lip of the plaza, a long if not sheer drop to the level below all that awaited him if he released his grip, was inclined to argue. "Even if you are the Avatar, you have no right to interfere in our customs," the man told Toph.
"That was never our intention," Mai told him. "Toph and I came here seeking a fire bending teacher. Her previous instructor proved unsuitable, so we were seeking remnants of the ancient sun warriors. With the extinction of the dragons, their knowledge of fire bending would be the purest remaining source of the art."
He stared at her for a moment, then around at M Bison, currently floating in the air and looking around angrily for prey. "Do you have this effect everywhere you travel?"
Mai shook her head, not in disagreement but in sympathy. "You have no idea."
.oOo.
In the end it took most of the day to settlee M Bison and he was still hufffing irritably towards any sun warriors who came into view when the sun set over the jungle. Most of said men and women found this a reasonable justification to stay clear of where Toph and Mai had relocated their campsite to: a space between two buildings across one of the ruined highways of the city from the buildings occupied by the sun warriors during their residence in the home of their ancestors. It was clear, however, that the distance would have been maintained regardless.
It was also clear that the buildings were effectively a campsite, albeit a regular one. There were no children in the little settlement, and very few married women. Wherever the true home of the sun warriors was, it was not something that any of them would share and while some of the tribe were relatively affable, Mai knew without Toph telling her that this was a veneer over deeper suspicion.
"I'd say we made a bad first impression," Toph observed quietly as she helped to groom M Bison, carefully removing damaged hair that would otherwise tangle unpleasently as it grew out.
"Your powers of deduction are growing," said Mai, deliberately not softening the sting of her words by adding 'little sister'. "I suppose we should have realised that the room would be considered important. Then again, I'm not sure if they wouldn't have reacted as badly to our presence outside the pyramid, given the eclipse."
"Yes, and what was that?" asked Toph. "They seemed to think that the sun was dying."
Mai swallowed. The sun was important to the Fire Nation, even to those who did not bend fire. "It looked very much like that," she explained. "A blackness, somewhat like a shadow, crossed over the sun, blocking part of its light."
Toph nodded her head, sending her bangs sflapping over her eyes. "Okay, so that's why I couldn't say anything. And because it affects firebending it's considered unfortunate?"
"Unfortunate doesn't cover it," her sister told her. "This was merely a partial eclipse, lasting a moment or two. On the Day of the Black Sun the eclipse was total and lasted several minutes longer, covering might of the Fire Nation. Long enough to turn the tides of empire if those moments were as fatefully timed as they were then."
The younger girl did not pause in her grooming but her lips pursed as she combed through her memory of history lessons, limited somewhat by the fact that she could not study scrolls herself but only work by what was read to her. "How long ago was it?"
"A little over six and a half centuries," Mai told her and let the girl work out the timing for herself.
It only took a moment: "The fall of the Dragon Princes."
"Precisely," agreed Mai. "No one remembers now if the timing was deliberate, opportunism or sheer mischance that the uprisings began that day, but at least a dozen of the princely strongholds were under attack when the sun failed. Thousands of firebenders were killed, unable to defend their princes, and the resultant power struggles almost tore the Fire Nation apart. It took the combined efforts of the Avatar Xatlan and the Order of the Fire Sages to end the wars and most of a hundred years for my people to recover. According to some of my teachers, there are parts of the ancient firebending lore that were lost forever."
"Although..." Toph said thoughtfully. "The sun warriors predate that, so maybe they can fill some of those gaps. Surely someone came looking for you before now," she added, turning to look at the Chief as he crossed the street towards them.
"They did," he agreed coolly. "The Masters read their hearts, their souls... Those they judged as being unworthy - likely, for example, to advertise our survival here - were destroyed. Those who they spared either kept our secrets, or simply remained here. By all accounts as happily as they would have anywhere else."
Mai tilted her head to one side. "The Masters?"
He nodded confirmation. "In the morning, we will take you both before them. If you are worthy, then they will teach you that which you will need. If not..." He shrugged. "In any event, it's rather too late for you to turn back at this point."
.oOo.
Somewhat before the crack of dawn the next day, a rather sleepy Toph - who had stayed up entirely too late trying to figure out where the Masters were - followed Mai towards a shrine on top of one of the smaller pyramids scattered around the ruined city. The two of them were surrounded by dozens of sun warriors, under the direction of Ham Ghao. Pragmatically speaking, Mai was fairly sure that they could have hopped onto M Bison at any point and just left...
But what would that have accomplished?
An archway at the centre of the shrine was occupied almost entirely by a smokeless fire. Mai had noticed that one of the buildings near the foot of the pyramid showed more sign of habitation than the camp - presumably for attendant to the shrine.
"This is the eternal flame," the Chief instructed them - as much for the benefit of the warriors around the two girls as for them. "The first fire given to man by the dragons, we have kept it alight for thousands of years."
He beckoned to the girls, who stepped forward. "All who go to meet the Masters carry with them a part of it, to show their commitment to the sacred art of firebending."
Mai cleared her throat. "I'm not a firebender," she pointed out. "I don't suppose that you have a lantern or something I can use to carry it?"
"No."
"Oh."
The sun chief refrained from smirking as he turned towards the flame and drew a modest globe of fire forth, dividing it between his two hands. "This ritual illustrates the essence of sun warrior philosophy. You must maintain a constant heat. The flame will go out if you make it too small but make it too big and you might lose control." The firebender held out his hands towards the two of them.
Toph extended her own hand unerringly and the chief placed one flame into the girl's small hands. Almost immediately she giggled. "It tickles," she said in a surprised voice. "Almost like... like it's alive."
"Fire is life," asserted the man. "Not just destruction." He turned his gaze towards Mai, who warily extended her own hands towards the flame, bracing herself to be scorched when the Chief released his control over it.
To her surprise the fire did not explode when the firebender removed his hand, nor even fall upon her fingers. Instead it simply remained hovering above her hands, fading slowly until it had reduced itself to nothing.
"That," said a caustic voice from behind them - Ham Ghao's, Mai recognised - "Was a bad start."
"Those are keen powers of observation that you have, Ham Ghao," she said, not looking back. "And also a very large mouth."
There was a ripple of amusement from the other sun warriors and even the Chief's expression softened slightly. "You must now take the fire to the cave of the Masters, beneath that rock." He pointed at where a hill reared up outside the city, capped by two mis-matched fangs of stone.
"Come on Spiky," Toph said, turning towards the stair down the pyramid. "I'll share my fire when we get there."
The Chief and Ham Ghao exchanged looks as the two girls descended.
"A very bad start," Ham Ghao conluded. His chief shrugged noncomittally.
.oOo.
"Are you alright?" Mai asked as Toph paused at one of the tougher patches of the hill to climb. The younger girl was frowning at nothing in particular - her blindness giving her little reason to point her face in the direction of whatever was irritating her.
Toph didn't reply at first, instead shifting her feet in a awkward rendition of her usual earthbending. The ground shuddered and then shifted grudgingly into a stair over the obstacle. At the same time, the flame in her hand flickered alarmingly. "Earth bending while I'm fire bending is harder than I expected," she admitted once the fire in her had had steadied.
"Well its impossible for the anyone else, little sister," Mai pointed out. "We're going to have to add that to your training. It's all very well being able to bend all four elements, but if you can't use them all at once then you'd be no better than a mixed squad of benders."
"Hey!"
Mai smiled slightly. "Which would be unacceptable, of course."
"Of course," Toph agreed, perfectly aware of Mai manuevering the situation and playing along. "I'm sure that fitting it in between the firebending lessons from these Masters, practising water bending on liquid water, trying to learn air bending from scrolls I can't read and keeping my earth bending up to scratch... all that will be easy!"
"That's a great idea," Mai agreed drily. "Where do you want to begin?"
"Earth bending while fire bending, of course," declared Toph and started to force a path into existence up the hill, the fire crackling in her hand as she wound the path back and forth up the slope, creating a slow and easy route. It wasn't as if they were in a hurry, after all.
As a result of the slow and sometimes circuitous route that the two took, the sun was low in the sky by the time that they came around a low hillock between them and the twin peaks and found that most of the sun warriors had beaten them there.
"Finally," muttered Ham Ghao, probably louder than he intended, from behind the Chief. Now unmasked by the terrain, Mai could see a high bridge connecting the two peaks to a broad pillar. A broad, steep stair of stone descended from the top of the pillar to an elaborately paved court where the sun warriors were standing. The sun was just descending behind the bridge, casting long shadows towards them.
