Chapter 60. The End

A firebender, one of the guards of the capital's prison, opened the door to one of the cells, quickly entered, and, placing a tray of food on the floor next to the cage, hurriedly headed towards the exit. Right at the exit, he heard the rustling of the prisoner.

This particular guard was very superstitious. And he loved to collect rumors. These two traits were closely linked.

He became superstitious after a decree from the new Fire Lord brought a new prisoner to the cell he was assigned to. At first, he wasn't very interested in who It was. And It looked like a living corpse. The toes were burnt, hair singed off, skin covered in severe burns, missing a left eye, genitals burnt, and It barely moved. It seemed It didn't even breathe.

Yet, despite such injuries, It was alive!

However, when he got bored, he began to find out, who was his prisoner?

And after he got the information, the sheet with the data fell from his hands.

The Bloody Monster, or, as his name - Freo. The most terrifying person (?) almost every resident of the Fire Nation, from children to elders, could imagine. Some bragged they were not afraid of the Bloody Monster, but the fame of this maniac, incredibly cruel and unimaginably strong, so powerful he could even fight on par with the Avatar! Stories had already spread among the people about how the Avatar defeated Lord Ozai, the former Fire Lord, and then lost an arm and received many injuries in a fight with the Bloody Monster. What happened next? No one knew, but now, this very Bloody Monster was sitting in his cell.

Since he learned who he was dealing with, the guard started praying to all the spirits he knew, praying that Freo would never escape from the cell.

But then strange things started happening. Three months after Freo was imprisoned, directives often came from the capital stating that all guards had to be in a certain place at a certain time and nowhere else. And this directive was signed by the Fire Lord herself. So, thinking about violating the order was out of the question! This continued for half a year, after which such cases became much rarer, barely once a month, but an order was given to provide this prisoner with a ration of food that even the prison warden could envy. Yet, this order was also signed by the Fire Lord, and no one dared to break it.

Despite the huge size of the portions, enough to feed three people, three times a day, everything was eaten. Where did it all go?

Everyone got used to the situation. Including our guard.

And today, for the first time in many months, the guard responsible for the cell heard and saw some movement from the prisoner.

Despite the long time that had passed since his arrival, and despite the fact that everyone had gotten used to his presence, his mere negligent movements instilled fear in the guard. Yes, as everyone knew, he had been stripped of his bending, what made him so dangerous, almost on par with the Avatar, and now he had so many burns and injuries that a child could defeat him, but... his fame spoke against this information. When he was captured at the cost of enormous sacrifices among the benders and soldiers, he was placed in such a prison where he also was helpless... but, as a result, everything alive in that place was killed by him during his escape. Only one survivor remained. And under mysterious circumstances, he, and the entire family of that sole survivor, died in one day in one house. This happened during the turmoil right after the Day of Black Sun. And now, it's said, known here in the prison, that he is absolutely helpless without a drop of bending.

"Do you fear me?" Freo asked the guard, still facing the wall, wrapped in rags from head to toe, his back turned to the exit.

"N-no!" he replied, but his quivering voice betrayed his true feelings.

"Why?" the bloody maniac asked indifferently, emotionlessly. "Why do you fear me? Now, I am incapable of anything. Bending... I can no longer control it. The Avatar did something to me, and now I'm just a mere human. Nothing more. Well... with some exceptions..."

Those words about exceptions seriously spooked the guard.

"Hey, where are you!?" the voice of the prison warden echoed down the corridor, and a few seconds later, he peeked into the cell, then smirked widely. "So, this bastard finally stirred? Stopped being shy? Hey, have you finally woken up?"

Freo didn't respond, didn't move, still staring at the wall in front of him.

"Oh spirits, and people were scared of you!? Heh! My son was afraid to sleep because of you. His friend lost his father, killed by you. And he was scared you'd kill me too, but what do I see? You can't hurt me now, you can't even harm a regular person! Pathetic wretch!"

The prison warden turned and left the cell without explaining why he was looking for the guard assigned to this cell.

"Do you think the same? That I'm a pathetic wretch? Though, in some ways, he's right."

He should have just left, ignored the questions, but he spoke...

"Everyone reaches the end of their path. Your path has ended, Mr. Freo, you've reached your limit, facing the Avatar. Now, you are as you are."

Saying nothing more, not to tempt fate, he exited and closed the cell door behind him.

He didn't see what only one person in the whole world, who occasionally visited him, saw.

