"Ahhh..."
The next I saw is plain darkness after I opened my eyes, I look around my surroundings only to find out I was in the middle of a mysterious swamp.
I rubbed my head and moved my stiff neck slightly to get myself. By the time I stood up, the damp humidity of the air hit me like a physical weight.
The transition was jarring. One moment, I was under the clinical, artificial lights of a metal tomb, feeling the bite of a needle; the next, I was standing in a place that smelled of rot, stagnant water, and ancient growth.
"Where...?" I tried to speak, and to my immense relief, my voice cracked through the silence. It was raspy, like grinding stones, but the "glue" was gone.
I looked down at my hands. They were pale, ghostly so, and my royal red robes were tattered, stained with a century's worth of grime. My breath hitched. If those men weren't lying, if it truly had been decades, then everyone I knew was...
I shook the thought away. Azula does not mourn. Azula calculates.
Later that night, the darkness wasn't absolute. A sickly, phosphorescent glow emanated from the moss clinging to the twisted roots of massive trees. It reminded me of the Fog of Lost Souls, but there was a heartbeat to this place. A pulse.
I tried to summon a flame.
I snapped my fingers, expecting the familiar, violent burst of blue fire. Instead, only a pathetic, flickering spark emerged before dying out in the damp air. My eyes widened. My bending.... the very thing that made me a god among peasants, felt buried under layers of lead.
"No," I hissed, my voice gaining strength. "No, no, no!"
I struck out again, driving my fist forward in a perfect fire-bending strike. A thin trail of smoke followed my knuckles, but the fire refused to catch. The "greenish liquid" they had injected into me... it wasn't just a sedative. It was a cork. They had bottled the dragon inside me.
"Ahhrgh!!!!" I screamed.
Just then a low, guttural croak echoed from the shadows, followed by the wet slap of something heavy hitting the mud.
"Who's there?" I demanded, my voice regaining its regal edge despite my internal panic. "Show yourself, or I'll have your head!"
The bushes parted, but it wasn't a man who stepped out. It was a creature that defied the natural order—a fusion of a swamp-otter and something reptilian, its eyes glowing with the same eerie green as the syringe. It didn't look hungry; it looked constructed.
Then, a voice drifted through the trees, amplified by some hidden mechanical source.
"Subject 014 has successfully integrated with the environment. Vital signs stabilizing. Begin the hunt."
My blood ran cold. I wasn't free. I had just been moved from one cage to a much larger, much deadlier one.