"Facing the judgement of the fire bending masters will be dangerous for you," the Chief warned Mai. "It is very rare for anyone not a fire bender to come this far. Also, the decline of the dragons is the work of the Fire Nation, and anyone can see that you are of their ancestry." He turned towards Toph. "That your predecessors did not protect the dragons may also displease them."
Toph shrugged. "I met a dragon in the spirit world," she told him. "He gave me a headache."
The Chief seemed unsure what to say about that. Instead he raised his ceremonial spear (which was capped by an ornamental golden flame motif that would probably be of little use doing anything more that herding leopard goats... baby leopard goats at that) and brought the butt down sharpy, jamming it into a small hole in the paving. Reaching out he took part of the flame from Toph and used his own chi to strength it before dividing it in two. Ham Ghao and the other sun warrior flanking the chief reached out and took the flames from his outstretched hands.
Around the paving, the sun warriors spread out into a circle, passing the fire one to another. Alternate members of the tribe retained enough to spark fiery circles that they held in front of them, while those between them knelt and began to beat upon drums, sending up a simple but evocative beat as the three sun warriors before Mai and Toph led them to the bottom of the stair.
"Are you afraid, little one?" Ham Ghao asked under his breath as Toph walked past him. Mai winced internally at the thought of Toph breaking up such a clearly important ceremony to take sudden revenge for the insulting query, but instead of breaking into a destructive earth bending move, the younger girl seemed to ignore him completely and started to walking up the stairs beside her sister. After months of travel, the taller Mai didn't have to think about adjusting her pace to Toph's shorter legs.
"That was very mature of you," she said quietly once they were above easy earshot of the sun warriors.
Toph smiled broadly. "Earth benders know all about waiting for the right moment," she said just as quietly. "And that wasn't the right moment." Unspoken: that moment would come and be damned to any threat at the top of the steps.
Someone less disciplined than Mai would have grinned. This was getting interesting.
As the two stepped from the stair onto the top of the pillar, the drums stopped suddenly. The platform that the pillar created was somewhat wider than the bridge extending in either direction. Speaking through a huge curved horn - the size of a sungi horn, Mai thought - a booming voice from the circle of sun warriors announced: "Those who wish to meet the Masters Ran and Shao shall now present their fire."
Toph touched the flames she carried to the cloak she was wearing and the front of the material lit immediately. Mai's eyes went wide and she snatched the garment off Toph's shoulders, almost tearing it as she yanked it out of the young Avatar's belt.
"I was going to give you it anyway," Toph told her drily and turned to her left, facing along the bridge and holding out what remained of the fire, drawing upon her chi to restore it to its previous size. She could feel a cave at each end. Presumably the Masters would emerge from the openings. Mai sighed heavily and held out the bundled garment, fire rising from it, in the opposite direction.
"Sound the call!" roared the chief, clearly audible even without a speaking horn.
Some short distance from the court, a lone sun warrior placed his mouth to a twisted horn, so long that it had to be rested upon the floor, and sounded it, a deep sound that shook stones from the surfaces of the two peaks either side of the bridge.
"I felt that," Toph growled. Then her eyes went wide. "Oma..." she whispered as she felt something truly massive moving beneath the two peaks.
"Do I want to know?"
"Whether you want to or not, you're about to find out," Toph told her.
Toph couldn't see the yellow eyes gleamed in warning before one of the Masters emerged but she could easily hear the hissing snarl as a gigantic red dragon shot out of the cave in front of her, only bending off at the last minute to start circling about the two girls. The dragon was so huge that even circling so widely that it almost brushed both peaks, it was quite literally chasing its own tail.
There was a second rush of air as another dragon, this one blue, emerged from the other peak and began circling.
"Oh. Dragons."
Toph was momentarily more impressed with her big sister's sang froid than she was by the dragons.
"That wasn't me," Toph said bluntly. "There's something happening to their firebending." She paused. "And mine, I think. Something bad."
Mai nodded and stepped forwards to look out of the door where more than twenty sun warriors were trying to force fire from their hands. "So I see," she said, and then her composure cracked as she glanced up at the sky. "Oh Spirits."
"What?"
"The Day of the Black Sun," Mai whispered. "It's happening again!"
"That... doesn't explain anything," complained Toph, joining her sister at the doorway. "Although I guess by their abject panic, we aren't going to be talking to you guys?" she asked the nearest of the sun warriors, the one who had shouted led the attack.
"Die, outsider!" he shouted, and tried to grab hold of her.
A pillar of rock smashed up from the ground and hurled him back. "No," Toph replied dismissively.
The blackness had consumed almost a fifth of the sun. Mai forced her attention away from it and reached into her dress, pulling out a whistle that the bison herders of the Water Tribe had given to her. "Don't try anything," she warned the fire benders, holding the knife in her other hand to remind them that without their fire bending she and Toph were the only ones armed. She blew into the whistle, creating no sound that she could detect although annoyance flickered across Toph's face as her sharper ears picked up a sound right on the edge of her ability to hear it.
"It's a solar eclipse," Mai explained hurriedly. "For fire benders it's the worst possible omen. We'd better leave and come back when it's all over and they've calmed down."
Above this conversation, the spot of light above the doorway faded as the sunlight being focused upon it was no longer sufficient and the stone doors responded by closing up behind the two girls.
"Over?" Ham Ghao shouted as he scrambled to his feet. "Your meddling with the sunstone is destroying the sun, outsider!"
"Not if this is the Black Sun," his Chief corrected him grimly, stepping forwards. "Such has happened before and the sun has always recovered swiftly. Which does not explain why the two of you were inside the sanctuary. It's clear from your clothes that you are from the southern cities."
Mai relaxed slightly as reason seemed to be breaking out. It seemed lighter as well, the sun not having shrunk any further.
"We came from there, anyway," Toph admitted. "As for being in there, it seemed as good a place as any to wait until your ceremony was over. We didn't know -"
There was a mighty bellow from above and M Bison plunged down onto the little plaza, diving out of the sun in response to Mai's earlier whistle. Unfortunately for all concerned, this resulted in him landing directly in front of Mai and Toph... more or less on top of the sun warrior's chieftain, who was bowled over and left stunned on the ground.
In fairness to Ham Ghao, it wasn't him who screamed: "It's a monster!" In reflex however, he did try to bend fire at the new arrival and to his delight sparks responded. Up in the sky, the darkness that had touched the sun was now moving away from it, never having covered more than a quarter of the disc, and his fire bending was returning.
"Drive the beast away!" the sun warrior shouted, "Capture the intruders!" And absent any other idea of what to do, the rest of the celebrants obeyed, hurling what little flame they could manage at the bison, setting fire to his fur. Annoyed, but not yet hurt M Bison whirled upon them, not waiting for the girls to climb aboard him and threw himself into a short climb that scattered the greatest bulk of his tormenters, flinging several of them down to the next level of the pyramid with bonecracking force.
Mai groaned. "They made him angry," she complained, fanning throwing knives between her fingers.
"Let's just try not to kill anyone," Toph suggested. "Maybe we can still sort this out."
Her sister looked at the sun warriors, now hurling fire with abandon as the sun resumed it's full strength, and then at M Bison, who was roaring down on another cluster of the sun warriors. "Sometimes I really wish you could see what you're talking about," she said, putting her knives away and producing her war fans in time to deflect a punch which was thrown at her by one of the more muscular sun warriors. Bringing up the other fan she managed to sweep the man off balance and hurl him face first into the wall beside her.
The sun warrior rebounded off, blood spilling from his face. Not killing anyone still left her with a considerable scope for mayhem.
Toph raised up a wall to deflect fire being directed at her. "I don't think I want them getting reinforcements up here," she decided and gestured towards the steps. With a crunch, the stairs tilted to form a steep slope and there were startled cries and yells of pain as a half-dozen men trying to make their way up it tumbled back to the next level.
Ham Ghao gestured for two of the other sun warriors to flank him as he forced his flames to concentrate to greater heat. "Ha!" he shouted, driving his hands forward and sending a fiery column up at the rampaging mass of M Bison. Unlike the previous attacks, between the sun being uncovered and Ham Ghao's concentration, this was enough to cause more than incidental scorching to the sky bison and he roared in pain... and even more anger.
