Mount Baihu rose above the clouds like a stone fang piercing the sky. Two weeks of uninterrupted flight had brought Aang there, crossing frozen mountain ranges and mist-filled valleys. The summit was an inhospitable place: the air was so thin that each breath scraped the throat, and the wind blew with constant violence, raising whirlwinds of pulverized snow that blinded the eyes.
Aang landed on a narrow ledge and gasped, resting his hands on his knees. His muscles protested after hours of flight in the rarefied atmosphere, but he could not afford to rest. The Renegades had the advantage, after all.
As he looked up, he saw it.
On one of the peak's vertical walls, partially hidden by a thick layer of accumulated snow, stretched a wall of ice. It was not natural ice: its surface was too smooth, as if it had been shaped by a waterbender of unimaginable power. And inside, barely visible through the bluish transparency, a silhouette could be distinguished.
—Sonum? —Aang murmured, his breath forming a white cloud.
He approached cautiously. The snow covering the ice surface reached his knees. With a circular motion of his arms, he generated a controlled gust of wind that swept away the accumulated snow. The flakes swirled in a spiral before dispersing into the void.
Now he could see better. On the other side of the ice, suspended in a crystalline prison, was a human figure. But her features were not clearly distinguishable: the thickness of the ice and the trapped air bubbles distorted the features.
Aang reflected for a moment. If that was Sonum, freeing her meant getting answers. But it also meant releasing a power that Avatar Xion had described as dangerous. And if it was not Sonum...
He made a decision.
He adopted the waterbending stance, his arms tracing a wide, fluid arc. The ice responded to his call with a deep groan. Aang clenched his teeth and pulled with all his power, separating the frozen water molecules, forcing the glacier to break from within.
The crash was deafening. The ice wall exploded into countless fragments that shot out in all directions like a rain of crystalline daggers. Aang covered his face with his forearm, feeling the superficial cuts of the ice grazing him.
From among the remains of the glacier, a hooded figure emerged. He floated in the air for a couple of seconds, suspended by an invisible force, his cloak waving slowly around him. Then, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, he collapsed onto the snow.
Aang ran toward him. He knelt beside him and pushed back the hood with trembling hands.
But what he saw made him frown.
The figure was not a woman. It could not be Sonum.
It was a stocky man, middle-aged, with a thick beard and hardened features.
—Who are you?
A deep tremor suddenly ran through the mountain. The ice beneath Aang's feet began to crack.
Aang looked up just in time to see the ceiling of the ice cave start to fracture. Large blocks of rock and ice broke away from the walls, and the ground vibrated with a shock that ran through his legs. The entire peak of Mount Baihu was beginning to collapse.
—Oh, no!
Aang hoisted the man onto his shoulders and grunted under the effort as he began to run toward the cave exit. Rocks fell around him like projectiles, and the roar of the crumbling mountain filled his ears.
A stone the size of a fist struck him in the back. Aang screamed in pain, and the unconscious man slipped from his shoulders, falling toward the abyss opening beneath his feet.
—Damn it!
The man began to fall at great speed, his body spinning inert in the void. Aang did not hesitate; he used one of the falling rocks as a platform, leaping off it with a burst of airbending, and launched himself in pursuit of the stranger. A colossal shadow loomed over him: an entire chunk of Mount Baihu's peak, the size of a temple, broke off and fell directly toward both of them.
Aang leaped from platform to platform, using the falling rocks as makeshift stepping stones. The wind whistled in his ears, the cold burned his eyes, but he did not stop moving. His fingers finally closed around the man's wrist just as the ground rushed toward them at terrifying speed.
Aang's eyes lit up with a blinding celestial glow. He channeled his chi in a desperate torrent, and from his palms burst two downward streams of fire. The two columns of concentrated fire roared toward the ground, slowing their fall. The heat singed his clothes, and the recoil shook his arms, but it worked.
Using the two fire streams as makeshift thrusters, Aang began to fly sideways, trying to escape the enormous rock still falling above his head. But his chi, exhausted after two weeks of travel and the battle against the glacier, reached its limit. The flames flickered and died, and Aang began to fall again, this time without control.
It was then that a hand grabbed him by the shoulder.
It was the bearded man. His eyes were open, bloodshot but lucid. Without a word, he traced a circle with his free hand, and beneath them, a large sphere of compacted wind formed. The sphere held them both in the air, spinning slowly as the world crumbled around them.
Then, the man extended his arm upward and unleashed a hurricane-force blast of wind. The column of air struck the enormous rock falling above them, stopping it momentarily in midair. It was only an instant, but it was enough.
Aang stared in astonishment. That movement, that way of bending the air... it was airbending. The bearded man was an airbender.
A shadow passed over them, and Appa's familiar bellow echoed through the sky.
—The Avatar Team has arrived to the rescue! —Sokka shouted from the flying bison's back.
Appa glided beneath the sphere of wind just as it began to dissipate. The bearded man and Aang fell onto his back with a dull thud, and the bison beat his six legs to fly away as the enormous rock finally fell, crashing into the ground with a thunderous boom that shook the entire mountain. A cloud of dust and snow rose above the clouds, hiding the place where Mount Baihu's peak had once stood.
Katara threw herself at Aang and hugged him with a force that drew a groan from him.
—You're okay, you're okay, you're okay!
—You couldn't wait a single day before running off to find your death, Twinkle Toes —Toph said from her position on Appa's back, arms crossed and one eyebrow raised, though her blind eyes could not see the disaster they had just escaped.
Sokka, on the other hand, was looking at the bearded man who lay gasping with difficulty on Appa's fur. His eyes narrowed with suspicion.
—I thought you came here looking for a staff. So who's this guy?
Aang slowly sat up, Katara's arm still around his shoulders. He looked at the bearded man with an expression that was a mixture of awe, confusion, and something akin to hope.
—He... —he said, his voice trembling slightly—. He's an airbender.
Sokka opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. Katara looked at the man with wide eyes.
—Another one?
The bearded man, before anyone could add anything more, closed his eyes and lost consciousness.