Chapter 34: Iroh versus Bumi (II)
For a moment, the battlefield stilled.
The smoke thinned enough to reveal the ruin they'd carved into the earth, deep fissures, shattered barricades, curled roots unearthed from molten blasts. The camp had been turned inside out, the terrain beyond it forever changed. Fire still smoldered in patches. Rocks jutted at strange angles, like broken ribs from the land itself.
In the center of it all, two old men stood.
One, swaying on his feet, blood seeping through the rents in his sleeve, his breath hot and ragged in the air.
The other, crouched low like a boulder preparing to roll, eyes locked with sharpness that had not dulled in a hundred years.
Iroh panted. One knee dropped slightly. His stance had slipped, by an inch, maybe two.
But Bumi saw it.
"You've gone soft," Bumi said, the humor gone from his voice. "You're not the man you once were."
Iroh didn't respond.
Bumi stepped forward, dust rolling off his shoulders. His voice cracked like gravel under heavy boots.
"You lost your fire the day Lu Ten died."
The name cut through Iroh's silence like a hot knife. He didn't flinch but something inside him did. The echo of a boy's laughter. A battlefield strewn with banners. The ashes of pride.
"You think you're the only one who's lost something?" Bumi snapped, stepping into full view, his eyes now wild with more than madness, memory. "You think my throne came without a graveyard? You think the walls of Omashu were built without bleeding for every stone? Every friend, every comrade… gone. But I stood. Because I had to."
Iroh raised his head, the wear in his face etched like stone. "And you mock me for surviving."
"I mock you," Bumi growled, "for turning your back on everything that made you dangerous."
There was silence. Not from lack of words but from gravity. It hovered between them like a weight neither could put down.
"I never turned my back," Iroh finally said, softly. His breath still heaved, but he stood taller now. "I simply chose where to face."
Bumi's lip curled in half a sneer. "You lost your crown to your younger brother. You let your empire rot. You…"
"I made peace with the ghosts," Iroh said, louder now. "But I never forgot how to breathe fire."
His feet shifted. His spine straightened. His arms lifted, not trembling now, but fluid, precise.
"I may have lost my son," Iroh continued, voice calm like water over hot coals. "But I have another chance. To fix what I couldn't. To make it right."
Bumi said nothing. He watched. Listened. Waited.
Iroh's body stilled. The dust around him spun in tiny eddies. The air pulsed, faint, then stronger. Heat built, not in bursts, but steadily, rising from beneath his skin like a tide breaking free of its moon.
Then, he moved.
A single, smooth breath.
A forward palm.
And the flames came.
Not thrown.
Not hurled.
They unfurled.
From his fingertips to his shoulders, to his chest and down his legs, fire moved with him like cloth in the wind. It curled over his back like a living cape, swept past his arms like wings made of heat and fury. No blue. No distortion. Just pure, living fire, deep orange and white at the core, tongues of gold licking the air.
He didn't blast.
He danced.
Every motion was part of the fire, and the fire was a part of him.
Bumi's eyes narrowed. He lowered his stance. The ground beneath him lifted with him, a platform of stone curling upward and carrying him forward.
Then they clashed.
Fire met earth.
Iroh's flames weaved between Bumi's rising spikes, dodging and curling around them like serpents. A fist, flame-coated, slammed into a rising stone wall, melting a hole through it. Bumi struck low, lifting a crescent of earth to throw Iroh skyward but the general twisted mid-air, launching a stream of horizontal fire downward, carving a searing trench in the ground.
Bumi rolled aside, rocks rising to cushion his landing.
Iroh landed beside him with a ground-pounding pillar of flame, shaking the debris loose.
Bumi lunged.
Stone coated his limbs again, forming gauntlets. He swung, a massive overhand punch that cracked the air.
Iroh caught it, not with his hands, but with a circle of fire shaped like a spinning disc. The stone cracked in the heat, but not enough.
He slid back.
A trail of scorched earth followed his retreat.
They clashed again.
Bumi rose atop a chariot of earth he shaped beneath his feet, sliding toward Iroh. He threw chunks of boulder mid-ride, each one like a hammer the size of a man. Iroh ducked, spun, countered, each fire strike precise, controlled. He didn't waste an inch of movement. Each step forward was laced with destruction. Each dodge left heat in its wake.
Still, Bumi closed in.
The final moment of this round was an impact that shook the ground itself.
Bumi leapt high, higher than he should have been able to and slammed down with both fists. A spike of stone the width of a tree trunk shot from beneath.
Iroh threw both arms up and released everything in one final surge. The fire burst out like a volcanic ring, melting the top of the spike, searing it to slag.
But the shockwave from Bumi's impact sent Iroh flying backward, smashing through a half-crumbled barricade of their destroyed camp. He hit the ground hard, slid through dirt and fire.
He groaned.
His limbs twitched.
Bumi stood still again.
Chest rising.
Arms loose.
No laughter this time.
Just focus.
Iroh coughed once, propped himself up slowly.
The next round would come.
But now, Zuko could still see it.
His uncle was slipping.