"Wow. I didn't realise that he could actually get angrier," Toph said calmly as she sank a pair of sun warriors almost knee deep in the stone slabs.
"Just get out of the way!" snapped Mai and pressed herself back against the wall as M Bison barrel-rolled across the plaza still on fire. Ham Ghao and his companions were swept aside easily and then the aggressive sky bison turned around for another pass. The fire benders seemed to be somewhat at a loss as to what to do about this: he was already on fire, what more could they do?
The sun warrior Chief, spared because he was already on the ground, crawled towards the wall, not far from Mai and Toph. "If that is your creature, then call him off!" he demanded.
"He'll calm down in a while," Toph said and reached out with both hands for a moment before drawing them suddenly backwards, the flames leaping away from M Bison's fur - which was now noticeably darker and thinner than before - and coalescing into a globe between her hands. "I'd suggest having your people play dead until he does." She hurled the fire out over the city, causing it to burst like fireworks.
"You're a fire bender?" he gasped. "But..." His eyes looked at where two of his warriors were lying on their backs, unable to flee due to their feet and calves being embedded in the paving. "The Avatar!"
Toph smirked. "Yep. I didn't come here to fight you guys." There was a howl from the level below and M Bison swooped up above the lip of the plaza with a triumphant bellow. "...although I guess that he did."
The Chief glared at her and then raised his voice. "Everyone lay on the floor and play dead until the beast has calmed!" he shouted, his words laced with such authority that not even Ham Ghao, then clinging desperately to the lip of the plaza, a long if not sheer drop to the level below all that awaited him if he released his grip, was inclined to argue. "Even if you are the Avatar, you have no right to interfere in our customs," the man told Toph.
"That was never our intention," Mai told him. "Toph and I came here seeking a fire bending teacher. Her previous instructor proved unsuitable, so we were seeking remnants of the ancient sun warriors. With the extinction of the dragons, their knowledge of fire bending would be the purest remaining source of the art."
He stared at her for a moment, then around at M Bison, currently floating in the air and looking around angrily for prey. "Do you have this effect everywhere you travel?"
Mai shook her head, not in disagreement but in sympathy. "You have no idea."
.oOo.
In the end it took most of the day to settlee M Bison and he was still hufffing irritably towards any sun warriors who came into view when the sun set over the jungle. Most of said men and women found this a reasonable justification to stay clear of where Toph and Mai had relocated their campsite to: a space between two buildings across one of the ruined highways of the city from the buildings occupied by the sun warriors during their residence in the home of their ancestors. It was clear, however, that the distance would have been maintained regardless.
It was also clear that the buildings were effectively a campsite, albeit a regular one. There were no children in the little settlement, and very few married women. Wherever the true home of the sun warriors was, it was not something that any of them would share and while some of the tribe were relatively affable, Mai knew without Toph telling her that this was a veneer over deeper suspicion.
"I'd say we made a bad first impression," Toph observed quietly as she helped to groom M Bison, carefully removing damaged hair that would otherwise tangle unpleasently as it grew out.
"Your powers of deduction are growing," said Mai, deliberately not softening the sting of her words by adding 'little sister'. "I suppose we should have realised that the room would be considered important. Then again, I'm not sure if they wouldn't have reacted as badly to our presence outside the pyramid, given the eclipse."
"Yes, and what was that?" asked Toph. "They seemed to think that the sun was dying."
Mai swallowed. The sun was important to the Fire Nation, even to those who did not bend fire. "It looked very much like that," she explained. "A blackness, somewhat like a shadow, crossed over the sun, blocking part of its light."
Toph nodded her head, sending her bangs sflapping over her eyes. "Okay, so that's why I couldn't say anything. And because it affects firebending it's considered unfortunate?"
"Unfortunate doesn't cover it," her sister told her. "This was merely a partial eclipse, lasting a moment or two. On the Day of the Black Sun the eclipse was total and lasted several minutes longer, covering might of the Fire Nation. Long enough to turn the tides of empire if those moments were as fatefully timed as they were then."
The younger girl did not pause in her grooming but her lips pursed as she combed through her memory of history lessons, limited somewhat by the fact that she could not study scrolls herself but only work by what was read to her. "How long ago was it?"
"A little over six and a half centuries," Mai told her and let the girl work out the timing for herself.
It only took a moment: "The fall of the Dragon Princes."
"Precisely," agreed Mai. "No one remembers now if the timing was deliberate, opportunism or sheer mischance that the uprisings began that day, but at least a dozen of the princely strongholds were under attack when the sun failed. Thousands of firebenders were killed, unable to defend their princes, and the resultant power struggles almost tore the Fire Nation apart. It took the combined efforts of the Avatar Xatlan and the Order of the Fire Sages to end the wars and most of a hundred years for my people to recover. According to some of my teachers, there are parts of the ancient firebending lore that were lost forever."
"Although..." Toph said thoughtfully. "The sun warriors predate that, so maybe they can fill some of those gaps. Surely someone came looking for you before now," she added, turning to look at the Chief as he crossed the street towards them.
"They did," he agreed coolly. "The Masters read their hearts, their souls... Those they judged as being unworthy - likely, for example, to advertise our survival here - were destroyed. Those who they spared either kept our secrets, or simply remained here. By all accounts as happily as they would have anywhere else."
Mai tilted her head to one side. "The Masters?"
He nodded confirmation. "In the morning, we will take you both before them. If you are worthy, then they will teach you that which you will need. If not..." He shrugged. "In any event, it's rather too late for you to turn back at this point."
.oOo.
Somewhat before the crack of dawn the next day, a rather sleepy Toph - who had stayed up entirely too late trying to figure out where the Masters were - followed Mai towards a shrine on top of one of the smaller pyramids scattered around the ruined city. The two of them were surrounded by dozens of sun warriors, under the direction of Ham Ghao. Pragmatically speaking, Mai was fairly sure that they could have hopped onto M Bison at any point and just left...
But what would that have accomplished?
An archway at the centre of the shrine was occupied almost entirely by a smokeless fire. Mai had noticed that one of the buildings near the foot of the pyramid showed more sign of habitation than the camp - presumably for attendant to the shrine.
"This is the eternal flame," the Chief instructed them - as much for the benefit of the warriors around the two girls as for them. "The first fire given to man by the dragons, we have kept it alight for thousands of years."
He beckoned to the girls, who stepped forward. "All who go to meet the Masters carry with them a part of it, to show their commitment to the sacred art of firebending."
Mai cleared her throat. "I'm not a firebender," she pointed out. "I don't suppose that you have a lantern or something I can use to carry it?"
"No."
"Oh."
The sun chief refrained from smirking as he turned towards the flame and drew a modest globe of fire forth, dividing it between his two hands. "This ritual illustrates the essence of sun warrior philosophy. You must maintain a constant heat. The flame will go out if you make it too small but make it too big and you might lose control." The firebender held out his hands towards the two of them.
Toph extended her own hand unerringly and the chief placed one flame into the girl's small hands. Almost immediately she giggled. "It tickles," she said in a surprised voice. "Almost like... like it's alive."
"Fire is life," asserted the man. "Not just destruction." He turned his gaze towards Mai, who warily extended her own hands towards the flame, bracing herself to be scorched when the Chief released his control over it.
To her surprise the fire did not explode when the firebender removed his hand, nor even fall upon her fingers. Instead it simply remained hovering above her hands, fading slowly until it had reduced itself to nothing.
"That," said a caustic voice from behind them - Ham Ghao's, Mai recognised - "Was a bad start."
"Those are keen powers of observation that you have, Ham Ghao," she said, not looking back. "And also a very large mouth."
There was a ripple of amusement from the other sun warriors and even the Chief's expression softened slightly. "You must now take the fire to the cave of the Masters, beneath that rock." He pointed at where a hill reared up outside the city, capped by two mis-matched fangs of stone.
"Come on Spiky," Toph said, turning towards the stair down the pyramid. "I'll share my fire when we get there."
The Chief and Ham Ghao exchanged looks as the two girls descended.
"A very bad start," Ham Ghao conluded. His chief shrugged noncomittally.
.oOo.
"Are you alright?" Mai asked as Toph paused at one of the tougher patches of the hill to climb. The younger girl was frowning at nothing in particular - her blindness giving her little reason to point her face in the direction of whatever was irritating her.
