Zuko would have genuinely preferred the obvious battle, being set upon the northern waterbenders guarding their quickly fashioned wall tucked close to the magnificent palace. He strode quickly along like he had any idea what they were all doing, beside Raven who was doing largely the same.
"Why did Ozai even want to attack this place? These people don't seem very threatening, and they just stay up here anyway," Zuko grumbled as Iroh hurried up beside.
Iroh shrugged, his expression deeply tense as he glanced back and forth at the assembly of exceptionally dangerous Arzayans.
"I do not think the Fire Lord has any justifications that would make sense to us, Prince Zuko," he said with deep disappointment. "But I'd be more worried about being seen by Azula right now."
They did at least give Zuko a full set of Arzayan girdings and armor, complete with a helmet his rabid wife hadn't destroyed yet, but carrying around Arzayanagi himself seemed awfully likely to draw attention.
All three raced over an arched canal bridge and into a low-walled, separated quarter of small slanted-roof structures built from especially weathered ice and rock. They were tucked behind Lord Arza, Captain Shoko, and four scowling, wild-eyed Arzayan firebenders in especially fancy armor. And hot on their heels was the aging and consistently blunt Commander Yo, who kept his hand firmly latched onto the strange golden blade 'Koanimaru', and four of his own marines who all carried some kind of fancy box that was akin to a tiny palanquin.
Zuko could only assume 'Maru' was another dragon, but nobody had actually explained it, of course.
To his right side he could see Arzayan regulars through some passes and alleys, marching along like they were making for the palace's flank. But even with the soldiers yelling themselves hoarse like they were in battle, they were pretty plainly just getting in the way of Azula's forces seeing what they were all up to.
"Prince Zuko!" Lord Arza called back.
The lead group of Arzayans had halted, and both he and Captain Shoko were scowling way more than necessary and pointing at an exceptionally old and more roughly domed shaped structure.
"What?" Zuko flatly asked as he hurried up, trying not to sound too annoyed.
Commander Yo came close behind Zuko and Iroh. "Fuckin' ask Our Lady if this is it already," he abrasively demanded.
"If it's fucking what, Commander?" Zuko abraded right back.
Commander Yo smiled. "I'd love to tell you, but…" he began, and turned to stare unblinkingly at Raven, who thumbed her nose back at him as hard as she possibly could.
"Oh, fuck off," she snapped instantly, smacking the air with her gesture in Arzayanagi's direction. "She was being totally gross and weird! I'm not sorry!"
"We know, Raven," her father growled with all teeth bared. "The only reason I'm letting you come is so I know what you're up to."
Raven looked prepared to say something very irresponsible, but she halted at a glance from Captain Shoko for some reason. Zuko was sure there was something they still hadn't told him that was going on between the two, but that was apparently just what life was like when tolerating Arzayans on a daily basis.
Before it could get worse, Zuko sighed and pulled off the glove he wore for the sole purpose of not constantly feeling the full weight of Arzaya's rather anxiety-inducing presence every moment he held the spear.
Bare hand on the jet black glossy shaft, he asked only, "Well?"
No.
Zuko reeled back a bit from the spearhead. Arzaya sounded different. Louder. Closer, maybe.
Like he had to fill the void to keep problems out, Iroh quickly spoke up, "I am sure it is that one, my friends." He was pointed to a structure further west.
Zuko didn't even have to confirm.
The sunken unmaintained crater in the ice that Iroh pointed to looked distinctly like the benders who fashioned the city's every square inch had all deliberately stayed well away from the especially boxy and starkly plain structure at its center.
The Arzayans went from quietly grimacing to grinning too much as they hurried up, surrounding the greyish, dirty ice block that looked short from a distance, but only because it was in a sloped pit.
"Prince Zuko, be careful not to touch anything. There is a truly foul presence here," Iroh warned as he stood especially close.
"Do we… blow it open?" Lord Arza wondered as he scratched his stubbly chin.
