The sun hung on the blade of a knife on the western hills as the sixth fighter approached me.
He announced nothing, did not align himself with ritual greeting and stance—he simply struck. Flame shot from his elbow in a crooked wave, and I met it halfway in the step, my wrist moving in an arc to send the flame down the outer rim of his blast and to invite it to exhaust itself harmlessly upon the obsidian stones. The crowd exhaled—their combined shudder of concealed ministers and mute sages. Their murmurs were beginning to froth. This was no duel now. This was survival.
I shifted stance instinctively—foot back on the left, hands open and palms up, the air between us shivering with the afterburn. He lunged in hard—a wild flurry of blows reliant more on strength than technique. I did not retreat. My form arched back and curved and back again. The torch slashed my shoulder, but I turned with it—let it glance instead of bite—and came back with a backhanded scything of flames of my own that ignited the bottom of his tunic. It flared fast and clean. He shrieked and staggered and fell.
Baishi stood at the edge of the arena, arms folded and motionless. His eyes were narrowed in approval—or calculation.
"Seven." I heard him mutter out of the smoldering stillness.
The seventh did not hesitate, a spindly combatant with charcoal eyes. No ritual now. No honor. Only desperation. He struck low, a sneaky tongue of flame licking the ankles and seeking to fell. I leaped—not high, but high enough—and turned in air, grazing the edge of his flame with mine and flinging it back like a whip. It cracked hot and flattened him.
I stood firm. My heart pounded - not from exertion but from focus. The flames were no longer draining me anymore. Not like they had been. They were now infusing me with energy.
The last opponent came forward. Not a master. Not a soldier. A girl.
Her arms were wrapped in red strings, both fists clenched. She moved in another manner—not defiantly but in rhythm. Every step was a note. I did not know her. No crest, coat of arms. Just a serene gait and a gaze that did not bow.
"You don't have to do it," I told her softly.
"I know," she replied. "but I chose to."
That caught me off guard. The world stopped for a second.
She subsequently moved.
No flames—yet. Just the body. She bridged the distance with blinding speed, low crouches, a whirlwind of coordinated muscle. I defended by instinct, palm up, the block on her elbow strike—but her second was faster. Her boot made impact with my knee. I moved to adjust. Counterattacked with a half-moon arc of fire.
She dodged.
She brushed her shoulder against the floor and stood up with her arm out in front of her, flames now erupting from her fingertips in a thin fan. They singed my sleeve. I took a step back.
"You've trained under Shoji."
She smiled. "I studied you."
That surprised me. Not the words—the confidence. She wasn't in it to win. She was in it to observe.
The two of us circled around each other. The courtyard wind shifted direction. The heat came from all sides. The people, the ministers, even Baishi-all were frozen in place.
She took the initiative. She fired again, two bolts, slanted and intersecting like an X. I did not retreat. I stepped straight into it. I let the flames surround me. I let it test me.
I raised both hands afterwards.
A column. Not flames but air transformed to heat, heat turned to pillar. It rose—my flames never touching but surrounding, swallowing hers. As it collapsed, it dragged hers with it—thrashing it into a dying whirlpool that sucked the air from her lungs.
She knelt down on one knee. Not in pain, but in recognition.
I did not incinerate her. Didn't throw her back. I simply stood there, the flames in me quivering like a drawn-out gasp.
"I submit," she replied, bowing her head.
It was done.
All eight had arrived to remove me from my spot, from my circle. None couldn't.
I stepped back and let the silence descend. My chest was damp, my arms and legs felt weighty and I remained upright.
"Impressive!" Baishi exclaimed on entering the arena.
The arena trembled with the wave of applause—a rising tide of shock and amazement which tore the air like a distant tempest. Over it all, the Fire Sages nodded their heads with a guarded solemnity, their wise eyes glinting—not so much out of respect, but out of something keener. Of fear. Of apprehension, perhaps.
The ministers conferred among themselves in murmurs as soft as the rustle of dead leaves—swift, furtive, and full of suspicion. They had seen. Actually seen—not an exhibition of authority, but a metamorphosis. A phenomenon. Lightning had flashed from my hands as if the fury of the heavens had been unleashed, an element none of the Fire Lords had ever had under control.
I was now greater than a king. I was a legend in the flesh.
The applause boomed past me, hollow and deafening. I withdrew from the arena in reluctant, slow movements, the heat of a thousand gazes searing my back. They wondered how I was chosen by divine fury—a fresh monarch with barely dried ink on his decrees. And more pressingly... what I planned do with it.
As I walked through the crowd, it parted. Sages, ministers, soldiers all bowed heads, pinned me with tight-smiling nods and muttered congratulations, but the strain in their eyes betrayed me. They knew what I had done—not a demonstration. A statement. A threat. I had bent lightning itself and was unstoppable in Fire bending—and I would have no hesitation in bending fate to do my will.
And in the midst of all the spectators, I saw her—Tseya.
She stood still as a hurricane's eye: unbreachable in the midst of the chaos around her. She was mattered more than all the noise. Her judgment—unfazed, level-headed and untainted—reigned supreme. Without her, Avatar Yangchen might see instability. Doubt.
I had always meant to unveil to her the truth—the Fire Lord disguised by the name. The young man burdened with the scars of his people. But now? The truth was a luxury I could ill afford. Why offer vulnerability to a girl and in turn the Avatar who might not even support me in the border dispute with the Earth Kingdom? Why appeal to compassion when fear had already done its job?
The bath chamber was a sanctuary of silence. The steam drifted through the air as a gentle whisper, carrying the scent of sandalwood and citrus. The warmth stuck to my skin as I emerged, water still clinging to my hair. The heavy robes of the Fire Lord enveloped my shoulders, a reminder again of the role I played. No longer a man. A symbol.
My footsteps were silenced by the scarlet floor of the audience hall. I moved as a ghost until I stood before her.
Tseya perched on a cushion of silk, eyes closed, hands barely touching knees. She was completely motionless, breathing so contained it seemed as if air itself was warped around her. Light danced in her hair—long and black as obsidian—streaming by her shoulder and covering her forehead in a bob hairstyle in movements like water around a stone, and while youth was around the softness of her features, a weight to her aura had weathered her. Made her wise.
I stood before her and gazed at her in a moment of silence, letting it linger. The disparity between us was jarring—fire to air, peace and tension. I yearned for her review of me to be glowing to Yangchen. In order to do that, I had to make her mine in everyway possible. It was time to take a page out of Johan Liebert's book.
Her eyelids fluttered open.
"Your Grace," she said with a soft but firm voice.
"Tseya," I spoke softly, warmth creeping into my voice like sunbeams through a foggy haze. "How did your meditation go?"
She looked at me with her piercing silence as if waiting to hear more than words. "Enlightening," she replied. "The energy around here is... different. Fierce. Almost aggressive. There's so much fire—it's overwhelming."
I nodded slowly. "You must miss the tranquility of the Air Temples. The chanting. The silence between breaths. The peaceful atmosphere."
She stopped, then nodded again, her expression easing. "I do. But it is my duty to be here. To observe. To learn. The Avatar needs to see the world through more than her own eyes."
Her eyes fixed on mine with unspoken resolve. "I have come to seek out the truth of your rule, Fire Lord Gonryu. I will discover it objectively."
Her words struck with honesty but I heard the undertone of loneliness woven through them. She was a long way from home, surrounded by politics and fire and strangers. I saw the pain of a desire for a connection reflected in her eyes—and I knew in the moment that I did not have to conquer her through brute force. I only had to offer her what she craved: friendship.
The subsequent days crawled by like a vine. Our interviews became informal like a night of conversation under the stars, tea drinking and chats about blossoms. She spoke of the Western Air Temple—of floating meditation courtyards and sky bisons and disconnection and balance. She became serious and wistful and I, a good listener as I am, replied with my own stories about the Fire Nation: wars fought and hurt caused by deception and sleepless nights keeping the expectations of the world alive.
Her questions also started to shift. Fewer about my politics. More about me.
She was peeling off the layers. I let her.
That evening, the moon encircled the horizon like a forgotten dream and covered the Royal Garden with soft silver. We sat on a low bench together and the flower petals above us quivered in the wind like tiny fires.
"When do you go back to Yangchen?" I asked, keeping my tone even.
She paused, idly folding her hands together in her lap. "When the she calls."
A rush of irritation coursed through my veins. She was not mine yet. She would be.
I complained, "I see."
She tilted her own head to the side, watching me as if trying to decipher a language she had not yet learned. I gave a small conspiratorial smile.
Her eyes stayed with mine a moment too long.
So I extended it slowly, touching my hand lightly against hers. The contact was tentative—but she didn't push me away. She took a deep breath, instead, as if preparing to do something uncertain.
There was a tension between us.
"Tseya," I whispered softly, my voice hardly more than a sigh, "I acknowledge this is not your place of residence. Still, as long as you're here. I wish for you to feel safe. Respected. Heard."
She said nothing, but the slight, parted curve of her lips, the extension of her eyes into mine, indicated that she had listened to the meaning of my speec.
"I want to show you something." I stood up. She hesitated and then placed her hand in mine.
I led her through the walks of the garden, surrounded by jasmine scent lingering in the air and braziers softly murmuring in the distance. We reached a small gazebo under the willow tree, its roof glinting in candlelight.
She stopped halfway, looking around, then up at me.
I took a step nearer. My hand rose to rest against her cheek. She was soft—soft in a way that made me forget, for at least a little while, war council and tribunal scrolls and lightning in my blood. She pressed into my hand.
"Tseya, do you trust me?" I asked her low and menacingly.
A break.
Then, "Yes, Fire Lord."
My hand came to rest on the back of her waist. She didn't recoil. She remained.
And as I leaned in slowly—intentionally—she came halfway to me. The kiss was tentative in the beginning, a lips-only kiss. It grew deeper. She gasped. She tightened her hand on mine. I could feel the hunger stir in my chest, the same old, age old that every man experienced when horny.
She pressed into me.
But when I pulled back, I caught it—confusion. Fear. She looked around hesitantly.
"I'm sorry if I frightened you," I murmured, tracing the line of her jaw with my fingertips.
Her voice shook and was low. "N-no, Fire Lord."
Yet, doubt had been creeping over her face and I had witnessed the tenuous edge on which we teetered.
"You are beautiful," I breathed softly, voice barely above a whisper, "and untouched by the flames of the world."
She shivered. Pupils were dilated. I could feel her racing heartbeat.
She was mine. Well, sort of.
But I could not forget—She was a Nomad. A symbol. An untouchable spirit.
And if I had desired to claim her—not her body, but her faith, her future, her trust—I would have to proceed slowly.
With patience.
With precision.
I had originally just wanted her for a glowing review to Yangchen.
Now I would use her to be my eyes for the Avatar instead.