Toph didn't reply at first, instead shifting her feet in a awkward rendition of her usual earthbending. The ground shuddered and then shifted grudgingly into a stair over the obstacle. At the same time, the flame in her hand flickered alarmingly. "Earth bending while I'm fire bending is harder than I expected," she admitted once the fire in her had had steadied.
"Well its impossible for the anyone else, little sister," Mai pointed out. "We're going to have to add that to your training. It's all very well being able to bend all four elements, but if you can't use them all at once then you'd be no better than a mixed squad of benders."
"Hey!"
Mai smiled slightly. "Which would be unacceptable, of course."
"Of course," Toph agreed, perfectly aware of Mai manuevering the situation and playing along. "I'm sure that fitting it in between the firebending lessons from these Masters, practising water bending on liquid water, trying to learn air bending from scrolls I can't read and keeping my earth bending up to scratch... all that will be easy!"
"That's a great idea," Mai agreed drily. "Where do you want to begin?"
"Earth bending while fire bending, of course," declared Toph and started to force a path into existence up the hill, the fire crackling in her hand as she wound the path back and forth up the slope, creating a slow and easy route. It wasn't as if they were in a hurry, after all.
As a result of the slow and sometimes circuitous route that the two took, the sun was low in the sky by the time that they came around a low hillock between them and the twin peaks and found that most of the sun warriors had beaten them there.
"Finally," muttered Ham Ghao, probably louder than he intended, from behind the Chief. Now unmasked by the terrain, Mai could see a high bridge connecting the two peaks to a broad pillar. A broad, steep stair of stone descended from the top of the pillar to an elaborately paved court where the sun warriors were standing. The sun was just descending behind the bridge, casting long shadows towards them.
"Facing the judgement of the fire bending masters will be dangerous for you," the Chief warned Mai. "It is very rare for anyone not a fire bender to come this far. Also, the decline of the dragons is the work of the Fire Nation, and anyone can see that you are of their ancestry." He turned towards Toph. "That your predecessors did not protect the dragons may also displease them."
Toph shrugged. "I met a dragon in the spirit world," she told him. "He gave me a headache."
The Chief seemed unsure what to say about that. Instead he raised his ceremonial spear (which was capped by an ornamental golden flame motif that would probably be of little use doing anything more that herding leopard goats... baby leopard goats at that) and brought the butt down sharpy, jamming it into a small hole in the paving. Reaching out he took part of the flame from Toph and used his own chi to strength it before dividing it in two. Ham Ghao and the other sun warrior flanking the chief reached out and took the flames from his outstretched hands.
Around the paving, the sun warriors spread out into a circle, passing the fire one to another. Alternate members of the tribe retained enough to spark fiery circles that they held in front of them, while those between them knelt and began to beat upon drums, sending up a simple but evocative beat as the three sun warriors before Mai and Toph led them to the bottom of the stair.
"Are you afraid, little one?" Ham Ghao asked under his breath as Toph walked past him. Mai winced internally at the thought of Toph breaking up such a clearly important ceremony to take sudden revenge for the insulting query, but instead of breaking into a destructive earth bending move, the younger girl seemed to ignore him completely and started to walking up the stairs beside her sister. After months of travel, the taller Mai didn't have to think about adjusting her pace to Toph's shorter legs.
"That was very mature of you," she said quietly once they were above easy earshot of the sun warriors.
Toph smiled broadly. "Earth benders know all about waiting for the right moment," she said just as quietly. "And that wasn't the right moment." Unspoken: that moment would come and be damned to any threat at the top of the steps.
Someone less disciplined than Mai would have grinned. This was getting interesting.
As the two stepped from the stair onto the top of the pillar, the drums stopped suddenly. The platform that the pillar created was somewhat wider than the bridge extending in either direction. Speaking through a huge curved horn - the size of a sungi horn, Mai thought - a booming voice from the circle of sun warriors announced: "Those who wish to meet the Masters Ran and Shao shall now present their fire."
Toph touched the flames she carried to the cloak she was wearing and the front of the material lit immediately. Mai's eyes went wide and she snatched the garment off Toph's shoulders, almost tearing it as she yanked it out of the young Avatar's belt.
"I was going to give you it anyway," Toph told her drily and turned to her left, facing along the bridge and holding out what remained of the fire, drawing upon her chi to restore it to its previous size. She could feel a cave at each end. Presumably the Masters would emerge from the openings. Mai sighed heavily and held out the bundled garment, fire rising from it, in the opposite direction.
"Sound the call!" roared the chief, clearly audible even without a speaking horn.
Some short distance from the court, a lone sun warrior placed his mouth to a twisted horn, so long that it had to be rested upon the floor, and sounded it, a deep sound that shook stones from the surfaces of the two peaks either side of the bridge.
"I felt that," Toph growled. Then her eyes went wide. "Oma..." she whispered as she felt something truly massive moving beneath the two peaks.
"Do I want to know?"
"Whether you want to or not, you're about to find out," Toph told her.
Toph couldn't see the yellow eyes gleamed in warning before one of the Masters emerged but she could easily hear the hissing snarl as a gigantic red dragon shot out of the cave in front of her, only bending off at the last minute to start circling about the two girls. The dragon was so huge that even circling so widely that it almost brushed both peaks, it was quite literally chasing its own tail.
There was a second rush of air as another dragon, this one blue, emerged from the other peak and began circling.
"Oh. Dragons."
Toph was momentarily more impressed with her big sister's sang froid than she was by the dragons.
Summer Solstice, which would be around June 21st.
According to the Avatar wiki, the Day of the Black Sun falls on August 1st. Sozin's Comet is due at the 'end of the summer', presumably some time before the Autumn Equinox on September 21st.
To give a comparison to canon, TomTom's abduction takes place at around the same time in canon and in this AU, although under different circumstances. Toph and Mai meet Piandao at around the same time that Sokka would have trained under him in canon.
According to the Avatar wiki, the Day of the Black Sun falls on August 1st. Sozin's Comet is due at the 'end of the summer', presumably some time before the Autumn Equinox on September 21st.
To give a comparison to canon, TomTom's abduction takes place at around the same time in canon and in this AU, although under different circumstances. Toph and Mai meet Piandao at around the same time that Sokka would have trained under him in canon.
"So are they going to question us?" Mai continued evenly as the dragons continued to circle. Firebenders had killed creatures this huge? She was actually a little impressed.
"Roku told me that dragons talk with their minds," advised Toph. "Maybe they already are. What are they doing?"
"Circling."
"Is that good or bad?"
"I have no idea."
Toph shook her head. "Well I'm not going to just stand here. They already know I can do that. Come on, Spiky. Let's fire bend."
"Aren't you forgetting something?"
"I know, I know. But even if you can't bend fire, they're perfectly good moves for kicking someone's ass. You do remember how, don't you?"
"You're unbelievable," Mai sighed and shifted into the starting stance for the simplest of the forms that she knew, trusting Toph to recognise it. "From the beginning?"
"Yeah, let's show them everything," Toph said and Mai anticipated by the shift of her breathing when to begin her own movements. The two girls set out, mirroring each other as they began the first and simplest kata that the Fire Nation taught to fire benders. Neither hurried. This wasn't battle were speed was second only to accuracy in importance. It was a demonstration: showing these two fire bending masters what the two of them were capable of... and what they were not.
Ran and Shao continued to circle, watched distantly by the sun warriors below as the two fire maidens moved through the almost dancelike forms of fire bending as the sun descended below the horizon.. The forms that the pair used had shifted over centuries from the traditions that had begun in this very place but that were still rooted here. As darkness fell, the only light was that of the fire wheels held by the sunwarriors kneeling below - sufficient for Mai to still make out the edges of the pillar.
"Feeling better?" Mai asked as they came to the end of one of the more advanced kata that she knew - which wasn't close to reaching the limits of what Zuko had taught to Toph during her short apprenticeship.
"Yes." Toph said. "We should keep going, I think they like it."
Mai didn't turn aside but the next time her line of sight intersected with the poorly illuminated face of one of the dragons, she saw no signs of it. "How can you tell?" she asked.
"We aren't dead."
"Yet," Mai told her as she jumped and kicked. A firebender would have hurled fire a dozen yards from the force behind the move. She was hard-pressed to keep hold of the now uncomfortably warm cloak, little left to spare her hand from the fire. "I don't know much beyond this."
"Then we'll improvise," Toph decided. "Remember the statues in the pyramid?"
"I don't know that form either." Mai sighed as she finished the form. The last, most advanced form that she had been taught. "So we'll learn it together."
