Chapter 1: The Massacre at the Oasis
The smoke tasted like stolen meals.
Lisa pulled the scratchy wool of her standard-issue scarf higher over her nose, the rough fibers doing little to filter the ash falling like gray snow. Through the slit between her helmet and the cloth, she watched the trading post burn. It was supposed to be simple. A show of force. The Water Tribe villagers were to understand the new order, to submit. That’s what Commander Jee had said.
But this wasn’t order. This was chaos screaming.
A hunched timber frame groaned and collapsed in a shower of sparks, illuminating the frantic shapes below. A man with a woven fishing net in his hands was cut down by a bright arc of fire from a soldier’s fist. The net turned to black lace, then to nothing.
“Stay in formation, grunt,” a veteran beside her growled, not even looking her way. His eyes were bright with reflected flame.
She couldn’t move. Her boots were rooted to the frosted earth. This was wrong. The mission brief said pacification. This was eradication. Her stomach, full of hearty garrison stew from just hours ago, turned to cold slurry.
A high, thin wail cut through the roar of the flames and the distant, off-key laughter of firebenders lighting up a storehouse of seal jerky.
It was a child. A small boy, maybe five, stood frozen in the open space between a burning sled and the advancing line of red armor. He was clutching a carved toy otter-penguin. A soldier leveled his hand, palm glowing a dull, building orange.
Lisa’s body moved before her mind could catch up. She broke rank, her own firebending propelling her forward in a clumsy rush. She skidded on the icy dirt, putting herself between the child and the blast.
“Stand down!” Her voice, usually so carefully masked to sound lower, cracked with the order. She flung her arms wide, shielding the tiny figure behind her legs. “By order of the Fire Lord, stand down! This is not our command!”
The soldier hesitated, the fire at his palm sputtering in confusion.
Commander Jee was there in three long strides. His face, a mask of leathery scars and cold disdain, didn’t register surprise. He backhanded her across the jaw.
The world exploded into white stars. The helmet flew off, her short, dark hair fanning out for a moment before she hit the ground, the impact driving the air from her lungs. The taste of copper joined the ash on her tongue.
“The only order here is mine,” Jee said, his voice calm and conversational over the cacophony. He didn’t even look at her. “Finish the perimeter sweep. No witnesses.”
He walked away. The soldier, his moment of doubt gone, stepped around Lisa’s prone form. She pushed up on her elbows, vision swimming. The boy was gone, vanished into the swirling smoke. Maybe he’d made it. Maybe.
A new sound entered the fray—the sharp, wet thwack of ice meeting armor, the guttural war cries of the Water Tribe warriors finally rallying.
Blue and white painted faces emerged from the smoke and shadows behind the huts. They moved with a fury that was both desperate and precise. A whip of water snatched a firebender’s feet from under him. A spike of ice impaled a soldier’s outstretched arm mid-blast.
The Fire Nation line buckled. The playful laughter turned to shouts of alarm. “Retreat to the treeline! Now!” Jee bellowed.
Chaos swallowed everything. Lisa staggered to her feet, disoriented. The tide of red was flowing backward, soldiers turning and running, launching defensive bursts of flame behind them. She was carried along for a few steps, a piece of debris in the current.
Then she saw the old woman.
Half-pulled, half-dragging a younger woman with a bleeding leg, they were trapped against the collapsing wall of a grain store. A Fire Nation soldier, cut off from his unit and panicking, saw movement and wheeled, fire coiling around his fists.
“They’re civilians!” Lisa screamed. He either didn’t hear or didn’t care.
She acted. A precise jet of flame, the kind she’d practiced ten thousand times in the royal courtyards, shot from her kick. It wasn’t to kill. It was to deflect. It slammed into the soldier’s shoulder, spinning him around. His own blast went wide, scorching the dirt. He glared at her, saw the face of a fellow Fire Nation, and his expression twisted in betrayal before he turned and fled.
The old woman’s eyes met Lisa’s. There was no gratitude there. Only a bottomless, chilling hatred. Lisa took a step toward them, maybe to help with the injured one.
A searing pain lanced across her ribs. She looked down. A gash, clean and deep, parted her uniform and the skin beneath. A Water Tribesman, having seen her firebend, had struck with a water-keen blade. He was already turning to face another threat.
The pain was a white-hot focus. The retreat was a rout now. She had to go. She turned to follow the last flashes of red disappearing into the pines.
A muffled cry came from the grain store. The roof beam, charred and glowing, was sagging. The younger woman was trying to crawl out, but her leg was pinned under a fallen sack. The old woman was pulling uselessly at her shoulders.
Lisa stopped running.
She looked at the trees. Safety. Her nation. Then she looked at the beam, at the two lives about to be crushed. Her father’s voice in her head was a cold, clear command: Your duty is to the Fire Nation. Sentiment is a weakness.
She ran toward the hut.
Heat blasted her face. She planted her feet in the ash, gritted her teeth against the scream in her ribs, and thrust her hands up. A concussive blast of fire shot upward, not at the beam, but at the supporting wall beside it. The already-weakened structure shuddered. The beam held, just for a second, propped up by the new angle.
“Now! Pull her now!” Lisa yelled, the strain vibrating in her voice.
The old woman heaved. The younger one scrambled free just as Lisa’s energy faltered. The fire sputtered. The wall crumbled.
The beam fell.
But not on the women. They were clear, stumbling back into the smoky night. It fell across Lisa’s path, a barrier of solid, burning timber. The impact knocked her backward. She landed hard on her wounded side, a cry tearing from her throat.
Before the spots could clear from her vision, a shadow loomed over her. Not Fire Nation red. Fur and leather and blue war paint. A Water Tribe warrior, his breath clouding in the freezing air, his eyes wide with a fury that was personal.
He saw her face, young and un-helmeted. He saw her singed Fire Nation uniform. He saw the faint tendril of smoke still curling from her fingertips.
He didn’t see the context. He only saw the enemy.
“Fire Nation filth,” he spat, the words thick with accent and loathing.
A boot slammed into her stomach. All the air left her for the second time that night. She curled around the agony, helpless. A rough hand tangled in her hair, yanking her head up. The last thing she saw was the butt of a stone-tipped club swinging toward her face.
There was no grand light, no meaningful memory. Just a blunt, dark crunch. And then nothing. Nothing but the cold of the icy ground seeping into her bones, the distant echo of screams, and the smell of a world, and her place in it, burning to ash.