But... ah, that troublesome alliance. Iroh was a deeply spiritual man. Which made sense—it was rather difficult to unlock the full potential of bending without embracing that same spirituality.
More precisely, difficult for the people of this world, bound as they were by their traditions and customs. And so, whether he wanted to or not, the elderly firebending master regarded the Avatar with a certain degree of respect, even reverence. They built temples to the Avatar here, after all, and as recently as a year ago one such temple had still been operating right inside Fire Nation territory, complete with a whole host of priests—firebenders—until Zhao cracked down on it.
In other words, even after Sozin killed Avatar Roku and exterminated the Air Nomads, people within the Fire Nation itself had continued to revere the Avatar, and Iroh had grown up in that cultural environment.
And that needed to be nipped in the bud. Even if the elderly master wouldn't betray his adopted son, his friends, and a whole bunch of lovely girls for the sake of one little flying bald kid (and a shaggy flying bison with a lemur for a pilot), that didn't mean the old man couldn't have a moment of hesitation and doubt—Am I really doing the right thing? Because, let's be honest, he had clearly felt something like that before, openly sabotaging his nephew's attempts to capture the Avatar, simply because a bender of his power couldn't possibly have let the Avatar slip away that many times—at least back when the kid was only beginning his journey—if he had seriously set out to squash him.
But the Avatar as he was now wasn't an opponent around whom doubts and hesitation could be tolerated. Maybe that was just my paranoia and excessive suspiciousness talking, but better to take unnecessary precautions and lay down padding you never end up needing than later have to bury friends and execute those who failed.
And so I told them everything, beginning with how the First Avatar had acquired his powers and ending with how he breathed his last after being killed by two warring armies that had united for that very purpose.
"So... our entire history, the last ten thousand years... no one has been able to unite humanity because it didn't suit some deranged spirit fused with a petty thief and traitor—a condemned man sentenced to death?!" Azula flared.
"Yes." I sighed. "More or less. He proclaimed himself the 'bridge between spirits and humans' when no one had asked him to be one. Then he threw those spirits beyond the boundaries of our reality, triggering a bloodbath among them. But apparently that wasn't enough for him, so he decided he had the right to 'guide' humanity as well. The ambitions of a petty bandit fused with the mindset and perceptions of a Great Spirit.
"So instead of conquering every land and establishing a single ruling dynasty for all humanity, he simply 'restores balance,' essentially refusing to let anyone develop and hammering into the ground anyone who so much as tries to raise their head: Chin the Great in the Earth Kingdom two centuries ago, Shoushan the Bloody from the North five centuries before that... He tried to stop Sozin too, after all. Granted, 'for old times' sake'"—I grimaced—"he merely beat him up and informed him in no uncertain terms that he would not allow the 'invasion.' And he didn't give a damn that soon there wouldn't be enough food to feed everyone."
"That story sounds unbelievable..." Iroh shook his head, taking a sip of tea. "Where did you learn about it?"
"In the Earth Kingdom, in the very heart of the Great Desert, there stands a Spirit Library, home to its immortal master, Wan Shi Tong, the Spirit of Knowledge. I was there and studied under him. He was the one who told me the ancient history of the world."
"Hmm..." The princess furrowed her brows. "I've never liked the Avatars, despite being Roku's granddaughter, but there's something in your story that doesn't add up, dear."
"And what would that be?" I raised an eyebrow.
"This Wan... From what you've said, he mastered all four elements before becoming the Avatar, meaning while he was still an ordinary human! But that's impossible!"
"It's possible. Just very difficult."
"Impossible! Otherwise, after so many years, stories about people like that would've survived among the people!"
"Well, talents like that could've been attributed to the person being the Avatar, or simply never fully recognized for what they were. For example, the desert tribes practice Sandbending. It's considered a form of Earthbending, but in reality it also manipulates air to some extent—they literally fill the sails of their sand-sailers with it.
"Or take the swamp dwellers: their style isn't pure Waterbending, even though it's considered such. They also manipulate plants and mud, which already brings it closer to Earthbending.
"Then there are firebenders who occasionally appear with the ability to bend lava and even create it directly from the earth. And our friend the Blast is far from a pure firebender himself—what he does is a combination of Energybending and Firebending, with the greater emphasis on the former."
"Still nonsense! A person like that could gain wealth and power!"
"And a whole crowd of people eager to take his head..." I continued.
"That danger has never stopped anyone from trying to gain power!" the princess instantly shot back.
"Power doesn't have to be official or publicly known," I countered. "Look at the Blast. Even without trying to worm his way into the highest offices, he's done very well for himself—especially for a commoner with a disability who's missing an arm and a leg."
(End of Chapter)
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