Toph laughed. "That's the spirit!" She had maneuvered to stand next to Mai as they completed their last form and both rose to stand on one foot, the stance used by the first statues in the circular arrangement they had found the previous day.
When they finished, standing on the far side of the platform, fists almost touching, Mai was almost embarassed at how clumsy she had been. The form was different from those that she was used to and she had almost stalled twice, hesitant over how to transition between the stances. Give her honest steel any day. She looked up and froze. The face of one of the dragons - the red one - was only a few feet ahead of her own, eyes fixed upon her own. She could feel its hot breath against her faith.
Behind Mai there was a soft thump of flesh on flesh and an affronted growl that could only be from the other dragon. "Little... did you just attack the dragon?"
"Punched it in the nose," the younger girl said somewhat triumphantly.
In unison the two dragons landed upon the sides of the pillar, gripping it with their talons, heads just barely above the bridge. The sound was shockingly loud. They drew back their heads, breathing in.
As if it would be any use, Mai dropped into a defensive stance against the fire that rushed out at her. It was not the orange flame she had expected, or even the famous blue flames that Azula favoured. These flames were golden, with traces of other colours threaded through it in a rich, roaring tapestry. Dragons' fire was clearly very different from that of human benders. And why should it be the same? she wondered.
Shouldn't I be dead?
Behind her she heard Toph slump to her knees as the flames came to an end and Mai whirled to catch her sister as the small girl keeled over to the side, eyes wide... and somehow more empty than she had ever seen them before.
.oOo.
Ran and Shao coiled, serpent-like, and then each darted back inside the caves that they called home.
"Well that's it," Ham Ghao said with some degree of vindication as he saw that the two girls were no longer standing on the pillar. "I'm surprised they weren't eaten. I guess the dragons thought that they might be poisonous."
The chief shot him an irritated look. "Maybe. Or maybe Ran and Shao spared them." He smiled. "Go up there and check."
Ham Ghao pouted and then made his way up the stairway as behind him his fellow sun warriors extinguished the firewheels and prepared to leave. Their mood was solemn - even if it was their duty to place intruders before the Masters for judgement, it seemed a shame for two such young women to have been found unworthy.
Their mood was lightened when several of the steps ceased to be steps, causing Ham Ghao - then standing upon them - to fall flat on his face and then tumble back down the floor when his feet suddenly lost their purchase upon the stone.
"That was the right moment," an amused voice announced from above them and a light kindled at the top of the stairs (which promptly resumed their usual shape), revealing Toph holding a palmful of flames. The small girl was leaning heavily against Mai, who half-carried her down the steps.
"You don't say," the older girl drawled, steadying Toph as she reeled slightly, legs still not steady under her.
"I do!" Toph said brightly. "I showed that dragon a thing or two!" Then her chin dropped to her chest and Mai had to support her full weight as the young Avatar went limp.
The Chief couldn't resist joining the rest of his tribe in laughter as Mai lifted the scrappy little earth bender in her arms. "You have a remarkable little sister," he noted as Mai reached the bottom of the steps and made a point of stepping on Ham Ghao on her route towards the chief. The sun warrior grunted in pain but sensibly did not actively protest.
"Yes, she's sure to regularly remind me of it," agreed Mai coolly. "So. What now?"
"Now that you have learned the secrets and you know about our tribe's existence... we have no choice but to -" He looked at her face and decided against joking on the matter. "- trust that you won't tell anyone."
"Just like that?"
"If the Masters like you, who are we to argue," the Chief said expansively. "And since we aren't mourning your foolish and pointless deaths, there will be a feast to honor the fact that you're alive. Although we might want to wait until your sister wakes up."
"Are you sure that you don't want us to be gone before she wakes up?"
"I do," Ham Ghao mumbled from behind them.
The Chief laughed and retreived his ornamental spear. "What sort of feast would it be without the guests of honour?"
.oOo.
"I didn't get a chance to say this earlier," Lu Ten said pleasently as he stood by the rail of the ferry. "Congratulations on your conquest of Ba Sing Se."
Azula smiled pleasently. "Well there was nothing else for it, cousin. If it had taken any longer then I wouldn't have been able to attend your wedding."
"It wouldn't have been the same without you," the Prince Admiral assured her. "Ty was ecstatic to hear you would make it." Traditional Fire Nation weddings - and as a member of the royal family Lu Ten's wedding had had to be very traditional - had only the immediate families in attendance for the ceremony itself, which was carried out by the bridegroom's immediate feudal lord - in this case the Fire Lord himself. As a result, while Ty Lee's parents and sisters had filled the bride's side of the ceremony entirely, Azula's presence had doubled those on Lu Ten's side.
"Since we're talking business," the princess added, "Between all the ceremonies, I wasn't able to catch up on your reports from the south. Have any traces of my brother been found?"
Lu Ten shook his head. "There has not been a single sign of him. In fact, the entire Water Tribe appears to have disappeared. We combed the entire coast of the South Pole and couldn't find a single village, not even that where Zhao claimed he had fought Zuko. The only clue we found were traces of some temporary settlements on the islands around the Southern Air Temple."
Azula frowned. "The Water Tribe are much diminished, but I hardly think that they would be so accomodating as to simply disappear from history."
"That's one reason that I won't be returning to the south immediately," her cousin explained, turning to lean his hips against the wooden rail. "I established a garrison near the southern temple to alert us if the Water Tribe return there and the same must be done for the other temples. I myself will take my fleet and search the coastline of the North Pole in case the Water Tribe have returned there. They will not stray far from open water, wherever they have settled."
"I see." Azula tapped her chin. "With the fall of Ba Sing Se, the pressure upon our armies in the Earth Kingdom has been reduced. It should be a simple matter to redirect them to search for signs of the Water Tribe, in case they have found refuge there somehow." So once the honeymoon was over, Lu Ten was going to be surrounded by loyal sailors and officers. That would make it significantly more difficult to get an assassin close to him.
Oh well, so much for Ty Lee enjoying the full two weeks of her honeymoon on Ember Island. Azula would have to send for the assassin directly.
"Are you two talking business?" asked Ty Lee, emerging onto the ferry deck, barefoot and wrapped in a light robe. "This is supposed to be our honeymoon, Azula. I'm not going to let you steal Lu Ten away to the war just yet."
The two cousins laughed. "I'm sorry sweetheart," Lu Ten apologised, sweeping her into his arms. "No more talk of the war. Look, isn't that Ember Island up ahead?"
Ty Lee squirmed in her husband's arms, although Azula wasn't sure if she was looking for the famous resort or just rubbing against Lu Ten. Wait a minute, yes she was sure. "I'll leave the two of you alone," she said, retreating towards the door, suddenly grateful for the fact that she would be borrowing the relatively modest cabin used by her teachers Lo and Li, rather than sharing the royal residence with the newlyweds.
.oOo.
Toph was firebending in the saddle. Mai could tell without even looking back from the saddle, the crackle of the flames something she was hypersensitive to after the encounter with the dragons. Probably that would wear off around the same time as the dreams where the dragonfire had been intended to kill them. She had to admit it though: between the dragons and a few days coaching from the sun warriors, Toph's firebending had come on by leaps and bounds.
"So, are you a master firebender now?" she asked, not looking back. Having been burnt by the sun warriors, M Bison was understandably a little concerned about having a fire bender on his back and Mai considered it prudent to keep a very close eye on his more aggressive tendencies.
Toph snorted. "Not even close, Spiky. Ran and Shao pointed me in the right direction but it's going to take a while. Still - it is better. If we can find somewhere I can train, somewhere remote where no one will spot us, I figure I should be passable with fire and water before Sozin's Comet arrives."
"Passable," Mai said thoughtfully. "But only in three elements. How is air coming along?"
"Not well." Toph confessed. She was silent for a long moment and then snuffed out the fire with a click of her fingers. Mai flinched. "It's kind of annoying and reassuring at the same time. I'm proud of how good I am at earth bending. Thinking that that was all being the Avatar would be annoying. But comparing it to air bending... it's not the same. Being Avatar might make me strong... but skill? That takes work."
Mai chuckled. "You're philosophical today."
"I must have hit my head when they decided to poke around it it."
There was a shuffling as Toph began to work on her air bending katas. Perhaps having evolved for that very purpose, it was actually possible to perform them on the back of a flying sky bison. "Where are we going?"
