She looked at the wounded traveller as he stirred. He coated his hand with a blue flame and cauterised the stump, all the while screaming his gut out, but surprisingly he did not collapse from the pain.

'Good.'

Yara was glad he could take a beating. Otherwise, flaying him alive wouldn't be fun.

"I'm a man who can admit when he's wrong," he said with great strain, "and it seems I underestimated you."

Yara said nothing.

"I couldn't have seen fucking wingsuits coming. It's that rat you have on your team, isn't it? You've all graduated from deadly warriors to one-man armies. Even still, I thought with a dragon, at least, I would've…"

"Stood a chance?" Yara scoffed. "When I'm done with you, you'll wish the other traveller killed you."

"Traveller, huh? Fitting name. But you're assuming I'll be spending any time with your lot," he smirked. "Given what I have, I reckon you have to let me go. Misha misses her child oh so dearly." His smile grew even wider, creeping up to the edge of his face.

'You spineless worm!'

Yara's rage burned so hot; it threatened to overwhelm her. But she's been using Chi-reinforcement for decades. Words and feelings were not enough to move her.

"I know a bluff when I hear it. I know she's been treated well," she casually said. "Knowing how much of a coward you are, I know you had the foresight not to dare harm a single hair on her head."

Yara grabbed the traveller by the scruff of his shirt. "Tell me where she is or I start taking limbs. You're down to three, You will tell me where she is when I Yara smirked when she saw the boy try and fail to hide his fear.

Yara looked behind her, noting the distance of the approaching balloon. They'd drifted even closer.

"Anything that happens to me happens to her," Samir said quickly. "I've left instructors to my most loyal servants. They know what to do if I don't return."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"But you have far more to lose than I do," Yara said, bothering not even to face him. "Mark told us all about your tournament. If I slit your throat, all of this madness stops. The Fire Nation will be weaker than ever, allowing us to overthrow what's left of the monarchy, Mark wins, and you're purged from the reincarnation cycle forever. You don't get a third shot at this. Only darkness awaits you."

Slowly, she turned to him. "Given everything that's happened today, can you afford to underestimate me again?"

Samir gnashed his teeth, but she saw through the facade of anger and saw the calculating madness beneath.

She refused to allow him to scheme.

"Make your choice," she demanded. "Once the fighting starts, I will kill you."

Wounded and pushed into a corner, Samir did the last thing she'd expected. He smiled.

"You phantoms claim to be vicious and cold, but I'd argue underneath all that, you're still human."

Misha wrinkled her brow. "This again?"

"You say you'd gladly let your daughter die for a chance to have at me, but I wonder if you could say that to her face. Jon, bring out our guest!" he crowed.

Behind Yara, Jon drifted, stepped back from the edge of the balloon and returned with a girl. Her hands and legs were bound, and her eyes were empty. She was nearly skin and bones, and for a second, Yara nearly mocked him that he had the wrong girl, but the lack of Chi gave her pause.

The girl had barely a smidgen of it, so little it took all of her focus to find it given how far she floated away.

"Misha," she whispered, her strength suddenly leaving her. A second later, she felt a spike of Chi drive up through her mind, and she nearly stumbled to her knee.

She looked back at Samir, who was grinning like a madman as he yelled.

"Kneel!"

She fell on one knee this time, and with a flick of her wrist, ten needles riddled Samir, but he still grinned like they barely hurt.

"I know better than not boosting my body stat, Phantom. I've been waiting for this day for a long ass time. Now, I said KNEEL!"

The word came down like a hammer to the side of her head. Suddenly, she could feel his Chi snaking its way into her body, drumming against her mind, trying to infect her spirit. She'd thought she'd be immune to it, given how experienced she was and what information she could gather, but she'd been wrong.

The distraction gave him all of the leverage he needed.

She looked at the teenager with rage and fear. He'd planned it all.

Samir ran up to her and whipped his leg at her head, hoping to capitalise on her weakness, but she caught it, startling the young man.

"Wh-What are you waiting for? All of you get down here."

Through what remained of her flickering senses, she felt his mind-whipped bodyguards hasten, using ropes to propel her onto the metal structure, so she attacked when she still had the chance.

Fingers blurring, she struck and neutralised the Chi points in his legs, making sure to strike extra hard enough to damage them. She'd finally run out of knives.

Samir yelped and struck at her with a blue flame, which seared through her gliding uniform, burning and darkening the flesh just above her heart. The pain brought back the clarity his Chi attack stole and brought back her edge. Her fingers snaked up his arm before he could pull it back, eliciting another grunt from Samir.

Panicked and unstable, he fell back, reeling, and Yara advanced, a cold rage burning through her. She couldn't conceive how a snivelling brat could've brought her and her daughter so low.

She'd only been bluffing when she said she'd kill him, but with every step she took forward, she was more and more certain he had to die.

He screamed one more time, "KNEEL!"

A torrential wave of pain crashed on the walls of her mind, nearly smothering everything that she was. She felt her spirit rattle as blood poured from her nose, but she bit her tongue and powered through the pain. It brought her close enough to deliver one last devastating strike. With Chi flooding all five fingers, she struck out with an explosive strike at the source of his power, his throat.

Samir flipped back like a loose plank and slammed into the wall with a clap. His body slid down, eyes wide and paralysed. A moment later, his minions arrived.