Once, the man, more resembling a living and mutilated corpse, turned towards the food. Two of his native blue eyes on a flawless face looked at the food from beneath the ragged hood, from which newly grown hair peeked out, then at the door the guard had exited through, and back at the food.

The guard would never have opened his mouth if he knew the future. Perhaps he would have regretted his words, only to hear the response.

"What did you say? Everything has an end? I've reached my limit?" each of his following words grew louder than the previous, and the will, once shattered and broken into tiny pieces, shards, sawdust, dust, receiving just a small emotional nudge, began to gather into a whole, into a monolith stronger than ever before.

Unbeknownst to him, this minor figure in history did something that would unimaginably change the world! He set off that small pebble that would trigger an entire avalanche.

"Yes, everything has an end. Everything has a breaking point. There's a ceiling beyond which growth is impossible. But at the end, a new path can be found, a breaking object can be fixed or reforged, and the ceiling can be broken. Weaknesses can be overcome, flaws turned into strengths! I have no bending? Oh, that doesn't mean I'm now a harmless creature. Just now, I will turn weakness into strength! And then I will find a way to reclaim MINE!"

For seven years, Aang lived with Katara, constantly moving around the world, resolving the aftermath of the war's end. Glancing at his left hand, or rather the prosthesis that replaced it, the Avatar sighed deeply. He had turned twenty years old and was finally able to rest fully.

After the death of the Phoenix King and the victory over Freo, everything scattered. Azula became the new ruler of the Fire Nation, coronated on the day of Sozin's Comet. She quickly ended military actions, solidifying the positions conquered during the war and safeguarding the colonies without weakening the army.

Freo... even now, Aang shuddered at the memory of the bender. As Katara had told him, he could sustain his life with his bending, but even when Aang took his bending away, not fully understanding the implications, he sentenced the mage to death. Against all odds - he lived. With numerous injuries, he continued to live! Soon after, emissaries from the Fire Nation demanded Freo's body, as he was a particularly dangerous criminal to be imprisoned by them. Aang had no objections; he saw no harm in it. And after that, he never heard of him again.

There were many other problems that the Avatar needed to solve as peacefully as possible, to prevent a new war.

Gradually, month by month, everything worked out. Toph quickly made a prosthesis for Aang's left hand, as Katara acknowledged she couldn't restore it.

Two years later, Aang encountered Zuko and Iroh, who had escaped during the eclipse seven years ago. They lived in one of the villages, and if not for Zuko's scar, Aang would never have recognized him.

Was the Avatar surprised by this encounter? Undoubtedly! But observing them, he realized it was best not to interfere. They lived peacefully and hardly used their firebending.

Aang was sitting on the porch of his house, watching the setting sun, when an old acquaintance, Suki, approached him.

"Hello, I didn't expect to see you. What brings you here?" he asked.

"Aang... I've just been told... the Fire Nation has been hiding it and still does, using all their might, even the civilians don't know, to avoid panic..."

"What happened?" Aang asked, standing up, concerned.

"He escaped... Aang, Freo escaped from prison..."

*****

"No bending?" Aang muttered under his breath, struggling to look at the walls and floor where fire nation mages and soldiers lay with severed limbs and smashed heads, and some walls bore huge cracks and dents, stone chipped away and metal bars of cages bent...

"How did he do it?" the Avatar asked one of the firebenders, looking at a hole in the wall.

"We don't know," he replied.

Although he, like many other firebenders, had little love for the Avatar, Freo terrified him much more. And now, with no bending... considering what he did, it's even scarier! So in this matter, he was fully cooperating with the Avatar.

Returning to the cell from which the Avatar's old acquaintance had escaped, Aang looked again at the hieroglyphs written in blood by a firebender lying nearby.

"Hello Aang. It seems we'll meet again soon!"

Aang's mood was not the best to begin with, and now it had plummeted so deep that few could retrieve it.

The Fire Lady was in her room, looking out the window at the edges of the crater of a huge volcano. She had mixed feelings that she was trying to sort out. Suddenly, she felt she was not alone in her room. A bright blue fire dagger ignited in her hand, which she immediately used to attack behind her without looking. Servants and others would not approach her from behind.

The fiery blade, capable of slicing through stone almost without resistance, harmlessly shattered and dispersed when it collided with a broad palm that immediately grasped her wrist, pulling her in. It all happened so quickly that Azula didn't understand what was happening until she was enveloped by huge arms hugging her.