"Somewhere we can pick up supplies. There aren't many places way out in the middle of nowhere in the Fire Nation," Mai explained. "Most of the islands are too populated for your sort of training to go unnoticed. Volcanos are rather obvious after all."
"That was just the once. And you didn't need to tell the sun warriors about it." The chief had been very enthusiastic about their need to move on after hearing that story from Mai. "Their island would have been fine for training."
"Not until they invent soap. Anyway, Ember Island isn't all that far."
"Never heard of it," Toph told her. "What's it like?"
Mai shrugged. "A resort town. Lots of brainless boys and girls looking to impress each other. They'll be too absorbed in each other to notice if M Bison landed right on the main beach. My family has a summer house there that we can use while we stay. It's closed up while they're in Omashu."
"Do you miss them?" Toph asked.
"Do you miss your parents?" Mai shot back and regretted it immediately.
"I miss them being my parents, not my jailors," answered Toph, breaking off from her form and climbing forward out of the saddle to stand behind Mai, hands on the older girl's shoulders. "I miss when I didn't know that they never told anyone they had a daughter. When they weren't ashamed of me."
Mai placed one of her hands over Toph's. "I'm sorry."
"Eh, I'm pretty much over it. I've got a sister, right. Who else do I need?"
"Same here. Why would I miss my parents when I've got you?"
M Bison grumphed beneath them.
"You don't count, fuzzball," the two girls told him in unison.
.oOo.
"Do you think anyone will recognise you?" Toph asked as M Bison flew over Ember Island late in the evening. Mai had timed the approach carefully, to arrive when the sun was not in the sky and the thousands of lanterns illuminating the town for the revellers would make it almost impossible for them to see anything in the sky above them. Fortunately, the moon was only a crescent, but even so, Mai had picked the route carefully to avoid coming between it and the town as they flew towards her family's summer house.
"It's unlikely," she replied. "There might be a few of my former schoolmates on Ember Island but none of them have seen me for years and I was only close to two of them."
Toph chuckled. "The famous Princess Azula being one of them?"
"I think she mostly enjoyed having me around to use against her brother," Mai noted. "But yes. I don't think she leaves the capital often, and then only on missions for the Fire Lord. I can't think of any reason she'd come to Ember Island."
"That's almost a shame," Toph admitted. "You said she was some sort of fire bending prodigy, almost as good at that as I am at earth bending. If we weren't enemies then it would be interesting to meet her."
"If only because the two of you would be enemies within minutes of you talking to her," agreed Mai drily. "If I'd known you were interested, I would have got you one of the propaganda scrolls detailing her many virtues. Of course, then I'd have to read it to you, so perhaps its best not."
"Your commentary alone would be worth it."
M Bison landed in one of the side yards of the house, one that had doubled as a stableyard at one point and was now more or less storage for anything not likely to be damaged by the weather. Without any significant light to guide her, Mai misjudged the landing slightly and M Bison crushed a table beneath one foot as he landed. She winced at the sound but there was no apparent reaction from the house.
"Well, if anyone is here, I think they would have heard that," Toph told her and slid down M Bison's side, landing on the paving. She rubbed her feet against the ground and shrugged. "No, we're the only ones nearby. Nice place, by the way."
"It's terribly gaudy and my mother decorated it in the most extraordinary bad taste," Mai told her. "Somehow, I was sure that you'd approve." She rose to her feet and walked back along M Bison to the saddle. "My usual rooms are upstairs, but there's a lounge in the wing on the left with a tiled floor and some couches. The room with the fountain."
"Got it," Toph agreed. "Seems to be some pretty big furniture there - couches?"
Mai unstrapped the bags with their belongings from the saddle. "I'm not as fond of sleeping on bare earth as you are," she explained and slung the bags carefully to the ground. "Take the bags there while I get the saddle off M Bison and then we can get some sleep. We've got a lot to do tomorrow so we'll have to be up at the crack of noon."
"What, first thing in the afternoon?" Toph objected. "That's a bit early isn't it?" Neither of them were particularly early risers by preference, although Mai had having restless mornings lately.
"Most visitors shop early and then enjoy the beaches during the day," explained Mai. "If we shop during the heat of the afternoon, there won't be so much of a crowd and less chance of running into someone I've met before."
Toph picked up the bags - neither was huge, as the girls hadn't managed to hold onto all that many belongings between the two of them, but in combination they were a hefty load for the twelve year old. "And if you do run into someone you know?"
"Then my name is Kotare, and your name is Ilah and we have no idea who Mai and Toph might be. And then we get off Ember Island fast and I don't care how obvious it is."
.oOo.
Mai groaned and dragged her the cloak she was using as a blanket up over her face as the sun streamed through the gaps between the window shutters. The sun had dragged her awake - why hadn't she remembered that this room faced east? - after only a few hours and since then the fire maiden had been too restless to get back to sleep. She'd heard Toph wake - raised by the sun, as if she were any other fire bender - but the smaller girl had had no difficulty curling up again on the floor in her nest of blankets. Probably because she couldn't see the sunlight.
Later on, Mai blamed lack of sleep on her part and an over-abundance of that on the part of Toph for what happened next.
Which was the sound of the door to the room being pushed open and two small feet pattering inside before closing the door. Mai was sleepily shuffling blankets aside to look at who the feet belonged to before she had fully processed the situation and a shot of adrenaline yanked her awake at about the same moment that she locked eyes with a surprised small child, the toddler's still thin black hair forming a familiar scalplock.
"Mai!" Tom-Tom declared in delight, beaming at her.
"'s called Kotare an' we're leavin'," Toph mumbled from her blankets and rolled over, without waking.
"Mai!" repeated the girl's infant brother, even louder.
"...wake up," Mai snapped harshly, hoping that her tone would get through to Toph. She was rewarded when the girl stretched, rolled... and kipped to her feet.
Sensitive to the tone of voice, if not the meaning of Mai's words, Tom-Tom stared in confusion at his sister. His chubby cheeks began to redden with emotion and he toddled towards her, tears forming at the corners of his eyes.
Another familiar voice spoke from outside the door. "Tom-Tom! Tom-Tom! Where are you?"
"Are we still sticking with the Ilah and Kotare plan?" Toph asked very quietly, grabbing up her bag.
Before Mai could say anything in response, the door swung open and an immaculately made up Fire Nation noblewoman wearing mourning colours entered, followed by two harried looking servants. The woman's eyes settled first upon Tom-Tom and then, inevitably, upon the focus of the toddler's attention. Her skin, already fashionably creamy, paled further and she visibly swayed, one of servants seizing her elbow to support her. The other pushed past the stricken woman and snatched up a startled Tom-Tom, who objected with a loud wail.
"No," Mai decided regretfully. "...I'm guessing there are a lot more people around us than when we went to bed."
Toph grimaced. "Lots and lots of them. Some of them are heading for where M Bison is sleeping. And now some of them are heading here."
"M-Mai?" asked the woman. "Little Toph? You're alive?"
Mai looked resigned. "Yes mother," she admitted.
Her mother stepped forwards, actually breaking out of the dignified shuffle expected of a highborn woman and threw her arms firmly around her daughter. "Oh thank Agni! You're alive!"
The girl's eyebrows rose and she slowly - reluctantly - returned the embrace, patting her mother gently on the back. That wasn't exactly the reaction that she had anticipated, still less the tears that the woman was shedding.
"Roku told me that dragons talk with their minds," advised Toph. "Maybe they already are. What are they doing?"
"Circling."
"Is that good or bad?"
"I have no idea."
Toph shook her head. "Well I'm not going to just stand here. They already know I can do that. Come on, Spiky. Let's fire bend."
"Aren't you forgetting something?"
"I know, I know. But even if you can't bend fire, they're perfectly good moves for kicking someone's ass. You do remember how, don't you?"
"You're unbelievable," Mai sighed and shifted into the starting stance for the simplest of the forms that she knew, trusting Toph to recognise it. "From the beginning?"
"Yeah, let's show them everything," Toph said and Mai anticipated by the shift of her breathing when to begin her own movements. The two girls set out, mirroring each other as they began the first and simplest kata that the Fire Nation taught to fire benders. Neither hurried. This wasn't battle were speed was second only to accuracy in importance. It was a demonstration: showing these two fire bending masters what the two of them were capable of... and what they were not.
