"What?"
Aang stood stunned, his mind refusing to process what he had just heard. His tattoos began to glow slowly, a pale blue radiance intensifying with the rhythm of his pulse.
"You…?" He turned toward Taga. "You did this to him?"
Taga looked at him with indifference.
"You always put your friends ahead of our people. They were an obstacle. The earth killed my people, the fire killed yours. The staff is the only way. We can create a new Air Empire. One capable of defending itself against the other nations."
He began to walk slowly toward the staff as he spoke, his footsteps echoing in the silence of the sanctuary.
"Don't you see? This is how we will redeem ourselves. It doesn't matter that you fled back then, as long as you're with me now. Aang, listen to me! This is the only way!"
"No… no, no, no. NO!"
Just as Taga was one step from the staff, he made a gesture with his hand and the staff flew toward him. But Aang was faster. A blinding light erupted from his body, and in his hand he condensed a whirlwind of air that he hurled at Taga. The impact sent him flying to one side of the sanctuary, and the staff shot off in the opposite direction, bouncing across the stone slabs.
Aang's eyes shone with a blinding white radiance. His tattoos were lines of light that ran across his body like veins of pure energy. The ground trembled beneath his feet, and the air around him began to spin in ever more violent spirals. He had entered the Avatar State.
He attacked with all four elements at once. A blast of fire shot from his right fist while with his left he launched three water blades. A pillar of earth rose beneath his feet to propel him forward, and a current of wind enveloped him like armor. Taga tried to block the fire with airbending, but the water blades struck him in the side, making him stagger. The earth pillar hit him in the chest and hurled him against one of the sanctuary's columns.
"You are a traitor to your own," Taga said, rising with difficulty atop the high wall of the sanctuary. Blood ran through his beard and his clothes were in tatters. "Just like Sonum."
He stomped on the wall. The stone shattered into dozens of small rocks that Taga manipulated with a current of air, launching them as projectiles at Aang.
Aang did not even blink. He extended one hand and released a controlled blast of air that swept the projectiles aside in a single gesture, deflecting them into the walls of the sanctuary, where they shattered into a rain of harmless shards.
The glow of his tattoos intensified, and Aang floated above the ground, surrounded by a whirlwind of the four elements that orbited him like obedient satellites. His white eyes locked onto Taga, and when he spoke, his voice resonated overlaid with those of other Avatars.
"You are not my brother."
Taga rose with difficulty on the cracked wall. His breathing was ragged, his clothes were in tatters, and blood ran through his beard in thin rivulets that dripped onto the stone. But his eyes still burned with the same fanatical determination.
"You can't stop me," he gasped, condensing wind beneath his feet. "I am the future of the Air Nomads!"
He launched himself forward with an explosion of compressed air, his body transformed into a human projectile. Both hands extended, he unleashed a double wind blade that sliced through the air with a sharp whistle.
Aang did not even blink.
With a gesture of his left hand, the earth beneath Taga's feet rose into a pillar that diverted his trajectory. With his right, a blast of fire enveloped the wind blades and dissipated them in an explosion of steam. Taga spun in the air, trying to regain control, but Aang had already swept his arms in a wide arc. The water surrounding the sanctuary condensed into a whip that coiled around Taga's torso. Then, with a yank, he slammed him into the ground.
The stone slabs cracked under the impact.
Taga coughed, spitting blood and dust. He tried to rise, propping himself on his elbows, but Aang was already upon him. He stomped, and a slab of stone rose beneath Taga's back and pinned him to the ground. Another slab folded over his legs. A third trapped his arms. Within seconds, Taga was immobilized up to the neck, with only his head protruding from the stone sarcophagus.
Aang descended slowly until he stood before him. The glow of the Avatar State began to fade, his tattoos returning to their pale blue color, and his eyes, once white, became blue again.
"You lied to me. You manipulated my hopes. You used my dream of bringing back the airbenders for your own ends."
"I did it for our people," Taga answered, his voice choked by the pressure of the rock on his chest. "You are too weak to do what is necessary."
"Weak?" Aang clenched his fists. The rock around Taga groaned, tightening a little more. "You call it weak not to want the chaos of war? Not to want to repeat the mistakes of the past?"
"Call it whatever you want. But while you were building your precious Republic City, the Air Nomads remained dead. All of them. Because of you. Because you ran away."
Aang was enraged by those words.
His fingers curled. A column of fire erupted from his palm, dancing mere centimeters from Taga's face. The heat was so intense that the sweat on the man's forehead evaporated instantly.
"I could kill you right now," Aang said, his voice trembling. "You ended my friends. My family. I could burn you until nothing was left."
Taga stared at him fixedly. In his eyes there was no fear, only a kind of proud resignation.
"Then do it. Prove to me that you're not weak."
Aang held the flame for an instant that stretched into eternity. Then, slowly, the fire extinguished.
He could not do it. That was not who he was. Every fiber of his being, every teaching of the monks, every value he had defended throughout his life, screamed at him that killing a defeated enemy was an atrocity that would stain his spirit forever. But he could not simply let him go. He had murdered his friends. Katara. Zuko. Toph. Sokka…
Suddenly, an idea took root in his mind. A voice seemed to speak directly into his ear, whispering what to do.
Aang hesitated. If he took away his powers, only two airbenders would remain in the world: himself and Nawaki. He was about to further reduce the remnants of an already nearly extinct people, to strip one of his own of the gift of air.
But Taga was too dangerous to leave free. He had shown what he was capable of. He had deceived the entire Avatar team and manipulated Aang from the very beginning, and had even tried to kill them all. If he kept his powers, he would find a way to escape. And then he would try again.
"No… Aang, you can't do this to me…"
Taga sensed what Aang was about to do. His voice, once proud, broke into a plea. He struggled against the rock that imprisoned him, the muscles of his neck straining like steel cables. But then something changed.
His body went rigid. For no apparent reason, strength left his limbs and an involuntary tremor ran through his jaw. His eyes, wide open, no longer looked at Aang. They looked beyond him, toward the entrance of the sanctuary, toward the place where Sokka had collapsed unconscious.
But Sokka was no longer unconscious. He was standing.
And he was smiling at him. A sinister smile curved his lips, one filled with cunning. His eyes, fixed on Taga, shone with a cold, calculating intelligence.
With a casual movement of Sokka's hand, the Staff of Sonum—which lay forgotten in a corner of the sanctuary—rose from the ground and flew into his open palm.
Taga wanted to scream, but he no longer could. His vocal cords did not respond. His lips moved without emitting any sound, forming a question he could not voice. Because in his eyes, Sokka's appearance was already changing.
His skin grew lighter. His hair turned white, like freshly fallen snow. The clothes of the Water Tribe faded, replaced by a simple tunic. And from the figure's back sprouted two wings: one golden as the sun, the other black as the darkest night.