Chapter Text
The ice golems roared and their voices echoed inside the confined space; their grotesque crystalline faces contorted in a sad parody of real human rage. Each and every one of the unnatural creations mimicked the face and body that once housed the soul that was stolen and mutilated to create their dastardly forms. The long and narrow corridor was filled with the abominations, all of them scrambling forward to shield their mistress while she continues her wicked work of selfish destruction. Fast and vulnerable to only the most powerful of bending, they were a terrible foe for most opponents.
But the Bands of Shin Mun that Azula herself had helped forge destroyed them by the dozens. The ten glowing circles were the most powerful lingniir ever constructed by any Spirit Weaver; Azula was proud that she and the others had taken the time and effort to create such a wonderful artifact. Each metal band could expand to have an inner diameter of four inches, just large enough to fit over Azula’s hands. After that, they could shrink to their normal size to be stored on her forearms when they were not in use, where they were held in place by her spirit tattoos.
Little did they know when they created these powerful bands three years ago that it may well be the only weapon capable of freeing the world from the horrific effects of the Loom of Arachna.
‘Mistress, we must hurry; Kya is accelerating the fraying of the Tapestry of Reincarnation.’ Nahala, the spirit that had answered the summons to possess the Bands of Shin Mun, called to her through their mental link.
Azula knew that Nahala was right; she could feel the unnatural energy radiating through the very fabric of the spirit realm. A stabbing finger of ice went down her spine at the unnatural resonance of the spirit energy emanating from the room ahead. She drew more energy from the Quintessence and pulled six of the bands back to her.
The metal rings glowed with the otherworldly power of ethereal cosmic energy, as did Azula herself. She could see the tattoos that connected the spirit nexuses on her arms glowing ever so faintly in the poorly lit cave. And the shining radiance from her silver eyes cast a soft light on all of the objects near her. Which just happened to be ice golems that were being eviscerated by her bands.
Two bands glided through the air and looped onto her right foot as she stepped up off the floor of the cave, allowing two more bands to loop onto her left foot once it was clear of the stones beneath her. She grabbed two other bands with her hands and she quickly accelerated upwards and over the golems, suspended by the airborne bands; it took a lot of ethereal cosmic energy to fly like this but she needed to reach Kya as quickly as possible.
The corridor she was fighting in was only about fifteen feet high but that was just enough clearance to keep out of the reach of most of the ice golems. Many of them started to climb the rocky walls of the hallway as she approached but she guided the four remaining bands to destroy them and clear the way to the larger cavern that housed the main portion of the Temple of Forsaken Souls.
Her glowing bands, eyes and tattoos brought some light to the rather large and dark space that housed the Loom of Arachna, but it was nothing compared to the light given off by the absolutely massive waves of fire being sent out by Avatar Yue. Despite only being thirteen years old, she had first learned the art of summoning the Avatar spirits from Guru Pathik and then, with the tutelage of spirit vestiges of Roku, Kyoshi, Kuruk and Yangchen, she had learned to become a fully actualized Avatar.
Which was exactly what the world needed right now. Azula rose above the fray into the enormous cavern and quickly moved towards Kya, where she had two hands on the large stone contraption and was chanting frantically. Three unconscious figures, two male and one female, laid on top of the loom.
She could feel the power of the loom pulling on the very strings of the cosmic weave, using its power to tug on the fabric of the Tapestry of Reincarnation itself. Of all the people that walked Atla, Azula knew that she was the only one witnessing the horrific sight of the Loom of Arachna in action. Even the Avatar was unable to sense the ethereal cosmic energy that was threatening to kill them all.
Azula unhooked the bands from her feet and, along with the four that were already free, used them to tear through the ice golems trying to protect Kya and the loom. She held on to the two rings in her hands long enough to make it safely to the ground and then released them before she charged forward towards her foe. More ice golems rushed towards her, only to be overwhelmed by a huge wave of stone spikes coming out of the ground; the Avatar had Azula’s back. The ice golems would melt and reform in just a few moments, but that was all the time Azula needed to deal with Kya.
There! She was close enough now to identify the Amulet of Olaka that was hanging around Kya’s neck; it housed the soul of an ancient mage that taught Kya how to use these terrible artifacts. For over three thousand years, the terrible artifact had remained hidden, seemingly lost for all time. Azula didn’t know much about the amulet, but she was sure that it needed to be destroyed to save the world.
