The first thing Zuko noticed was that the door didn't open into a room, but an unnaturally dark hallway. He instantly craned his neck, leaning back to see the corner back inside the temple. He scowled. There was no such structure from what he'd seen, so it couldn't be as deep as it looks. His eyes lingered on a seemingly distant flickering flame, the slight scuff of his boot sharp in the dead silence, and ever so near the pulsing gloom.
Nearly a hundred elite soldiers and decorated firebenders stood in a half circle behind him, Zhao front and center, and every one of them trying and failing to make sense of the sight ahead as they stood ready for battle.
General Iroh stood nearest, cautioning with a rare dread, "Ahh, I do not think you should go in there." And he slowly reached for Zuko, like the slightest mistake could get everyone killed. Zuko just swung around with a dirty look aimed at Shyu, "what is this, sage?! Where is he?!"
Shyu just jerked, timidly cringing at the accusation, only mouthing useless excuses without a sound, and looking like he was struggling not to turn and flee.
"Light it up, Prince Zuko!" Zhao snapped, impatient. "The Avatar is inside, is he not!?"
Zuko's face twisted. He was already going to, but now he kind of didn't want to since Zhao ordered it. He took a deep breath of frustration, stepped back into a stable stance, and thrust out his palm as he sharply exhaled. His eyes flickered, then snapped shut at the surprise blinding flash! "Agh!" he growled. It was no trap, but simply Arzayanagi turning his flame into a raging surge of power he barely had the chance to witness before it was swallowed up by the impenetrable shadows.
Several others also winced and seethed at the burst of light. Most leaned forward after, wondering what just happened and why it was still just black.
"What was that supposed to be?!" Zhao taunted, although sounded genuinely annoyed too.
Zuko rubbed his eyes with his forearm, darting a gaze to the most irritating blur—probably Zhao—and barked back, "how should I know?!"
"Ugh... just get out of the way," Zhao grumbled, and punched forward, sending a burst of forceful, thick flames into the gloom, also magnified by Arzayanagi's presence, causing Zuko to clench his teeth as he dropped fast to a crouch to avoid it. But it too simply faded away the instant it passed the doors. "What the..." he trailed off.
The soldiers were getting a biiiiit shifty, with a few sidling back ever so slightly.
Zuko leaned forward instead, peering into the void, and he could not fathom the gloom, but something caught his eye just inside the door, on the narrow band of visible, polished obsidian with delicate golden inlay. A pool on the black stone. Not water, nor oil, but... gold?
A thin slick of it had pooled at the seam where the door met the floor, like it had been dripping from it on the inside. Before anyone could tell him not to. His glove brushed the stone. The gold clung to his fingertip. It was warm, and smelled... very unexpected.
"Zuko!" Iroh harshly warned, "touch nothing in there! That is a realm for spirits, not men!"
Completely humorless, Zuko turned to face Iroh, his fingertip in his mouth, the slight glint of liquid gold still on his glove. "Tastes like... spicy gravy." He shrugged, sounding bored.
Iroh had a look of absolute horror, and even Zhao was astonished beyond words that the prince actually just tasted the unknown spirit goo. It was a teenage overconfidence beyond adult understanding. Holding fast even as he rose again to his feet, and found his nose an inch away from a familiar face perfectly molded in solid gold. Around it not a headdress, but smooth silk as a tight cloak hood.
Zuko narrowed his eyes, the less fit men behind him gasped, and after he scanned the inanimate visage to conclusion, with zero caution, he demanded, "why does your face look like that?" Like he wasn't about to get his ass haunted.
Iroh made a small choking sound that became a gagging cough.
Others behind whispered mixtures of questions about who or what the hell was emerging from the darkness.
There was a guttural and rattling but powerful deep chuckle from the being before him. "Ahaha, why does hers?" she rasped, giving Zuko the slightest shred of direct attention, before simply...
Zuko flew back, feeling like he'd been hit by a shout made of steel, but it made scarcely a sound as some form of bending he'd never felt rippled through him. Sailing through the air, his focus was heightened, and he twisted, seeing his uncle also thrown back, as well as the closest ring of soldiers, all crashing back into others, and his heart refused to beat until he'd managed to crash feet first sideways into one of the grand pillars, dropping down without much injury, but seeing Arzayanagi clatter to the floor beside him.
"Firebenders! Attaaaack!" Zhao bellowed over the panicked shouts.
The air got very, very hot.
The gold-plated and silk strewn form of Arzaya slithered and bobbed oddly out of the pitch to place to wet slaps of gold oozing boots upon the real stone of the Fire Sage's Temple, seeming unconcerned with the army around her. Flames engulfed her from a dozen directions, and she was motionless as she went obscured.
"Zuko, get back!" Iroh insisted, scrambling to his feet and trying to drag the prince away, while he was still recklessly glaring at the vile thing they had just released.
Shyu dropped to his knees amidst the chaos, just beside Zuko and Iroh, he had his hands clasped in prayer, tears streaming down his cheeks. "She who cracks the riverbeds," he whispered, eyes glazed, voice shaking.
Zhao shoved past the line of soldiers, face bright with arrogant certainty. "Defeat the Avatar! Don't hold back!"
Fire bloomed from a dozen fists. Orange tongues, precise, practiced. The chamber lit like a festival for a heartbeat. The flames hit the gold-armored thing and vanished. Not deflected. Not dodged. Just… gone, snuffed like her armor caught and kept them. Arzaya barely reacted. She rose, slow, unnatural, feet dangling just off the obsidian floor, dripping gold.
"Fire," her voice rasped, dry and rattling like a throat forged in flame, "cannot be burned."
Zhao, looking very frustrated at his reeling and shocked soldiers, was not yet afraid himself, and he simply barked, "it's fireproof armor, capture her!"
Many moved up, not in the biggest hurry, but one soldier lunged in close, driven beyond discipline as he saw that masked face suddenly tilt to face him, and he let out a strangled cry as he thrust his spear at it. There was a shriek of metal, but a strike home at her throat, on one of few places she wore only sheer grey.
"I said CAPTURE!" Zhao howled fast, but too late, and clenching his fingers as he took another stomp forward.
Arzaya sank, her feet touching the stone again as she went limp, and the soldier didn't hear Zhao behind him, too transfixed on the rush of gold running down his spear, and the sight of the ancient being's wound closing the instant he pulled the spear free, like nothing had happened at all. Other soldiers surrounded her, placing her in a prison of spear shafts as they edged closer, if it still even mattered from what he could tell.
Zhao forcefully spun the overzealous spearman around, pure hate on his face, but the soldier was still just stunned. "It… it's n-not blood," he stammered, retreating half a step without meaning to as Zhao tugged him back. "G-gold... she's n-not human!"
"She who bleeds go-o-old! Ha-ha!" Shyu stammered with an incomprehensibly blissful but terrified smile, on his knees and quickly bowing again to Arzaya, although no one had time to worry what he was up to.
"Death," Arzaya intoned, lifting her head with that calm, superior stillness, as another barely visible pulse emanated from her with a flick of her wrist, and the spearmen holding her down were scattered back several paces, some head over heels. She rose back into the air, hands held aloft again as if on strings. "Does not die." Pitter-patter went the steady ooze of gold from her dangling metal boots.
Another soldier yelped. "Wh-what is she?! Monster!"
Seeing Zuko awkwardly hunched over and chasing after a clattering Arzayanagi, Zhao's eye twitched, "Zuko!" He raged. "Why this claim the Avatar is a boy?! Whatever you're up to, you can forget sharing credit for defeating her!"
"Are you stupid?! You think I know who the fuck THAT is?!" Zuko instantly snapped his head back around to scream, snatching up Arzayanagi, letting out a huffing breath the sent scorching flames to his toes, and although Zuko went unaware of it in his focused irritation, the raw power oozing from him as he held the spear sent Zhao stepping back, slack-jawed and for a moment blank.
The soldiers surged, not much caring about Zhao's orders at this point and just wanting the horribly ghostly woman to die already, or at least care a little they were attacking her. Palms stuck forward for another barrage of intense flames, all swirling and sucked up by her thousands of golden scales again, and a well drilled charge of spears followed the cinders. Arzaya suddenly shifted, not touching the ground as her hands jolted one way, then another in a sweeping bending style lost for millennia, that also looked like it would really hurt to do. The spears slowed, the spearman's feet cautious, their eyes wide.
Shyu whispered faster, voice cracking, rocking in place huddled on his knees. "She who bends the trees! She who drinks the tides!" He prayed like his life depended on it.
Hanging like a depraved tapestry, one too skinny knee up and her hands having finished some rapid, complex bending pattern, Arzaya did not need to dodge the charge. Each man panicked, beyond all reason, no cause the firebenders could witness. Spears dropped, or were tossed, some collapsed to their knees and wept, others scrambled, shrieking away from her, a few stood still and dazed, two seemed to collapse unconscious in a loud clatter of armor... possibly dead.
"What is HAPPENING!? Who is that, uncle?!" Zuko growled. "Where is the Avatar?!" he shouted to anyone and everyone, even Arzaya. "And why does her mask look like my mother?!" he shrieked in irritation upon anger, almost freakishly loud.
Instead of a response, Zuko was annoyed to just get a tug on his sleeve, just as he intended to see if the weird floating crazy lady was fond of being hit in her incredibly offensive face with Arzayanagi. "Z-Zuko, we should get out of here!" Iroh hissed in an incredibly rare moment of genuine terror.
