"It seems that our sage's will and resources never cease to amaze me." Vaatu's voice emerged from Aunt Wu's body, causing those left behind to look at her in astonishment.
However, the fortune-teller simply followed Shisui with her gaze as she watched him and two Firebenders walk resolutely toward Mount Makapu. Whether he was seeing through the eyes of an old woman or as a spirit at the pinnacle of the Spirit World, there were things he could discern that other beings could not.
Shisui had always intrigued him. There was a strong aura of order in the young man's body, but also an equal amount of chaos. It was as if the sage had somehow managed to balance both within the core of his essence.
To Vaatu, that was interesting! It wasn't unbelievable to him, but it was certainly curious. Vaatu had lived as long as Raava and had watched humans develop from his place of sealing. Over the course of 10,000 years, how many brilliant, powerful, despicable, evil, and kind figures had he seen?
He was interested in each of them, but he never respected any of them. Yet he could no longer say the same of Shisui. Did Vaatu respect the Sage? Before, he would have denied it, but now he wasn't so sure. Although he wanted to tempt Shisui to fall, drive him to despair, and make him surrender to the darkness, the spirit was now anxious and eager to see what he was about to accomplish.
"I see you finally don't want to play the same old game anymore, Vaatu," said Raava. She shared a deep, almost fateful karmic bond with Vaatu and could sense the subtle shift in him. Her words weren't meant to be mocking, though; they simply stated a fact.
"Should I team up with a human, too, Raava?" Honestly, it never really occurred to me. Possess them? Yes, but I mean a partnership similar to yours and those brats who call themselves Avatars." Vaatu's words didn't change Raava's expression, but they did change the expressions of the young people accompanying her. However, they didn't have much to worry about at the moment.
Not when a threat loomed over them that was much closer than the volcano on the verge of erupting. From the shadows emerged a different spirit shaped like an ordinary brown calf. However, its face was not bovine but distorted to resemble a child no older than five.
Its body emanated a faint, dark mist, and its red eyes glowed ominously, making its appearance even more jarring. The creature opened its mouth, revealing fangs.
"I can see the disaster looming over you, over this village. You will all die here," the entity declared, prompting Sokka, who had been on guard the whole time, to attack with his spear.
"Soldiers! Quickly evacuate everyone in the vicinity and anyone who might still be in the village!" Since Shisui, Zuko, and Azula weren't present, Mai, who had a high rank in the army, gave the order.
The soldiers accompanying the group wasted no time, quickly clearing the area that had already turned into a battlefield. Sokka's actions were swift and decisive. However, as if it had seen it all before, the calf simply tilted its head and took several steps back, dodging the tip of the warrior's spear.
"In my eyes, your actions are trivial," said Kudan, the spirit who had given Aunt Wu those prophecies. He had entered the fray, and the dark aura emanating from his body was incredibly powerful.
...
"Raava, why have we been fighting from the very beginning? Do you remember?" asked Vaatu, still using Aunt Wu's body as a conduit to communicate with the outside world.
He asked this question when only his vehicle remained, along with Raava and Avatar Aang, who was nervously watching the battle his friends were waging against a powerful dark spirit, but knew he couldn't intervene, since he had to resolve his own affairs.
Everything involving Raava had to do with the Avatar; it had been that way since Wan, and it wouldn't end until the end of time, or the end of humanity, whichever came first.
"We are opposites; we command the cycles of the world and..." Raava was about to give an answer that sounded very standard for the question at hand, but Vaatu raised his hand, shaking it.
"No, Raava, that's not what I mean. We are twins; we were born at the same time, we gained consciousness at the same time, we act at the same time. That's not what I mean; I'm not talking about the fundamental laws of both worlds," Vaatu replied, feeling a little disappointed by Raava's words, or at least that's what his tone of voice suggested as he spoke.
"Maybe it's because I've been watching humans for 10,000 years of boredom, but the things these creatures think and debate are really interesting. Wasn't there a… philosopher? Yes, that's the word for those thinkers.
Wasn't there a philosopher named Karl-Karl who talked about contradictions? Dialectics, quantitative and qualitative changes, I didn't quite get it. Sometimes humans overcomplicate things to explain what we understand from the moment we are born.
But I've been thinking, because aside from releasing a tiny spark of energy to see the world on special days, all I can do is dwell on my utter loneliness. Why did we start our fight? If that human hadn't separated us, would we still be fighting constantly until the end?" Vaatu's tone, which had always been strongly arrogant, haughty, and proud, was now measured, calm, and for a moment, Aang felt as though he were listening to one of Shisui's lectures.
"Now that you mention it, I don't know. Our powers are equal; the forces we control are on the same level; our priorities and status in the world are the same. The times you won, or I won, were mostly because we were bored and let things slide.
In the end, order and chaos are two sides of the same coin. What does it matter if the world plunges into 10,000 years of chaos? Won't there be a chance to win and have it be 10,000 years of light again?" Raava laid out her thoughts, and in that moment, Aang realized something fundamental: perhaps Raava was far better than Vaatu, but essentially, they were superior beings, disconnected from human thoughts.