With the help of Nahala to guide them, two of her bands slammed into the large and gaudy amulet as Azula channeled as much ethereal cosmic energy as she could wield into the amulet. For a moment, the amulet resisted the surge, but there was no stopping the onslaught for long. Azula felt the ethereal cosmic energy surge into the amulet and for a moment she was connected to the terrible spirit inside. She shuddered at the sense of fear and anguish the spirit emitted as it was consumed by the energy Azula had channeled through the bands. In less trying times, Azula would have used the ethereal cosmic energy to compel the spirit to leave the amulet and lock it in the spirit realm.
But with tens of thousands of children already dead, there was no time for niceties. In a matter of seconds, she had burned the soul free of all cohesion and it ceased to exist.
All of the ice golems instantly melted to water as Azula and Yue surged towards Kya, who had been been knocked onto her back by Azula’s assault. She tried to get to her feet but she was locked in place with earthbending by Yue.
“Great job, Azula! Can you undo what she’s done with the loom?” Yue asked as Azula approached the loom, the ten glowing bands circling the artifact in a slow, clockwise progression, monitoring the energy, both spiritual and cosmic, that was coming off the loom.
And Azula was terrified by what she found. Where there should have been a tight weave, undulating in another plane of existence as the threads of the recently deceased were woven back into the fabric of existence, all she felt now was the terrible of chaos of the Unraveling, the most terrible fate for the souls of Atla.
It took her a few moments to find her words and she spoke them in a low voice. “I don’t know, Yue. She…she has torn the Tapestry of Reincarnation far more than I expected.”
“You can’t stop the Unraveling, you stupid bitches!” Kya snarled from her earthen prison. “I’ve linked the sacrifices to the threads of my husband and children. They will be pulled back and returned to me. Even if you kill me, they will live again!”
Azula didn’t answer as she continued monitoring the fraying of the tapestry. It was a jumbled mess of individual threads moving and oscillating chaotically; normally, the pattern should be woven in tight, controlled process as people die and are reincarnated, but this felt wrong in every way.
She was beginning to see the rhyme and rhythm of the fraying now. Kya was using the Loom of Arachna to try and retrieve the reincarnated souls of her husband and children. Investigations into Kya had learned that her husband and children had been killed by the Southern Raiders; it had been a stupid and barbaric policy to try and eliminate the waterbenders of the Southern Water Tribe and this horrible decision had now come back to haunt the entire world.
Kya was systematically unraveling the weave to free the threads that were connected to the souls that had been her family in order to place them in the bodies of the three poor souls she had kidnapped. But in order to untangle them, Kya had to cut out the threads of everyone that had been reincarnated after them, removing them from the reincarnation cycle for all eternity.
It had been three years since her family died and so far she had killed every child on Atla that was under the age of two, their souls lost forever as she pulled their threads from the Tapestry of Reincarnation. And she would kill untold thousands, if not millions more, if Azula couldn’t use the Loom of Arachna to halt the fraying of the weave.
She continued examining the weave as the rest of the surviving members of the White Lotus made their way to the cavern. As strong and skilled as they were, they hadn’t been as well-suited to smashing their way through the ice golems as Yue and Azula.
“Will you be able to fix things, Azula?” Lu Ten asked.
She turned to look at his tired and weary face. Every face in the cavern was tired and weary. So much had been lost during the Hundred’s Year War. Then the Ice Golem Insurrection. And then the Unraveling. Lu Ten was the only family she had left. Grandfather, Father, Mother, Uncle, Zuko and Uhrzon had all died by one means or another.
“The damage is more severe than I thought, Lu Ten. I’ll try but I don’t know if I can do it.” She answered in a low voice. It pained her to admit this weakness in front of him and the others, but she was terrified about what she had to do. For all her training, this just felt bigger than she could handle.
“Hey, Little Weaver, you are the most talented person on Atla. You were given the gift of Spirit Weaving by Agni himself, probably just so that you could be the one to save us in the here and now.” He leaned down and took her face in his large hands and leaned close, pressing his forehead against hers. She leaned into the sensation; he knew that it was uncomfortable for her to have people to touch her tattoos but that she still craved human contact when she could get it. Touching foreheads was as close to a hug as she could get since she had undergone the Kiak Anu. “It’s unfair to ask an eleven-year-old child to carry this burden, but we all believe in you.”
Azula looked around at the others watching her. They all gave sad smiles and nodded. Piandao and Pakku and Jeong-Jeong and Yue and a dozen others. She felt her resolve stiffen. Yes, she could do this. She had sacrificed her firebending just so that she could fulfill her destiny as a Spirit Weaver; she had been the first Spirit Weaver identified in almost two thousand years and she would do what it took to justify Agni’s faith in her.
“I will do what I can. I need to get started now to repair as much as I can.” Azula said, reluctantly stepping back from Lu Ten’s grasp and turning towards the loom. She knelt in the spot that had been occupied by Kya.
“You’re not strong enough to fix this, you f*cking fire-whor*. It was a pleasure killing your mother and brother, to give you a little taste of the anguish I felt. I watched it through the eyes of my ice golem as they slowly and painfully beat your family to death. It was lovely to hear them-“ Azula closed her eyes tightly as Pakku silenced the horrid woman by creating a water gag.
But she could still feel the hateful glare of the woman on her back, the spite and venom veritably oozing from her pores. She pushed that sensation aside as she extended her arms and recalled the Bands of Shin Mun. The ten bands came at her command and passed over her hands and onto her forearms for storage, five to an arm; with the bands on her arms to help guide the flow, she could channel significantly more ethereal cosmic energy to the loom. She would need all of her strength and command of ethereal cosmic energy that she could muster to use the Loom of Arachna to undo the damage done to the Tapestry of Reincarnation.
‘I am ready when you are, Mistress.’ The gentle voice of Nahala spoke in her mind. Azula closed her eyes and called on the power of the Quintessence, pulling it through her spirit nexuses before directing it to the loom. She extended her senses and began grasping the strands of the weave, trying to rethread them back into the tapestry in order to halt the fraying and strengthen the integrity of the whole. Again and again, she grasped the silky threads that were being torn away, but for every thread she pulled, three more still came undone.
Faster and faster she wove, but while she could slow the fraying and hold the edges of the weave together for now, she knew that it was a losing battle. There were simply too many missing threads now to keep the tapestry from unraveling. The Loom of Arachna was no longer pulling on the threads, but she was filled with horror at what she saw.
It had taken two months to kill every child on Atla under the age of two; this also meant that anyone that had died during this time had been excised from the reincarnation cycle. And the war and ice golems had taken the lives of untold tens of thousands of people during that time. Like many of Azula’s family, they were lost forever.
With the Loom of Arachna no longer pulling on the threads, the fraying was slower but still inevitable. Azula would probably never live to see her twelfth birthday at the rate the tapestry was decaying. And her soul was filled with despair as she knew that there was nothing that she could do to stop it.
“There is no need to despair, young one. The Tapestry of Reincarnation is beyond your ability to repair, but you have done your duty and prevented the Loom of Arachna from pulling any more threads free of the tapestry. I will take it from here.” K’lek Ya, the Celestial Dragon said as the vision of his sinewy body filled her sight. His scales shimmered with a divine light that warmed her very soul with its beautiful sight, her faith in the goodness of the universe restored by his resplendent and magnificent appearance. He was the only dragon that had ever ascended to immortality and was the frequent companion and confidante of Yentha, intermediary of Agni and patron of spiritual travelers such as herself. He was a magnificent silver dragon and the tattoo that she wore of him on her back was the major source of her power since it connected nearly a third of all her spirit nexuses.
Her heart filled with joy at his words and she watched in awe as he reached out with his glowing silver talons and began plucking at the threads of the tapestry, causing them to bend and fluctuate. But the smile faded and she frowned as she watched his speed increase because he was pulling the entire tapestry backwards, causing the fray to increase as the threads moved in the wrong direction. He was unraveling the tapestry!
“K’lek Ya! What are you doing? You will kill us all!” Azula mentally shouted through the spirit realm they were both occupying, for there was no air and no sound on this plane of existence.
“Yes, I will. Death is life. The integrity of the Tapestry of Reincarnation must be protected at all costs.” K’lek Ya answered, his voice tinged with sadness.
Those were the last words that she heard before her thread was unwoven from the Tapestry of Reincarnation.