"Stop it, please! Make it stop!" a spearman on his knees cried out, pleading and so desperate he was reaching out to Arzaya, over whatever she had done to his mind.
"God," she said, almost gently. But she oh-so viciously cackled, "Does. Not. Stop. Ha-ha-ha-haha..."
Iroh tugged again, Zuko momentarily transfixed on the sight of the spearman apparenly foaming at the mouth, then toppling over as the hovering entity bobbed forward, slowly, like she was testing each foray further from that accursed dark hole of a door. "Zuko! LOOK!" Iroh furiously insisted.
He turned his head, and wasn't... quite sure what to make of it. Some of the scattering, fearful men seemed to be smoothly suddenly transitioning into confident strides, towards the stairs and other exits and... his heart sank. Four drenched elderly men stood there, withered and pale, almost too obviously dead with their heads lolled aside, and waterlogged blood soaked down their grey sleepwear. Jaggedly severed sticky throats. In each heart, a small dagger was plunged, golden handled and of Arzayan design, with a trickle of that same golden fluid that was on the floor, that was dripping from the horrible thing, and that he... yuck.
Zhao had started shouting orders again, "hold the line, you fools! Where are you going, I did NOT order a retreat!"
A few disciplined men turned to try face Arzaya again. Fire went extinguished, spears turned away in terror, and with another pulse even more soldiers were thrown back, adding injuries, terror, and hopelessness, until there was a sudden moment where it was obvious to Zuko. Morale had shattered. Every one of Zhao's men was scrambling and scattering, sick of their attacks having no effect, and they stumbled right into some of the first men who fled, who had turned back to face them, and others did double takes at the oddly... dead... old sages standing shoulder to shoulder with them.
Zuko staggered back, sensing something very wrong. And as he raised Arzayanagi, it suddenly flared in his hand, stinging his palm, and he held onto it, able to tell it was clearly important, but had to shake off his hand with a seething breath. All the torch flames were suddenly pulling towards Arzayanagi, gone as unnoticed by everyone else as Zhao bellowing, "Hold her down! Do whatever it takes to stop her!"
Iroh's eyes were wide now, not just with fear, but with recognition too. With the horrible, quiet knowledge of a man who had read too many old scrolls and lived long unfortunately enough to see legends crawl out of them. Zuko saw him taking a solid bending stance, but facing away from everyone, and just ended up even more frustrated.
"What, why?" Zuko spun back and forth in momentary confusion himself.
The walls and floors groaned, gravel and grit falling as the wall of fleeing soldiers scrambled for exits, running into each other as they failed to piece together every way out was already blocked. A horrible groaning, metallic noise echoed louder and louder from the pitch black void. The line of soldiers and sages at the stairs drew weapons, and the line of men trying to find any way out was finally forced to rush them.
"Mmm, ha-ha-ha..." Arzaya was content to just watch with satisfaction, apparently.
"Get out of the WAY!" a soldier shouted, shoving at the rear line.
"Are you crazy?!"
"She's a monster!"
"Something else is coming, ugh, from that door!" A ragged, coughing voice came.
"We're all gonna die if you don't let us out!" A final soldier begged, thinking it must be some order from Zhao.
The men blocking the stairs didn't move. Their helmets turned, slow and synchronized.
"We know," they all said, and Zuko noticed, so did she... and she was bending again, that jerking almost inhuman strange style.
They attacked. Steel flashed. Fire flared. Near a fifth of Zhao's men, somehow traitors? Zuko watched blood spray in disbelief, Fire Nation soldiers on fellow warrior, the suddenly reckless firebenders blasting their comrades point blank, sending men flying. Spears and swords clattered in such a racket indoors, Zuko winced.
Shyu, still on his knees and just below the floating figure, looked up in wild-eyed, fanatic praise. "Arzaya! Arzaya! Arzaya!" He chanted, but there was such terror in his tremor.
"Arzayan traitors!" Zhao roared, somewhere in the melee. "Kill them all!" A burst of flames from the admiral saw many men dodging aside, but one of the withered, bloodless sages, palm outstretched in stiff firebending of his own, stood in place and was engulfed.
The old man was blackened to a crisp, unrecognizable as he swayed forward, like he was the last to learn he had died a while ago, but then collapsed. Utterly still.
Zuko stepped back, and blasted flames at two men, spirits know whose side they were on, and they reeled back for better or worse, followed by a sudden bright jolt and crack of rock, snapping Zuko's attention aside. Iroh stood there, two smoking fingers pointed at a hole in the solid stone wall. "Prince Zuko, this way!" Iroh shouted.
Hearing a pained shriek and being spattered from afar with blood on his cheek, Zuko stood and stared at the conflict for one brief moment, judged rapidly participation had zero benefits, and he ducked aside, dashing for the hole as every other way out thronged and clashed with a sudden civil war.
