Yaosen walked alone down the main thoroughfare of Shadow Ridge, seeing the village with new eyes.
The jagged peak of the mountain behind him belched smoke. The ring of black stone extended from that peak like the wings of an ashraven, encircling the village and hiding dozens of smaller caves where the villagers dwelt. All of them were connected to the smoke above, through chimneys and vents, and many of them might have their own secret passages into the shadows below.
Noone walked the streets of volcanic gravel.
The villagers would all be asleep at this hour. Yaosen and Rook had spent the day flying and fighting the scout balloons, then the night seeking answers in the bowels of the mountain. The first glimmers of dawn were just beginning to grace the eastern horizon, and Yaosen could convince himself that it was the light of his homeland that cast distant rays toward the edges of this wild continent.
When Yaosen had been exiled – and he had dared to hope that his mission to find the firebending avatar could actually be accomplished – he had envisioned a society similar to the Fire Nation. He had expected it to be more primitive, of course, smaller and weaker, but by the dragons he had at least expected them to bend fire!
The revelation that firebending was irrelevant to this society, and that light was equal in importance to shadow left Yaosen questioning the relevance of everything he had accomplished throughout his life.
Suddenly mastering lightbending seemed so unimportant. And being almost able to master lightbending even less so.
He summoned a flame to hand, as easily as breathing. The motion normally satisfied him, but now it felt hollow.
There was a part of him who loved the bending arts, who reveled in the strength and purity of fire for its own sake. But the other part of him, the darker part, saw lightbending, and indeed the entire institution of the Light Temple, as a way to prove that he was worth something. Had he been able to rise to the rank of master, maybe he would have proven that he did not deserve to be cast off and sequestered away in the first place.
A Light Temple master was as exalted as a Fire Sage, nearly a peer to the Fire Lord himself. But a monk in training, no matter how far along in that training or how highly ranked within the temple grounds, was nothing to Fire Nation society at large.
The Fire Nation acknowledged only the best. Fire Nation families only acknowledged the most worthy successors.
Yaosen snuffed the flame with a clench of his fist.
Fenri’s abode was where Halvard had said it would be.
In a fog, Yaosen pushed aside the thick hide at the entrance and stooped to enter.
A small, sensible woodfire burned in the hearth, and three tired faces turned toward him.
“I thought you would all be asleep,” said Yaosen, hoarse with fatigue.
“Halvard didn’t know when you’d be back,” said Torun, leaning against the drowsing form of Grunt.
Despite the closeness of the space, the wolfboar and even the bearmoose were crammed into Fenri’s home.
Fenri brought him tea, overlong fingernails rasping against the clay as Yaosen automatically took the proffered cup.
“I haven’t slept well since the change began anyway,” said Fenri.
Boneshifting must be painful, and Yaosen still had many questions as to how it worked and what would happen, but he managed only a grateful nod toward the lanky man.
“Grandfather always said that even trees sleep during the night, so they can grow toward the sun in the daytime. He never let me stay up all night!”
About your grandfather, Yaosen thought, but he was too tired at the moment to form the words.
“You didn’t stay up all night,” Torun grumbled.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
“Yes I did! I only closed my eyes for a little!”
Torun scowled at Duu but didn’t engage further.
Yaosen took a sip of the tea and almost gagged.
Yaosen snapped down the cold mask of purity, so as not to be rude, but Fenri must have noticed.
“I know it's not what you and Torun are used to, back home,” said Fenri, ushering him to a plush pelt beside the fire, “But it helps. Truly.”
Yoasen tried another sip of the liquid, if only to absorb its warmth. He found the bitter dark brew did indeed bolster him. The cold of the high altitude climate began to seep out of his bones and the shadows seemed just a bit further away.
Yoasen nodded his thanks again, then set the cup aside.
“I have something important to tell you. It concerns you all, though I am sorry I did not ask for your thoughts beforehand.”
