Dark clouds covered the sky. Lightning flashed, followed by rolling thunder that rumbled for seconds at a time. It seemed the heavens had decided to stage a parade or a concert just for the Fire Army and the defenders of Ba Sing Se tonight. I wasn't the only one who felt the bad weather was concentrated specifically on us. Some even decided that the spirits were acting up. Rain hammered down. It was a deluge, making it difficult to discern anything beyond your nose.
Several teams, including Prince Lu Ten's squad, crawled toward the walls of Ba Sing Se, wallowing in the mud. When lightning flashed, illuminating the night, we froze to avoid being spotted by the enemy. There were plenty of attentive and sharp-eyed people among them. Each of us dragged a backpack containing several dozen kilograms of a special mixture. It was banned by the Fire Lord himself. But for this operation, General Iroh was finally given permission to use it. Every single gram of the mixture he received had to be utilized. It was an explosive.
The locals have been using gunpowder for a long time, but they don't have firearms. Or rather, they didn't, until this explosive was invented, immediately banned, and classified. It hadn't been used even once in the war until this moment. They feared it. Because it would give ordinary people something currently available only to a segment of society: Power. A power that would put benders and non-benders on equal footing.
Fire Lord Azulon, upon seeing a demonstration of the substance—intended to aid in mining, as presented by its inventor—immediately understood that the explosive could be used for more than peaceful purposes. Instead of a demolished rock face, the inventor then demonstrated it on the Fire Lord's palanquin, which his servants had recently carried through the streets of the Fire Nation Capital. Thanks to Lu Ten for the brief history lesson…
Finally, all the teams assembled near the walls. Closer to the gates. Because according to the reconnaissance of our Earthbenders, the junction between the walls and the gates, which were constantly opened before the siege, was the most vulnerable section.
Lu Ten, whom General Iroh had appointed the leader of this operation, gave the signal to the Earthbenders. They held their breath, waited for a lightning strike, and made a small indent in the wall. The process was repeated for about forty minutes. They had to act precisely during the lightning strikes so that the enemy benders wouldn't feel the vibrations from the shifting walls. Even so, it was extremely dangerous. There could always be a person more sensitive than the rest of the Earthbenders. But it seemed we were incredibly lucky today.
The hole in the wall grew large enough to accommodate all our explosives. And that was no small amount. Again, there were several teams, each with at least ten fighters. Lu Ten's group alone had thirty men. Somehow, all these people managed not to make the slightest rustle with their clothes the entire time; conversation was out of the question. Everyone was focused and meticulously following instructions. That is, after handing over their bags of explosives, the fighters began crawling back toward our base.
When no one remained near Lu Ten and me, I pulled a reel of strong, steel wire from my own bag. I wrapped it around the bag of mixture and inserted the end into the bag itself. The command didn't want to reveal the secret of the explosive's existence. All the fighters who participated in the operation thought that, using a special royal family technique, Lu Ten would lure an evil spirit whose lightning strike would destroy a section of the wall. This was also intended to elevate the royal lineage in the eyes of the common people. The Fire Lord's idea was that the people of our nation would start believing the Avatar was completely unnecessary, since someone from the ruling family could serve as the bridge between worlds.
Just in case, several other bags of the explosive mixture were also wrapped with the steel wire. We couldn't allow the wire to snap or slip from the bags. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to detonate the explosive.
Quietly unraveling the wire from the reel, Lu Ten and I crawled back toward our troops' position. The gradual easing of the downpour was worrying, and the lightning wasn't striking as often as it had at the beginning of the operation.
At one point, when the rain had reduced to a mere drizzle and the clouds had almost opened up to reveal the starry sky, the reel emptied. Approximately six hundred and fifty meters of wire had been unwound. We were about two hundred meters from the position of our soldiers, who were ready to charge at any moment.
"Prince Lu Ten," even at this distance, I preferred to communicate in a whisper, "it is your turn to act."
I hoped my worst fear, that the explosive had become damp, wouldn't come true and that the detonation would still occur. After all, there were no more explosives. This was the first and only batch produced by the deceased inventor. The recipe for its creation was personally destroyed by the Fire Lord to prevent further access.
I handed the end of the wire to the Prince. With a wave of his hand, he asked me to crawl back a few meters. After a few seconds, he dropped to one knee, placed the wire somewhere under his feet, and closed his eyes, attempting to concentrate. The index and middle fingers of both his hands, pointing at each other, moved from his lower abdomen to the center of his chest. I smelled ozone. Even more so than before the rain. Lu Ten opened his eyes, suddenly threw one hand back, and touched the wire with the other.
The next moment, black spots appeared before my eyes due to the intense light I witnessed. A bolt of Lightning, like a snake, rapidly crawled across the ground toward the walls of Ba Sing Se. Before the sound of thunder from the Lightning Lu Ten had fired could even reach us, the night became bright as if it were midday. Except the sun wasn't in its usual place, but somewhere near the walls of Ba Sing Se. Simultaneously with the sound of the lightning strike, a massive explosion occurred, which simply obliterated a vast section of the fortification.