10,000 years of experience might be just a single day for Raava. Perhaps she had learned many things and begun to take into account concepts like human emotions, ethics, and morality, but those things certainly didn't apply to her, because, in essence, she didn't need them; they weren't even ingrained in her being the way they were in humans.
Then the Avatar recalled a phrase Shisui had once said to him; it was just a fleeting memory, but now it was crystal clear in his mind because of this situation: 'Sometimes, absolute order is more dangerous than absolute chaos. Like Yin and Yang, each extreme contains a bit of the other.'
Aang couldn't imagine what the extreme of 'Order' would be, but perhaps he could get a glimpse of how these two ancient spirits, who had begun debating before him, were thinking.
"Ah, it seems I'm not the only one who's been thinking and reflecting over the last 10,000 years. Raava, it's not that I'm going to stop trying to bring chaos to the worlds; however, I might make things more interesting from now on.
Well, I don't have the luxury of an Avatar or a tailor-made body; this vessel of flesh cannot withstand my presence. Until the next time we meet, Raava, Avatar Aang." At that moment, and without waiting for a response, the dark energy lying within Aunt Wu extinguished itself, or rather, was drawn back to its source.
Now, the elderly Aunt Wu looked like a desiccated corpse, and soon, she turned to ashes. Aang had rushed over to her, trying to see if he could help, but watching her vanish like that brought a lump to his throat.
"Couldn't you have let her go? There was no need to…" murmured the Avatar, who tried to catch some of the floating ashes that had once been the body of a renowned fortune-teller, but those fragments slipped through his fingers.
Sure, if he'd wanted to, he could have caught them, but his mind was replaying the entire brief conversation between Raava and Vaatu, yet he found no answer. Did this woman end up like this just because Vaatu simply didn't take lesser beings into account?
Were the emotions those spirits displayed fake? Were they just intelligent embodiments of this world's rules? This was the first time Aang had questioned the true nature of Vaatu and the spirit that had accompanied him since birth.
"I know how you feel, Aang. But you should know this: I am more than just a bearer of rules, more than just an ancestral spirit. Especially since I joined you, since I united you all," Raava's eyes pierced the veil between the material and spiritual worlds, seeing all the Avatars with whom she had once lived in extreme symbiosis.
"Aang, I think you should help your friends, don't you think? It looks like they're having a bit of a hard time." Seeing that the Airbender had fallen silent, deep in thought, Raava urged him to join the fight against Kudan, but he shook his head.
"No, that fight is theirs, you know? Even though I'm the Avatar, I'm not their babysitter. Besides, I know how much they want to fight, to prove they can lighten my load." Aang's response made Raava smile, realizing that this little troublemaker of a monk had matured more than she had initially thought.
Perhaps, if Aang hadn't grown up in the ice, if he'd remained with the body and mind of a 12-year-old, he'd be very nervous in this situation. He'd probably want to carry everything on his own shoulders, maybe shirk his duties, but he'd undoubtedly rush into battle with his friends.
Now, Raava could see that Aang's muscles were tense; the air around him had turned into sharp gusts of wind, but he didn't move, instead watching as the others battled Kudan.
He wanted to join in; that fearlessness in him hadn't disappeared at all, because maturing isn't about leaving your true nature behind, but knowing when to show it. At that moment, perhaps Aang hadn't noticed, but the weight that bound him to the ground like taut chains had loosened.
It wasn't detachment, not by a long shot; the Avatar could never attain that mystical state that many Airbender monks sought. His responsibilities bound him firmly to the earth, so to speak, and this was the dilemma faced by many Avatars born among the Air Nomads.
But perhaps he could find his own path; humans are quite good at exploring new things, new horizons, that was something intrinsic to them. Raava then saw small clouds forming around Aang before disappearing.
'Oh? I haven't seen anything like this in millennia. Could it be possible? Humans always find a way to amaze.' Raava reflected, before turning her gaze to the volcano, where another marvelous sight was unfolding.
A golden dragon, a blue falcon, and a golden sun rose in unison. The volcano had become the stage for something that could easily be considered mythological in the future, but Raava saw it; everyone in the village and beyond saw it.
A new legendary story that parents would tell their children in the future is being written right today in front of hundreds of people. The paintings based on this event were countless, each one showing just how impactful it was in its own way.
What was the name of the most important of these artistic depictions? Oh yes, 'When Humans Tamed Nature.' That version, as the story goes, was painted by a beautiful woman who had signed it 'Ra,' and now hung in the office of Izumi, the Future Fire Lord.
-----------
AN: ... finally, I guess. I got a big writer block and my University went hard this period, lol.
TheAnPlayer2 gave me a tip: Promote my original stories every 5 chapters. So, read my original novels: Steam and Heart, Lunar Mechanism, and Witch's Adventure. You may or may not like them, but give them a chance. c: