59 Chapter 59
Additional chapter for power stones
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***
A stream of fire knocks Aang off the cliff, barely having time to set up an air shield, but I too am propelled upwards as the neighboring cliffs crack and collide with the one I was on.
Lightning bolts tear from my hands in an instant, quickly catching up to the Avatar, but at that moment, I see Aang familiarly redirecting the lightning, changing its course. Moments later, my own lightning is flying back at me. I release a net woven from lightning from my hand, which disperses the redirected lightning back at me. However, following the lightning, a powerful air current rushes towards me.
This time, I manage to dodge only partially and am spun at great speed, sending me skyward.
With airbending, I correct my movement and stabilize my upward flight, then use jet propulsion flames to take control of the flight. I dive down, accelerating and feeling the g-forces from the high speed. A jerk to the left, and I dodge a dense stream of fire. A move to the side, and I evade another fireball, but the next second, I am unexpectedly enveloped by water...
Arms spread, and the water instantly transforms into steam, as I direct the expansion of gases away from myself. One of the bending rules we deduced with my brother during our self-taught waterbending lessons - the closer the element, the easier it is to control. And vice versa. If I can control a sphere of water close to me, as soon as I send it towards another waterbender far away, there's a high chance they'll simply take control over it. It then depends on the control and power of the bender. Precisely, on both.
The Avatar is the strongest bender! Yet even so! I will not allow him to control water that is close to me!
The steam turns into five-centimeter ice spikes, which immediately fly towards Aang, but they couldn't penetrate the air current swirling around him. Hmm...
I begin to descend, dodging his attacks and sending back my own. I must admit, not without pride, that I fly much faster than Ozai! However, he could simply not survive such flights - the g-forces experienced are too great! I am still alive only thanks to control over blood and body! So catching up to me is not as easy for Aang as it is for Ozai.
I start flying in circles, rather, in a spiral, then dodge two of his air currents and land near one of the cliffs.
"Aang, do you know why I can do everything that others cannot?" I began to stall, mostly focusing on entirely different processes. "There's a phenomenon in the development of civilization where every question, no matter how simple it may seem to you now, is philosophical. People ponder over it, argue, propose hypotheses, and conduct experiments that confirm them, and so on. But all of them, however correct they may seem, are somehow incomplete or inaccurate. But over time, the amount of knowledge accumulates the necessary mass, and then precise and true explanations are found for these, seemingly philosophical, questions. That's the whole difference between me and everyone else. Including you. You all are damned philosophers, arguing and arguing, but unable to come to the full truth. And I am the one who, without even realizing it in childhood, took a step forward. I collected information, statistics, experimented, again and again, repeating the same actions, like a madman. But I moved away from philosophy and went from reflections and hypotheses to precise answers. That's the whole difference between me and you."
"What are you getting at!?" Aang said angrily, landing on the ground ten and a half meters from me.
Hmm, there was no glow; he controls himself, had I not trained with Pathik myself, I might think he learned to open chakras from him. He's still in the Avatar state, but externally there are no signs!
"It means that you need to know chemistry and physics," I said with a smirk and at maximum speed plunged deep underground, then created a cavity around myself, which I fortified to the maximum and filled with air I created.
Meanwhile, on the surface, in the air where Freo once stood, a bright orb consisting of darting sparks hung suspended. It was encased in a shell of densely compressed gas, which thinned with each passing second. Aang was swayed from side to side. Only now did he notice something happening to him. He couldn't gather himself or focus his vision, his ears rang increasingly louder with some indistinct pounding, his head spun, and he felt a rising nausea as his facial muscles began to contract involuntarily.
Aang couldn't understand what was happening to him, realizing only that something very bad was about to happen!
Realizing this, the Avatar formed a thick sphere of stone around himself.
In the next second, the film of dense gases finally melted away, as if tens, if not hundreds of meters around burst into the flash of a single explosion!
A volumetric explosion is a very serious matter, causing immense damage!
*****
Feeling the shockwave and vibrations from the explosion, a few seconds later, I started to emerge, thinking that if Aang survived this, which cannot be denied, then he would suffer from oxygen poisoning, having breathed in too much oxygen while chasing me, and while I distracted him with talk. The most challenging part was not allowing Aang's fire, which circled around him and with which he periodically attacked, to ignite the oxygen, which I had been diverting away from the fire. Naturally, I also refrained from using anything explosive during the chase.