The defenders of Ba Sing Se probably didn't have time to understand what happened before they heard the deafening roar of the Fire Nation soldiers, who burst from their hidden positions into a charge, led by General Iroh himself. But our duo was still at the forefront. This was due to Lu Ten's recklessness; immediately after the detonation, he rushed back toward the enemy. I ran right after him. I had to protect the Prince, to earn my elevated salary as his bodyguard.
The Earthbenders snapped out of it when Lu Ten and I had already covered half the distance to the walls. Relying more on the whistling of projectiles than trusting our eyes, we dodged the enemy's attacks. We were lucky that the enormous boulders being thrown at us were more accidental than deliberate. They couldn't see us in the darkness. We were creating noticeably less noise than the army running behind us.
A section of the Second Ring of Walls of Ba Sing Se was simply gone. In its place was just a small pile of rubble, a mound that could be easily overcome. By the time we arrived, a thin line of six people was starting to form atop that mound. I don't know what they were hoping for, but our momentum immediately crushed this group. While I knocked the air out of one soldier with a knee strike to the chest, then ruthlessly broke his neck, Lu Ten, disregarding his energy reserves and any pretense of stealth, used Lightning again and fried the remaining opponents. The killing brought the Prince absolutely no joy, but he grieved more for the deaths of Fire Nation soldiers than for the Earth Kingdom troops. Therefore, the fate of his opponents was sealed.
Dodging several arrows shot at us from the surviving sections of the walls, we decided to climb up to reduce the number of archers. Helping each other avoid falling, and warning each other of enemy attacks, our duo was the first to reach the fortifications of Ba Sing Se in this assault. We immediately launched two waves of flame with all our might, which ultimately merged into one huge, hot torrent that swept away everyone within twenty meters.
Sensing danger at the back of my head, I grabbed the Prince and dropped with him to the floor. Several arrows flew through the air at the level of our chests from the other side of the fortification. In one smooth motion, I settled onto one knee and struck the air multiple times, launching a dozen fireballs. Slightly more than half of them hit the opponents and took them out of the fight. The remaining enemies were ready to unleash a new, more precise volley at us when a jet of flame from below simply prevented them from doing so. The main army had reached us and also began climbing the walls from both sides, while some of the warriors continued their path into the residential areas of Ba Sing Se.
The ground under my feet began to sway strangely, mimicking waves on the sea, preventing ordinary soldiers and Firebenders from climbing onto our section properly. Lu Ten warned me that I was about to fly, grabbed my forearms, and lifted himself slightly using a powerful stream of flame from his feet. Spinning me, he literally sent me flying into the enemy formation, where I broke the concentration of the Earthbender, who had begun hindering the Fire Nation soldiers, with a wave of flame. Dodging two thrown boulders with acrobatic maneuvers, I moved even closer to the Earthbender and used dense fire in the form of daggers. The hot flame, jetting forward for twenty centimeters, easily burned through the enemy's armor and his insides. At the cost of losing my own helmet in the struggle, I sent several more Earth Kingdom soldiers, who decided to engage me in close combat, to the next world after the first Earthbender.
At one point, I stumbled and received a gash on my armor from a sword because someone thought to grab my hair and yank it. Reaching behind my back, I severed my hair with a fire dagger and extinguished the flames with an act of will. I turned around, stripping the opponent first of his arm, then of his life.
I felt the movement of the ground beneath my feet but didn't manage to roll away. A slab of earth hit me in the back, and I fell face down. An attempt to get up was interrupted by another sword strike to the back, which, thanks to the magic of the armor, only hit the metal and bounced back with a clang. But it still felt incredibly unpleasant. So much so that I froze for a couple of moments from the pain, which several opponents, ready to tear me apart, were eager to exploit.
A familiar flash of Lightning, and five charred bodies dropped to the ground. Then the enemy line was finally swept away by the Fire Nation soldiers who had climbed the wall. Lu Ten offered me his hand and helped me stand.
"Are you alright?" he asked, inspecting me closely. "Sorry you got hit. I wouldn't have been able to get here so quickly…"
He was interrupted unexpectedly and shoved me aside. A clap of a hand on the ground sounded behind me, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw an earth spike pierce Lu Ten's chest, ignoring his armor. The Earthbender, whom Lu Ten's lightning had previously fried and who now began cackling like a raven, received a fireball from me directly to the face and finally died.
I grabbed Lu Ten firmly and cried out with all the power of my lungs, straining my throat: "We need help!!! The Prince is wounded!!!"
Lu Ten released one hand from the spike, which he had been holding onto, weakly grasped my forearm, and, turning his head almost imperceptibly toward me, with a slight smile, whispered almost silently: "You keep the score… I'll take it from here…"
Along with the rain, which had intensified again, the walls of Ba Sing Se were washed with the blood of the Prince of the Fire Nation.