Ran and Shao continued to circle, watched distantly by the sun warriors below as the two fire maidens moved through the almost dancelike forms of fire bending as the sun descended below the horizon.. The forms that the pair used had shifted over centuries from the traditions that had begun in this very place but that were still rooted here. As darkness fell, the only light was that of the fire wheels held by the sunwarriors kneeling below - sufficient for Mai to still make out the edges of the pillar.
"Feeling better?" Mai asked as they came to the end of one of the more advanced kata that she knew - which wasn't close to reaching the limits of what Zuko had taught to Toph during her short apprenticeship.
"Yes." Toph said. "We should keep going, I think they like it."
Mai didn't turn aside but the next time her line of sight intersected with the poorly illuminated face of one of the dragons, she saw no signs of it. "How can you tell?" she asked.
"We aren't dead."
"Yet," Mai told her as she jumped and kicked. A firebender would have hurled fire a dozen yards from the force behind the move. She was hard-pressed to keep hold of the now uncomfortably warm cloak, little left to spare her hand from the fire. "I don't know much beyond this."
"Then we'll improvise," Toph decided. "Remember the statues in the pyramid?"
"I don't know that form either." Mai sighed as she finished the form. The last, most advanced form that she had been taught. "So we'll learn it together."
Toph laughed. "That's the spirit!" She had maneuvered to stand next to Mai as they completed their last form and both rose to stand on one foot, the stance used by the first statues in the circular arrangement they had found the previous day.
When they finished, standing on the far side of the platform, fists almost touching, Mai was almost embarassed at how clumsy she had been. The form was different from those that she was used to and she had almost stalled twice, hesitant over how to transition between the stances. Give her honest steel any day. She looked up and froze. The face of one of the dragons - the red one - was only a few feet ahead of her own, eyes fixed upon her own. She could feel its hot breath against her faith.
Behind Mai there was a soft thump of flesh on flesh and an affronted growl that could only be from the other dragon. "Little... did you just attack the dragon?"
"Punched it in the nose," the younger girl said somewhat triumphantly.
In unison the two dragons landed upon the sides of the pillar, gripping it with their talons, heads just barely above the bridge. The sound was shockingly loud. They drew back their heads, breathing in.
As if it would be any use, Mai dropped into a defensive stance against the fire that rushed out at her. It was not the orange flame she had expected, or even the famous blue flames that Azula favoured. These flames were golden, with traces of other colours threaded through it in a rich, roaring tapestry. Dragons' fire was clearly very different from that of human benders. And why should it be the same? she wondered.
Shouldn't I be dead?
Behind her she heard Toph slump to her knees as the flames came to an end and Mai whirled to catch her sister as the small girl keeled over to the side, eyes wide... and somehow more empty than she had ever seen them before.
.oOo.
Ran and Shao coiled, serpent-like, and then each darted back inside the caves that they called home.
"Well that's it," Ham Ghao said with some degree of vindication as he saw that the two girls were no longer standing on the pillar. "I'm surprised they weren't eaten. I guess the dragons thought that they might be poisonous."
The chief shot him an irritated look. "Maybe. Or maybe Ran and Shao spared them." He smiled. "Go up there and check."
Ham Ghao pouted and then made his way up the stairway as behind him his fellow sun warriors extinguished the firewheels and prepared to leave. Their mood was solemn - even if it was their duty to place intruders before the Masters for judgement, it seemed a shame for two such young women to have been found unworthy.
Their mood was lightened when several of the steps ceased to be steps, causing Ham Ghao - then standing upon them - to fall flat on his face and then tumble back down the floor when his feet suddenly lost their purchase upon the stone.
"That was the right moment," an amused voice announced from above them and a light kindled at the top of the stairs (which promptly resumed their usual shape), revealing Toph holding a palmful of flames. The small girl was leaning heavily against Mai, who half-carried her down the steps.
"You don't say," the older girl drawled, steadying Toph as she reeled slightly, legs still not steady under her.
"I do!" Toph said brightly. "I showed that dragon a thing or two!" Then her chin dropped to her chest and Mai had to support her full weight as the young Avatar went limp.
The Chief couldn't resist joining the rest of his tribe in laughter as Mai lifted the scrappy little earth bender in her arms. "You have a remarkable little sister," he noted as Mai reached the bottom of the steps and made a point of stepping on Ham Ghao on her route towards the chief. The sun warrior grunted in pain but sensibly did not actively protest.
"Yes, she's sure to regularly remind me of it," agreed Mai coolly. "So. What now?"
"Now that you have learned the secrets and you know about our tribe's existence... we have no choice but to -" He looked at her face and decided against joking on the matter. "- trust that you won't tell anyone."
"Just like that?"
"If the Masters like you, who are we to argue," the Chief said expansively. "And since we aren't mourning your foolish and pointless deaths, there will be a feast to honor the fact that you're alive. Although we might want to wait until your sister wakes up."
"Are you sure that you don't want us to be gone before she wakes up?"
"I do," Ham Ghao mumbled from behind them.
The Chief laughed and retreived his ornamental spear. "What sort of feast would it be without the guests of honour?"
.oOo.
"I didn't get a chance to say this earlier," Lu Ten said pleasently as he stood by the rail of the ferry. "Congratulations on your conquest of Ba Sing Se."
Azula smiled pleasently. "Well there was nothing else for it, cousin. If it had taken any longer then I wouldn't have been able to attend your wedding."
"It wouldn't have been the same without you," the Prince Admiral assured her. "Ty was ecstatic to hear you would make it." Traditional Fire Nation weddings - and as a member of the royal family Lu Ten's wedding had had to be very traditional - had only the immediate families in attendance for the ceremony itself, which was carried out by the bridegroom's immediate feudal lord - in this case the Fire Lord himself. As a result, while Ty Lee's parents and sisters had filled the bride's side of the ceremony entirely, Azula's presence had doubled those on Lu Ten's side.
"Since we're talking business," the princess added, "Between all the ceremonies, I wasn't able to catch up on your reports from the south. Have any traces of my brother been found?"
Lu Ten shook his head. "There has not been a single sign of him. In fact, the entire Water Tribe appears to have disappeared. We combed the entire coast of the South Pole and couldn't find a single village, not even that where Zhao claimed he had fought Zuko. The only clue we found were traces of some temporary settlements on the islands around the Southern Air Temple."
Azula frowned. "The Water Tribe are much diminished, but I hardly think that they would be so accomodating as to simply disappear from history."
"That's one reason that I won't be returning to the south immediately," her cousin explained, turning to lean his hips against the wooden rail. "I established a garrison near the southern temple to alert us if the Water Tribe return there and the same must be done for the other temples. I myself will take my fleet and search the coastline of the North Pole in case the Water Tribe have returned there. They will not stray far from open water, wherever they have settled."
"I see." Azula tapped her chin. "With the fall of Ba Sing Se, the pressure upon our armies in the Earth Kingdom has been reduced. It should be a simple matter to redirect them to search for signs of the Water Tribe, in case they have found refuge there somehow." So once the honeymoon was over, Lu Ten was going to be surrounded by loyal sailors and officers. That would make it significantly more difficult to get an assassin close to him.
Oh well, so much for Ty Lee enjoying the full two weeks of her honeymoon on Ember Island. Azula would have to send for the assassin directly.
"Are you two talking business?" asked Ty Lee, emerging onto the ferry deck, barefoot and wrapped in a light robe. "This is supposed to be our honeymoon, Azula. I'm not going to let you steal Lu Ten away to the war just yet."
The two cousins laughed. "I'm sorry sweetheart," Lu Ten apologised, sweeping her into his arms. "No more talk of the war. Look, isn't that Ember Island up ahead?"
Ty Lee squirmed in her husband's arms, although Azula wasn't sure if she was looking for the famous resort or just rubbing against Lu Ten. Wait a minute, yes she was sure. "I'll leave the two of you alone," she said, retreating towards the door, suddenly grateful for the fact that she would be borrowing the relatively modest cabin used by her teachers Lo and Li, rather than sharing the royal residence with the newlyweds.
.oOo.
Toph was firebending in the saddle. Mai could tell without even looking back from the saddle, the crackle of the flames something she was hypersensitive to after the encounter with the dragons. Probably that would wear off around the same time as the dreams where the dragonfire had been intended to kill them. She had to admit it though: between the dragons and a few days coaching from the sun warriors, Toph's firebending had come on by leaps and bounds.
"So, are you a master firebender now?" she asked, not looking back. Having been burnt by the sun warriors, M Bison was understandably a little concerned about having a fire bender on his back and Mai considered it prudent to keep a very close eye on his more aggressive tendencies.