And then - to notice the first signs of beginning oxygen poisoning and to leave behind a ball lightning in a protective gas shell. How is that even possible!? But it doesn't matter. The more I use bending and the more I develop, the more I understand that although bending can be used in a scientific manner, it doesn't have to obey the laws of science known to me. And stable ball lightning is direct evidence of this.
I emerged outside and found myself amid dust, which barely let through the reddish light pouring from the skies. Listening for a second, I began moving towards where I felt life. I was almost unsurprised that the Avatar had survived even now.
I saw a stone sphere, from the cracks of which the brightest light was pouring.
"Oh, I don't like this at all!" I thought, using all my abilities and concentrating in my left hand my own and the surrounding fire chi, which was in abundance. I learned this trick thanks to Iroh*. It came to him intuitively, while I had to regrow my fingers many times before I could do it correctly. Although he paid with his hand and foot for the same thing, as far as I know.
The fire chi concentrated in my hand but did not transform into fire, remaining just fire chi. And now I direct my hand and under immense pressure in the form of a drill, I release the chi into the sphere. It looks as if a thin beam splits the air with a barely audible whistle, but then this beam collides with something and then...
...BOOOM!!!
The explosion raised a cloud of dust, and I felt Aang being blown away further and crashing into one of those huge cliffs. Without slowing down, I launched lightning from my other hand.
This time, another explosion sounded. There was no dodge, I felt it for sure, nor redirection of the lightning. The lightning hit something!
Obedient to my wish, the dust settles, revealing an impressive scene. There stands a huge cliff, into which the Avatar had crashed, and around it, a vast amount of small rubble, hit by my lightning, flies at high speed.
The whirl of rubble ceased and split into two huge, multi-ton heaps, gathered on either side of... the Avatar. Not Aang, but the Avatar. Now he appeared as a two-meter-plus beastly man in some cloak on his shoulders, with a thick black beard and similar hair. And his face was in anger, his eyes and mouth glowing, looking straight into my eyes.
"Something new..." I said and immediately, at maximum speed, took off, overcoming immense g-forces.
All to dodge an attack.
At supersonic speed, with characteristic pops, thousands of small stones hurled towards me! The cliff I had just stood on was simply shattered, one could say, torn apart!
The bombardment didn't stop, and I barely managed to dodge, already hit by several projectiles that pierced through my body, leaving three holes in my much-suffering right hand and one, particularly fortunate projectile, that tore off my index finger. The Avatar's projectiles were unlimited, and the rocks as cover didn't stand a chance - the stream of projectiles simply tore them apart in less than two seconds!
I had a few moments to hide behind several rocks before the Avatar would change his firing position - he hadn't lost the ability to fly!
An idea formed in my mind, and I immediately condensed water from the air, which I turned into a disk and spun, then formed a similar disk out of white flame right after the water, and not running away this time, I flew on jet propulsion towards the Avatar.
The stream of supersonic projectiles hit the swiftly moving water and lost speed, their trajectory altered by the water's motion. Yet, even so, the momentum was enough for the projectiles to overcome the water disk, literally vaporizing in the plasma disk. I flew towards the Avatar, understanding that fighting him at long distances was absolutely useless! Fire and lightning were easily blocked by this rubble, and even explosions couldn't scatter them strongly enough, and breaches in the defense just couldn't form in time!
The other elements were even less helpful in this situation! It was clear to anyone that this incarnation of the Avatar had achieved incredible results in controlling earth and stone. To say nothing of the fact that even I couldn't accelerate pebbles to supersonic speeds! Not to mention such natural control over such a mass of rubble! I could imitate it to some extent, but to reach this level was still far beyond me!
I got as close as possible, almost right up close, and after icing my foot, I kicked him, transforming the ice into steam at the moment of impact and directing the expanding gases towards the Avatar.
But instead, I hit empty air, and the steam dissipated into nothingness, as did the entire impact, and the next moment, my leg was grabbed by a woman's hand which, using my own inertia, spun me in the air and slammed me into the cliff on which she stood.
I passed through the stone, making it malleable, and emerged on the opposite side, but next to me was already a woman with makeup similar to the Kyoshi warriors, fans in her hands, delivering the same kind of kick I had just attempted.
The kick, enhanced with a directed steam explosion, sent me rocketing into the ground. I distinctly felt three ribs crack and a multitude of small blood vessels burst!
Crashing into the ground, I bounced off it like a ball, then landed on my feet and slid to a stop.
Before me, the Avatar Kyoshi descended to the ground.
My clothes were shredded and beyond salvageable, so I simply tore off the obstructing remnants and was left in equally tattered pants. A huge bruise was already visible on my left side around the ribs.
So now, I'm not fighting Aang, essentially a young boy, but a two-hundred-plus-year-old warrior, a master of martial arts, proficient in all the elemental bending disciplines available to the Avatar, as proven at least by how easily she copied my steam strike, having immense experience, not only in combat. And, to be honest, if I look at it objectively, I'm in a complete mess...
Hmm, faced with an overwhelmingly strong opponent, and I start to fear? Oh yes! I'm scared! My hands are slightly trembling, I feel an approaching tremor in my legs, and my blood is boiling with liters of adrenaline! However, I accept this fear! Didn't I learn this on the island with the old man Pathik for nothing!?
Kyoshi didn't wait for my move and charged at me at tremendous speed, delivering a strike accompanied by a gust of air that blew me away and left two furrows in the ground from my legs. Bare legs, since the footwear couldn't even withstand the start of the beating. Despite the pain in my arms, which I barely used to block the strike, I used the seconds gained to saturate my blood with oxygen. Generally, doing this, I'm poisoning myself with oxygen, primarily affecting nerve cells by disrupting their metabolism, but when using chi simultaneously, everything changes. Here, bending acts as a catalyst, smoothing out all the rough edges, allowing me to pull off what I just did.
Eyelids dropped, sounds faded away, only a faint ringing and the sound of my pulse remained audible. I felt no pain or fatigue, no tension, only lightness...
Opening my eyes and tilting my head to the left, I dodged Kyoshi's fist. With my right hand at maximum speed, I grabbed the forearm of the striking hand and with fingers bent at the second phalanx, I struck under the armpit. My right leg delivered a kick to the femur of the warrior's right leg. The kick wouldn't break the bone - benders have very strong bones - but it would cause excruciating pain, while simultaneously pulling Kyoshi forward by the grabbed arm, causing her to fall without a stable point of support. A quick shift of my legs and I delivered a counter-kick with my other knee to the falling warrior, a sharp blade of metal gleaming on my knee.
However, just milliseconds before the blade penetrated the Avatar's body, when I could already feel the skin being pierced, the Avatar's body glowed, and I was repelled by a wave of air.
I was only thrown back two or three meters, stopping myself in the air with a counter gust of wind and jet flames from my legs and hands, immediately rushing back towards the Avatar, not giving him a chance to use any more of his tricks.
There were only a pathetic three meters between us, but in the moments I flew towards the Avatar, I noticed the ground beneath me transforming into lava, and with just two meters to go, I saw, as if in slow motion, the lava beginning to rise.
"I WON'T MAKE IT!" - I thought, starting to swirl around me streams of air mixed with water, and using all my lava bending abilities to prevent it from engulfing me.
The air had only begun to swirl, the lava had already risen a quarter of a meter, and I swung my left leg, sending a metal blade towards the new Avatar, who appeared as a tall, adult man with a strange headdress, a narrow black beard, and similar mustaches. Then, my perception returned to normal, and I was engulfed by the lava.
It worked. Not fully, but it worked! Forget about the multitude of burns and the agonizing pain! I certainly won't die from shock! The main thing is that I didn't die immediately!
I tumbled out of the lava pillar at a height of fifteen to twenty meters, quickly moving to the top of one of the cliffs.
Despite the pain, now completely naked - the remnants of my clothes didn't survive the ordeal by lava - I lay on the cliff to catch my breath for a second, ideally a dozen, it would have been perfect to lie there for a minute.
I listened to myself.