The heat shimmered across the wreckage like a mirage. Twisted pillars of melted steel bent like reeds in the wind. Craters still steamed from where fire had struck stone and stone had struck fire.
Iroh stood amidst the ruin, arms lowered at his side, his chest heaving with deep, deliberate breaths. His robes were charred along the sleeves and shoulder, clinging to sweat and scorched skin beneath. A shallow cut above his eyebrow bled down to his jaw. The sting was real but it kept him sharp.
Bumi, not twenty meters away, cracked his knuckles one by one. The smile had long since faded. He stood tall now, posture no longer wild and hunched. No joking. No taunting. Just two old masters, facing the edge of their reserves.
Iroh took a long breath. Felt the tension in his chest, in the earth around him. He slowly drew his fingers into a clawed form at his side. One hand forward. One hand behind.
The stance of the Lightning Dragon.
Bumi's eyes narrowed.
Iroh exhaled through his nose. His palms opened slowly, and then…
Snap.
His fingers drew across the air, a flicker of white light tracing the path.
A low hum sounded in the air. Static sparked at his elbows. Energy danced between his fingertips, coiling like vines of pale flame. His fingers traced the sky again, circular, precise, curved like water but charged like a storm waiting to break.
Then he launched it.
The bolt of lightning tore through the battlefield like a divine spear.
It shrieked across the sky, brilliant, raw, and honed.
Bumi reacted fast but not fast enough.
He raised a wall of earth and layered it again with a second, then third slab still, the lightning ripped through the first two, bursting into an explosion of rock and dust that knocked him from his stance. The ground split in a jagged line where the lightning had passed.
Iroh followed it.
He surged forward with fire bursting from his heels, closing the distance in seconds. Flames wrapped his arms like gauntlets, trailing embers behind each punch. A right hook scorched the air as it passed. A flaming elbow collided with Bumi's stone-wrapped shoulder, sending sparks in every direction.
Bumi grunted, sliding back but not falling.
Another streak of lightning built between Iroh's fingers.
This time, Bumi struck first. A rippling shockwave of stone blasted up from beneath, forcing Iroh into the air. Iroh twisted mid-leap and hurled lightning downward, it slammed into Bumi's side, searing through a patch of stone armor and ripping a snarl of pain from the old king's throat.
"So... still a storm in those bones, eh?" Bumi muttered, now winded.
Iroh landed hard, fire cushioning his fall. "You're not the only one who ages like wine."
Bumi chuckled. "Lightning, fire, thunder. You're still the Dragon of the West."
Another bolt surged forth, this one wild and jagged.
Bumi slammed his hands together, and a pillar of stone exploded upward to meet the attack. The lightning carved a searing trench across it, but this time it failed to fully break through. Dust and light battled mid-air.
Bumi leapt out of the cloud, flipping overhead.
Iroh caught him mid-air with a spiraling plume of fire that exploded into a ring beneath the king. Bumi crashed to the ground, sliding across torn terrain.
But he rose again.
Faster than Iroh expected.
"Enough warm-up," Bumi growled.
He stomped the ground once.
Everything shook.
The terrain warped, twisted. Boulders rose and spun like orbiting moons. Cracks split open and swallowed debris whole. He bent low, preparing to launch the entire section of battlefield upward…
"KING BUMI!!!"
A shout cut through the roar.
Both masters froze.
A young Earth Kingdom soldier, bloodied, panting, arm in a sling, was sprinting up a ledge, waving one hand. "My lord! From the southern coast, Fire Nation reinforcements! Hundreds of banners! Warships!"
Bumi paused. The ground stilled.
He looked across the shattered battlefield at Iroh, who stood panting amid the heat and smoke.
"Well…" Bumi muttered, brushing dust from his shoulder. "Looks like the tides turn again."
Iroh didn't lower his stance.
Bumi rolled his neck. "I'll be seeing you, General. That nephew of yours still has a date with Fong."
He stomped twice.
The earth lifted beneath his feet, and in a single breath, King Bumi shot backward into the Earth Kingdom lines.
All around them, the earthbenders began retreating.
Rocks drew up in formations, walls created to block pursuit. In waves they pulled back, orderly, precise. Their casualties were gathered, their wounded carried, their path smoothed as they marched east.
The attack had ended.
For now.
Zuko blinked. Blood clouded one eye. His ribs burned with every shallow breath.
He had seen everything.
Not all of it, no, he'd passed out once, maybe twice, during the chaos. But enough.
Enough to know.
This was not the kind of fight he had faced with Zhao.
This was a war of gods.
Iroh's boots approached.
Zuko turned his head weakly as his uncle knelt beside him, hands steady, eyes filled with calm even through exhaustion.
"You like to hold back on things, Uncle," Zuko murmured through broken breath.
Iroh didn't answer. He just adjusted Zuko's shoulder, supporting his weight.
Zuko stared at him, eyes glazed. "Here I was… thinking my bending… was getting close to yours…"
A shallow exhale.
"But I can see… I have a long way to go."
His head dropped.
Zuko passed out in the dirt, bloodied and spent.
Iroh held him. His robes were tattered, his beard singed, his limbs aching.
But his arms… were steady.
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