Toph snorted. "Not even close, Spiky. Ran and Shao pointed me in the right direction but it's going to take a while. Still - it is better. If we can find somewhere I can train, somewhere remote where no one will spot us, I figure I should be passable with fire and water before Sozin's Comet arrives."
"Passable," Mai said thoughtfully. "But only in three elements. How is air coming along?"
"Not well." Toph confessed. She was silent for a long moment and then snuffed out the fire with a click of her fingers. Mai flinched. "It's kind of annoying and reassuring at the same time. I'm proud of how good I am at earth bending. Thinking that that was all being the Avatar would be annoying. But comparing it to air bending... it's not the same. Being Avatar might make me strong... but skill? That takes work."
Mai chuckled. "You're philosophical today."
"I must have hit my head when they decided to poke around it it."
There was a shuffling as Toph began to work on her air bending katas. Perhaps having evolved for that very purpose, it was actually possible to perform them on the back of a flying sky bison. "Where are we going?"
"Somewhere we can pick up supplies. There aren't many places way out in the middle of nowhere in the Fire Nation," Mai explained. "Most of the islands are too populated for your sort of training to go unnoticed. Volcanos are rather obvious after all."
"That was just the once. And you didn't need to tell the sun warriors about it." The chief had been very enthusiastic about their need to move on after hearing that story from Mai. "Their island would have been fine for training."
"Not until they invent soap. Anyway, Ember Island isn't all that far."
"Never heard of it," Toph told her. "What's it like?"
Mai shrugged. "A resort town. Lots of brainless boys and girls looking to impress each other. They'll be too absorbed in each other to notice if M Bison landed right on the main beach. My family has a summer house there that we can use while we stay. It's closed up while they're in Omashu."
"Do you miss them?" Toph asked.
"Do you miss your parents?" Mai shot back and regretted it immediately.
"I miss them being my parents, not my jailors," answered Toph, breaking off from her form and climbing forward out of the saddle to stand behind Mai, hands on the older girl's shoulders. "I miss when I didn't know that they never told anyone they had a daughter. When they weren't ashamed of me."
Mai placed one of her hands over Toph's. "I'm sorry."
"Eh, I'm pretty much over it. I've got a sister, right. Who else do I need?"
"Same here. Why would I miss my parents when I've got you?"
M Bison grumphed beneath them.
"You don't count, fuzzball," the two girls told him in unison.
.oOo.
"Do you think anyone will recognise you?" Toph asked as M Bison flew over Ember Island late in the evening. Mai had timed the approach carefully, to arrive when the sun was not in the sky and the thousands of lanterns illuminating the town for the revellers would make it almost impossible for them to see anything in the sky above them. Fortunately, the moon was only a crescent, but even so, Mai had picked the route carefully to avoid coming between it and the town as they flew towards her family's summer house.
"It's unlikely," she replied. "There might be a few of my former schoolmates on Ember Island but none of them have seen me for years and I was only close to two of them."
Toph chuckled. "The famous Princess Azula being one of them?"
"I think she mostly enjoyed having me around to use against her brother," Mai noted. "But yes. I don't think she leaves the capital often, and then only on missions for the Fire Lord. I can't think of any reason she'd come to Ember Island."
"That's almost a shame," Toph admitted. "You said she was some sort of fire bending prodigy, almost as good at that as I am at earth bending. If we weren't enemies then it would be interesting to meet her."
"If only because the two of you would be enemies within minutes of you talking to her," agreed Mai drily. "If I'd known you were interested, I would have got you one of the propaganda scrolls detailing her many virtues. Of course, then I'd have to read it to you, so perhaps its best not."
"Your commentary alone would be worth it."
M Bison landed in one of the side yards of the house, one that had doubled as a stableyard at one point and was now more or less storage for anything not likely to be damaged by the weather. Without any significant light to guide her, Mai misjudged the landing slightly and M Bison crushed a table beneath one foot as he landed. She winced at the sound but there was no apparent reaction from the house.
"Well, if anyone is here, I think they would have heard that," Toph told her and slid down M Bison's side, landing on the paving. She rubbed her feet against the ground and shrugged. "No, we're the only ones nearby. Nice place, by the way."
"It's terribly gaudy and my mother decorated it in the most extraordinary bad taste," Mai told her. "Somehow, I was sure that you'd approve." She rose to her feet and walked back along M Bison to the saddle. "My usual rooms are upstairs, but there's a lounge in the wing on the left with a tiled floor and some couches. The room with the fountain."
"Got it," Toph agreed. "Seems to be some pretty big furniture there - couches?"
Mai unstrapped the bags with their belongings from the saddle. "I'm not as fond of sleeping on bare earth as you are," she explained and slung the bags carefully to the ground. "Take the bags there while I get the saddle off M Bison and then we can get some sleep. We've got a lot to do tomorrow so we'll have to be up at the crack of noon."
"What, first thing in the afternoon?" Toph objected. "That's a bit early isn't it?" Neither of them were particularly early risers by preference, although Mai had having restless mornings lately.
"Most visitors shop early and then enjoy the beaches during the day," explained Mai. "If we shop during the heat of the afternoon, there won't be so much of a crowd and less chance of running into someone I've met before."
Toph picked up the bags - neither was huge, as the girls hadn't managed to hold onto all that many belongings between the two of them, but in combination they were a hefty load for the twelve year old. "And if you do run into someone you know?"
"Then my name is Kotare, and your name is Ilah and we have no idea who Mai and Toph might be. And then we get off Ember Island fast and I don't care how obvious it is."
.oOo.
Mai groaned and dragged her the cloak she was using as a blanket up over her face as the sun streamed through the gaps between the window shutters. The sun had dragged her awake - why hadn't she remembered that this room faced east? - after only a few hours and since then the fire maiden had been too restless to get back to sleep. She'd heard Toph wake - raised by the sun, as if she were any other fire bender - but the smaller girl had had no difficulty curling up again on the floor in her nest of blankets. Probably because she couldn't see the sunlight.
Later on, Mai blamed lack of sleep on her part and an over-abundance of that on the part of Toph for what happened next.
Which was the sound of the door to the room being pushed open and two small feet pattering inside before closing the door. Mai was sleepily shuffling blankets aside to look at who the feet belonged to before she had fully processed the situation and a shot of adrenaline yanked her awake at about the same moment that she locked eyes with a surprised small child, the toddler's still thin black hair forming a familiar scalplock.
"Mai!" Tom-Tom declared in delight, beaming at her.
"'s called Kotare an' we're leavin'," Toph mumbled from her blankets and rolled over, without waking.
"Mai!" repeated the girl's infant brother, even louder.
"...wake up," Mai snapped harshly, hoping that her tone would get through to Toph. She was rewarded when the girl stretched, rolled... and kipped to her feet.
Sensitive to the tone of voice, if not the meaning of Mai's words, Tom-Tom stared in confusion at his sister. His chubby cheeks began to redden with emotion and he toddled towards her, tears forming at the corners of his eyes.
Another familiar voice spoke from outside the door. "Tom-Tom! Tom-Tom! Where are you?"
"Are we still sticking with the Ilah and Kotare plan?" Toph asked very quietly, grabbing up her bag.
Before Mai could say anything in response, the door swung open and an immaculately made up Fire Nation noblewoman wearing mourning colours entered, followed by two harried looking servants. The woman's eyes settled first upon Tom-Tom and then, inevitably, upon the focus of the toddler's attention. Her skin, already fashionably creamy, paled further and she visibly swayed, one of servants seizing her elbow to support her. The other pushed past the stricken woman and snatched up a startled Tom-Tom, who objected with a loud wail.
"No," Mai decided regretfully. "...I'm guessing there are a lot more people around us than when we went to bed."
Toph grimaced. "Lots and lots of them. Some of them are heading for where M Bison is sleeping. And now some of them are heading here."
"M-Mai?" asked the woman. "Little Toph? You're alive?"
Mai looked resigned. "Yes mother," she admitted.
Her mother stepped forwards, actually breaking out of the dignified shuffle expected of a highborn woman and threw her arms firmly around her daughter. "Oh thank Agni! You're alive!"
The girl's eyebrows rose and she slowly - reluctantly - returned the embrace, patting her mother gently on the back. That wasn't exactly the reaction that she had anticipated, still less the tears that the woman was shedding.
Think fast!