“So the shadows spoke to you?” asked Fenri, “You reached a decision?”
“Yes. Though I would not put much stock in the shadow spirits going forward.”
Torun harrumphed.
“There is an army heading toward us…” Yaosen turned to Fenri, “The Earthbreakers are-”
“He’s caught up,” Torun interrupted, “I told him everything.”
Yaosen scowled slightly at that.
“Duu started it,” said Torun, deflecting.
Yaosen turned his scowl on Duu for sharing what should have been a secret.
“What?” asked Duu, “We had all night! And Fenri’s stuck with us so he might as well know what we’ve been through.”
Yaosen nodded at that, and reached for another sip of the dark liquid in his cup, before continuing. It was bitter and thick, but Fenri was right. It did help.
“The Earthbreakers are pressing north and I have every reason to believe they will attack Shadow Ridge. We have destroyed their scout balloons which should delay them, but any earthbender scout worth their salt will sense the tunnels eventually, and they’ll follow them here. My estimation is that they’ll be within striking distance in the next two days.”
“Nothing new,” said Torun, “Their goal was always to take land and hold it. So we head north until we find the avatar.”
Yaosen took a deep breath, but held Torun’s gaze, “Rook has decided to stand and fight. And I’ve agreed to help her, in exchange for her help finding the avatar.”
Torun thought a long moment, then at last said, “Hmph.”
It was acceptance, at the very least, and Yaosen dared believe that there was a hint of approval in it.
Fenri’s eyes flicked up at Yaosen, “There’s more isn’t there.”
Yaosen stiffened his spine and said, “I don’t believe that this is an enemy that we can defeat.”
Confusion shone on all of their faces, but it was Duu who spoke first.
“So… what do we do?” It was ostensibly the question of a child, looking to her elders for answers. But perhaps everyone wanted to ask the question when faced with the prospect of their own destruction. Only the innocence and vulnerability of youth allowed asking it so plainly.
Yaosen knew he was allowing his emotions to play across his face, but he didn’t have the energy to stop them. The sad smile he gave Duu should speak volumes.
He took another swig of the liquid, absorbing its warmth for what he had to say next. They would resist he knew. He had already stepped through this in his head, but he had to at least try.
“Duu, I want Torun to take you as far out of the way of the Earthbreakers as you can get. Torun, you have a greater responsibility to wild benders like Duu and to finding the avatar than to protecting me. Fenri, I want you to be their guide.”
He spilled it all as quickly as he could before the protests began. Of course they all spoke up at once. Fenri speaking of life debts and his sentence, Duu speaking of abandoning her grove and now her friends, Torun saying nothing but eyes blazing in a way that said he was insulted Yaosen would even try to send him away.
Yaosen let it all wash over him. He listened to it all, absorbing their arguments without a word. Beneath their arguments were the undercurrents of snickering shadows. They rose and rose and reached a crescendo, and suddenly it all seemed too much.
“Everyone in this village is going to die!” Yaosen snapped, cold mask of purity shattering like all other illusions, “We can’t let the only good wild benders die with it. Do your convictions and ideals outbalance the notion of a world without benders? Torun and I are worthless. We’re castoffs from a broken hubristic society. But you two… you two could be the only chance this world has of having a good nation of treebenders and boneshifters.”
They were stunned into silence. Not even Torun, who had seen Yaosen at his most petulant, had seen the monk lay his thoughts and fears so bare. They looked at each other, then Yaosen again, then finally down at the ground.
It was Fenri’s voice that broke the silence, quiet but not timid as it so often was. “Then we have to win. We turn the trap.”
“Aye!” said Torun with uncharacteristic vehemence, “We make preparations!”
“And we don’t abandon our friends,” said Duu, “even if they aren’t trees.”
That was it. Yaosen’s last defenses crumbled and he knew their fates, the four of them, were entangled. They would stand or fall with the people of Shadow Ridge.