Multiple injuries. More than half of my body's surface burned by lava, missing the index finger on my right hand, the left eye not functioning - seems to have burst, no hair left at all, the Avatar's unexpected transformation indeed broke three ribs that were only cracked before, my right arm had three wide open wounds, not to mention my burned genitals and scalded scrotum, fingers on my feet and partially on my hands felt burnt, and it seemed my nose was also not in good shape.
In short, despite how good I look from the outside and ignoring the incredible pain I have the pleasure of experiencing, I got off pretty easily - half a year with plentiful nutrition or two years without food and water at all, and I'll be back to my handsome self! And if I absorb the life force of six people, I'll recover in just two months!
"May all the man in world screw you in all your holes continuously throughout all your lives!" I yelled as I felt an approaching life.
There were noticeably fewer lives felt, by the way!
Helping myself with water bending, I stood up. Maintaining balance was very difficult when almost no toes were left! Listening to myself, I realized I didn't have much strength left. But that's if I only use my own strength, as I usually do. There's an alternative, which everyone else uses. Especially since there's an abundance of fire chi around!
Through terrible pain, I unleashed a wave of white flame, which only met Aang as he rose to my altitude. Yes, Aang. He responded with a gust of air, simply slicing my wave in the center. I had already released a sixth fireball at him, but all of them were stopped by dense air bursts that pierced through the fireballs, destroying them in the process.
Notably, Aang did all this using only one hand, his right, because he didn't have his left! At the same time as the cut on his arm, there was also a clean cut on Aang's side. Quite deep. Both, it seems, he had already cauterized. Heh, so I did hit after all!
Aang looked orders of magnitude better than me, although still not great. The pallor of his skin and the shadows under his eyes suggested he'd lost a good amount of blood. His stoop, despite being in the Avatar state.
I released the strongest and densest stream of fire I could muster in my current state and with the remaining strength I had, but all the fire just clashed with the oncoming wind and was blown away while Aang walked towards me.
Twenty seconds of continuous flamethrower imitation, my last Chi energies left me. The rock in front of me, along the path of the fire, turned red and glowed but immediately cooled as soon as the Avatar stepped on it.
"Haah... haah... haah..." I gasped, too weak even to move.
Another second and I fell to my knees, as my legs could no longer support me.
"Ngh... what's next... Aang?" I asked, smiling with my face that was now all burns, at the Avatar. "Can you... finally... kill me?"
Aang stood before me and said nothing. Just looked into my eyes.
"No," he said, after about twenty seconds of silence. "Even though you're a monster, a beast, the worst person I've ever seen, I won't kill you. I don't want to kill you. Because you're still a person..."
"Do you realize... my condition is only temporary? A cell in a volcano could have held me before, but now there's no prison that can keep me. My powers will return to me, Aang," I said, ignoring the pain with every word I spoke, every sound my throat made, "and then, at our next meeting in battle, I'll be even stronger. Even more dangerous..."
"No. You won't. You will not become," Aang said, coming close to me and placing his hand on my forehead. "Freo, you're a strong bender, but now... now I take away your bending! Once and for all!"
I felt Aang's chi flow into me, encountering something inside me that resisted. I felt I could resist, but also knew that if I lost... I'd lose it... lose my bending... forever...
"No... no-no-no-no-no-No-No-No-No-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO! You dare not! Better kill me! KILL ME! DO NOT DARE! DO NOT DARE TOUCH MY BENDING! HEAR ME!? DO NOT DARE!!!!" I screamed, completely forgetting about the pain in my throat and all other discomforts.
I resisted, and I must say, I was doing well. The main thing was not to give up! The main thing was to have an unbreakable will! And I was sure - I would not give up! Not for anything! I would not let what little I had left from my mother and brother be taken from me!
But at some point, I felt that all the incarnations of the Avatar joined the battle of wills! Their entire will! Their entire force crashed down on me! I held on! Held on as best as I could... but at some point... my strength was just... not enough...
"NO-O-O-O-O-O! GIVE IT BACK! GIVE IT BACK!!! GIVE IT BACK!!!" I screamed with all my might, tears streaming from my right eye.
I felt that I could no longer feel it... I couldn't feel the chi... couldn't feel the elements...
And then I couldn't hold on any longer and fell into darkness...
*Iron - a mercenary with an eye on his forehead
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