The traitors all fought like they were already dead, even the ones who had just turned. Like they were desperate for blood, theirs or anyone else's, but he glanced back to see Zhao shouting and rallying his men, finally successfully. With his hand on the shattered wall, Iroh leaned over the edge, and gave an "aha!" at sight of a balcony to hop down to.
Zhao's soldiers outnumbered the traitors, and when cornered, they fought just as desperate, and suddenly things were still. The final Arzayan gurgled his last gasp, full of holes and burned far beyond saving. One by one, they fell. And the last sage fell, mouth gaping, and dragging an enemy down with him like a lover to burst into flames, thoroughly ending both.
"Prince Zuko, come on!" Iroh insisted, tugging at him, and making to jump down without him in another breath, but Zuko couldn't quite look away. Was Zhao... actually winning?
Shyu still didn't stand. The only noise in the sudden quiet. "Forgive me, great mother. Forgive my foolishness. I am not worthy to look upon you…" he warbled, to no reaction from her.
The admiral stormed over and kicked Shyu flat on his back, Arzaya having drifted further away, slowing raising her drifting gangly hands, but not facing anyone. "Shut up, traitor," Zhao snapped. "The Fire Lord will have you."
Then Zhao turned, triumphant again, and pointed at the gold-armored figure who had not taken a single hurried step this whole time. "And is that it?" Zhao said, sneering. "Snuck traitors in my ranks, some bad acting?"
Arzaya gave the briefest of nods, and despite her being across the room, he was quite sure it was directed at him. As if... giving him permission? Zhao's soldiers approached the figure in a ragged half-circle, spears leveled again, eyes wide, hands shaking despite themselves.
Zhao's gaze slid to Zuko briefly, smirking at obviously leaving him out of the 'hunt'. "I guess you really are a hundred and twelve," he mocked Arzaya. "An Avatar that old has to rely on cheap tricks, hah."
Zuko didn't even have the energy to be insulted. He stared at the gold mask, at the dripping metal, at the dark door breathing behind her. There was a glint just beyond. Something BIG was in the darkness, just making metal scratching sounds.
"Admiral Zhao!" Zuko shouted, voice firm, trying to give him one last chance to run the hell away, "that's NOT the AVATAR."
Zhao's brow furrowed, offended by confusion. It had been too chaotic to hear before. He even did a double take before starting, "wait, wha—?"
"RIIIISE." Arzaya intoned, her withered hands held aloft, her rattling breath booming and carrying down the halls.
For one last brief pause, nothing happened, and Zhao got to keep thinking it was an act.
Then the bodies of the dead firebenders quivered. Smoke rose from their nostrils, curled between the teeth in their scorched mouths. Breath came, a hollow lifeless wheeze. Then flames, like no other. Even Zuko fled instantly, seeing his uncle already down below, and last he saw were flaming, raging wraiths billowing forth from the dead. Spirits ripped from bodies, glowing white hot spears forming in their hands before they even fully escaped their own ruins. Zhao was shouting. The gold-armored figure was cackling. Zuko felt the rush of air, prepared to roll as he landed a story below, and he was near struck instantly unconscious by the tremendous, wall and floor shattering BOOM above, slamming him hard into the ground.
Before he knew what was happening, Zuko blinked. His uncle was dragging him... his head was spinning. "Hold on to it!" Zuko heard, muffled and distant, and he clutched his hand around... whatever, dragging his boots on the dark stone floor.
"Uncle...?" Zuko breathed out, sounding a bit worried as he saw blood matting his grey hair.
He scarcely remembered staggering out of the temple. On the long walkway, out in the ocean, there were shattered warships, burning and half-sunk in the shallow harbor, others still sailing but damaged, and just a few pristine, too busy helping their sinking comrades to notice him or his uncle.
"What happened..." Zuko groggily muttered.
Iroh pulled him upright. "Dark spirits, I don't know! By my scorched beard, what is that..." he began, he really did has some soot on it, too, but Zuko followed his uncle's gaze up to the now blasted and significantly shorter Fire Temple. "I fear this going to somehow get even worse! Move, Prince Zuko!" He urged.
The door was still there, hanging open to darkness, in the distance. Everything at its level, or above, was gone. And it seemed a much older, and apparently sturdier black polished stone had been underneath the brickwork, like the Fire Temple had been built right on top of another sacred site. It didn't bode well for much, that was for sure, as Zuko carried his steps a bit more gingerly up the ramp to his cruiser.
No sign of Zhao or his men. The fleet was in disorder. Zuko didn't protest when without an order from him they pulled away, out of the harbor, and into the suddenly choppier waters. His own men were shouting in absolute confusion, demanding answers from an Iroh who had few to offer. With his brow furrowed and head finally not spinning, Zuko swore he could see molten gold just beginning to pour over the ridge of the island's active volcano.