"For the last four years, you haven't visited me. Have you found someone else?" asked the voice, as she was pressed against the one who had embraced her.

"No. I thought your mind was already dead. But how? And what happened to you? You've become... different..."

"The Avatar stripped me of my bending, that's true. But I still have my body. And life. A lot of life. Over my practice, I absorbed so much life force from other people and benders that my own grew enough to keep me alive, even being barely a living piece of roasted meat. And even very slowly healed. Thank you for the food, my love, without it, it would have been very difficult."

"But why have you become so... large?" she asked, distancing herself from Freo and examining him.

If previously they were approximately the same height, plus or minus half a head, now... now he was a giant, his entire body seeming to consist of muscles, with a mane of thick black hair falling from his head, hiding somewhere in the rags that served as clothing for this giant, the only familiar thing being the blue eyes she often saw when visiting Freo in prison.

"A lot of free time, the inability to practice bending, abundant nutrition, and control over my body, combined with almost round-the-clock physical activities and finding what replaces bending for me... and in the future, I hope, supplements it."

"Bending replacement?" Azula asked.

"Life. I have a lot of it. And when I fully recovered, I started learning to control it, the life energy. Years in the cage made me what you see now. And life force can largely replace bendingal power. The same body control was easy to relearn, shifting to life."

"Not what you expect when talking about a criminal who hasn't left a small cell for seven years."

"Yes, that place became like home to me, as much as I might miss it. Seven years, you say? I thought only four, at most five had passed. I lost track of time again. And you, in this time, have blossomed, become even more beautiful than you were!" - bending his head, Freo kissed the Fire Lady.

"I think," Azula said, pulling away from the kiss, "we should close the door..."

*****

"So, this is how you live now?" a voice sounded behind Aang. Aang immediately turned around, getting up from the floor, and looked at the unexpected guest.

It was a very tall man, over two meters tall, with black hair that fell in a thick mane to his shoulder blades, his skin had a dark hue, his shoulders were as wide as two and a half Aangs, and his neck was thicker than the Avatar's leg. Something about him seemed familiar, but he could not pinpoint what exactly. Such a man, Aang would have definitely remembered.

"Who are you?" he asked calmly.

"Oh, how sweet, you don't recognize me. Well, yes, I've put on quite a bit of weight over the years..." The giant approached closer, looking down at Aang, and after a couple of seconds, he smiled, revealing all his teeth.

The next second, Aang's body was breaking through a wooden wall, flying outside.

Stopping himself, the Avatar jumped to his feet... only to immediately receive another blow to the shoulder, which sent him flying several more meters.

"You know, Aang, maybe I wouldn't have come to you, tried to achieve everything on my own, I even made significant progress trying to find a way to reclaim what you took from me, but, unfortunately, I came to some rather disheartening conclusions. On one hand, I'm glad - my bending was always with me and no one stole it! On the other hand, I was blocked from using it in any way!

Using life energy allowed me not to trigger the soul's immune response to the clamps that blocked the flow of bending in me, making the effect last until the end of my days. And even control over life force didn't yield results - these 'clamps' are fixed by bending and can only be removed by a mixture of bending and life. Unfortunately, the only one besides me who has life energy, or rather can control it, is you. The one who put these 'clamps'."

"Freo!?" Aang looked at him, eyes widening.

His eyes immediately started glowing, but in the next instant, the giant was next to him, grabbing his leg, and slamming the Avatar into the ground.

"Got it, got it. Now, show me what you've achieved."

Aang flew out from the crash site already in the Avatar State, wrapped in a sphere of air.

A dense air burst hit the giant's chest, but he just smiled even wider, not moving an inch.

"Didn't feel a thing. Now..." The air around Freo thickened and turned red, his hair began to move, eyes filled with redness, and then he disappeared...

...to immediately appear beside Aang and with a backhand blow send him on a new flight, effortlessly bypassing the air sphere.

"Since it turns out that you're the only one who can return my bending at the moment, and you clearly won't do that, I had to find an alternative. And as you can see, this alternative didn't make me weaker," a fire wave flew at Freo, but he just met it with his hand and... the wave shattered as if it hit a rock, yet following it were stone blocks that were easily shattered by the giant's hands and feet, who didn't stop talking in the process. "And years later, I figured out how to reclaim my bending on my own. It was all so simple! All it takes is just... to die!"

With the last word, he moved behind Aang, grabbed him by the prosthesis, and with the other hand slammed his head into the ground. A little effort, and the prosthesis was torn off from the arm.

Enough to perish, and those chains made of someone else's life force, constricting the flows of chia, simply disappear. Unfortunately, one must die completely! So that nothing of the body remains! So that there's nothing for these "clamps" to grasp onto! And that means the end. The end of this life.

A fire stream bursts from the stump of an arm and strikes right into Freo's chest. However, a reddish glow around his body repelled the fire, so that after a dozen seconds of being scorched, even the clothes on the giant's body remained unharmed.

"And so I thought, if I indeed perish, and I must do it, as I want to reclaim my bending, then I'll make sure you go with me. Not you, as Aang. But you, as the Avatar!"

What happened next was akin to an explosion. One of the Avatar's incarnations took control and managed to push Freo back, along with tearing a huge chunk of earth that seemed to cling to his feet, yet in flight, detached and fell to the ground.

The incarnation changed, and before Freo stood the earthbending master familiar to him from the battle seven years ago. Expectedly, he began the same barrage, thinking that an opponent without bending could not oppose him.

However, Freo moved with such speed that the Avatar simply couldn't aim his fire.

Circling around the Avatar, Freo instantly closed the distance to Aang and grabbed him by the neck. At the same moment, all the stones began to strike the giant but couldn't penetrate deeply enough, only leaving small holes in the skin where they hit.

"Farewell forever!" whispered Freo and, grabbing the head with his other hand, with difficulty, but tore the head from the body.

The bending calmed, stones fell to the ground, the glow faded, and only blood, still driven by the heart, spurted out of the neck under pressure.

"Hm... this turned out to be even easier than I thought. Indeed, a different approach solves problems."

"Sure, had we fought with bending, I might have had a significant chance to lose again, though with a better chance to win. But now... all of Aang's and the Avatar's attacks are based on the possibility of victory and inflicting damage comparable to their durability. However, the development of the physical body, along with practices for controlling life force and managing the organism, made me an opponent not of their level in terms of durability. In my current state, even firearms are not a threat to me, let alone such attacks as this gravel barrage. And yet, this was the most fearsome of the Avatar's attacks I've seen!" thought Freo, looking at the corpse, which was beginning to form a pool of blood.

Turning his head towards Aang's home, Freo just sighed and trudged back from where he came.

He had nothing more to do here, and Katara with the children can live on peacefully... even without the father of her children.

The journey back took two months.

All this time, Freo pondered over what step he was to take next. He had been free for six months and all this time had been seeking a way, but found only one.

Having sneaked into the palace, I watched Azula from the shadows, alongside her were three children, two girls and one boy. All of them had bright blue eyes, a clear indication to their father that they were indeed his children. During Freo's initial years in captivity, Azula hoped he would recover from the depression caused by the loss of his bending. He did recover, though he never lost the desire to regain control over it. As a result of this hope and her frequent visits to his cell - three children were born. Whose? The palace was rife with rumors, some of which involved him. Yet, no one dared to speak out. Those who began to speak have been missing for almost half a year, unable to be found. This served as a deterrent, but Azula had also become much stronger over the years!

Hours later, the children went to their rooms, and Azula headed to her quarters. When she entered, I greeted her with a kiss, having arrived in the apartment before its mistress.

Several hours later, I lay in bed with Azula, enjoying her company for the last time.

"You're insane. This is simply suicide."

"For you and everyone else - yes. But not for me. For me, the journey doesn't end. I can feel it."

"Even without your bending, you're strong. The strongest! You defeated the Avatar alone and fought him on equal grounds before that. And how am I supposed to live after? Alone?"

"Why? You have our children. Teach them as I instructed, and they can become just as strong! Make them powerful. Give them love and a path to strength."

Azula said nothing and silently relaxed on top of me. I too relaxed and fell into sleep.

*****

A night later, Azula couldn't find Freo. He was nowhere to be found. He had simply vanished. No traces. No last words. Nothing! As if he had never existed...

And two days later, a lone soul, having lost its body completely, entered the spirit world, which, however, couldn't contain the soul for too long. The soul was strong, and it yearned to live. To begin life anew. And it wasn't difficult to leave, especially after the recent death of one of the strongest spirits, the spirit world was in turmoil, and the soul easily left it.

The end of the first book.

I will take a break from this book for a while and will release another book. Freo's story is not over, but if you want to read the second part of the book, please visit my patreon, the chapters will continue to be published there.

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