There is a door.
Zuko jolted, and blinked. He couldn't hear it, but he could somehow feel Arzaya's condescension and disappointment regardless. It almost made him feel bad for Lord Arza, as he hadn't seen the well-hidden seam either.
"There," Zuko said, and pointed with Arzayanagi.
For an instant he felt it. The presence his uncle spoke of, like a cold wind checking his shoulder just to bully him. He gripped the spear shaft tight, winced, and dragged the spearhead down again, plunging it into the instantly sizzling and steaming ice floor.
"Whoa!" he blurted. "It… was pulling closer!"
No one seemed worried other than Iroh, although Raven was mostly just staring at her feet and ignoring everything as she gritted her teeth and forced herself not to do some kind of flaming kick at her dad, so Zuko wasn't sure she was keeping up at all.
"Energetic for a dead woman," Commander Yo said with a grin, and as usual tried to laugh but mostly just coughed. "Get it open already, men," he grumbled.
Yo's four marines set down their weird treasure box.
Very, very much to Zuko's surprise, the four marines took bending stances. Not fire. They all four arced their right hands over their heads and pulled down in a smooth, flowing motion. With no delay, the seam parted, and the heavy, featureless door slid down into the frozen ground with a rumble.
"You—there's—what?" Zuko coherently requested, and when that only raised an eyebrow or two, he tried, "There's Arzayan waterbenders?! Since when?!"
"Well…" Raven quietly muttered. "The first Arzayans were mostly waterbenders, actually."
The pitch black inside the now opened tomb was eerily familiar, Zuko realized. It drank in the light too greedily to be natural, just like when he opened the way to Arzaya back on Crescent Island. The casual disregard of wild things faded away from the whole assembly of Arzayans as they all paused for a moment.
"I can hear her…" one of the Arzayan waterbender marines whispered.
Commander Yo glanced over at Arzayanagi, and held his grip tightly on Koanimaru.
"No need to shout at them," he coolly said, and took the shoulder of the most rattled looking waterbender from behind. His voice went low. "Don't act like prey, son. We don't know how wild she'll be, or if she'll recognize you at all."
It wasn't a good sign if Yo of all people was giving stern, genuine warnings.
"W-wait," Raven suddenly perked up the instant the waterbenders approached the darkness. "Dad?" she cautiously asked, trying not to sound accusatory.
He didn't even turn to look at her, but Zuko could see his scowl tighten.
"You're not seriously just letting Koani out of Arzayanagi—Dad?!" Raven warned, gripping Zuko's forearm and pulling close to him, and flickering a gaze to the golden spearhead.
"You can… even do that?" Zuko paused in place to airily say, glancing around before settling on Arzayanagi's tip.
No response.
Lord Arza gave only a glance. He was in no mood to trust his daughter, it seemed. Raven huffed, very deliberately reasserting her discontent, and looked to Shoko instead.
"This is… but she hates Arzaya! What are you doing?!" and she snapped her hand to the spearshaft. "Lady Arzaya, you're really okay with this?!"
Again, no response.
Lord Arza kept his eyes on the sight of the waterbenders carrying ancient, frayed cloth wrappings and brittle bones from the sinister void, but tilted slightly back towards his daughter.
"The Northern Water Tribe is useless to us weak, Raven," he said with a gravelly rasp. "Even if they joined our war, they're far too soft now."
"Why would they follow some ancient dead pirate?" Zuko scoffed, gesturing to the very abandoned tomb. "Doesn't look like they're fond of her."
Lord Arza grinned back.
Commander Yo handed something to a waterbender marine, and he slowly and ceremoniously placed the silvery metal ornament atop the assembled wrappings and bones. Zuko leaned in enough to see it had two large blue gems faceted like eyes upon a monstrous, stylized jawless skull.
Captain Shoko apparently misliked how disgusted Zuko and Raven looked as they watched her place six golden bangles—like the ones most Arzayans wore—inside the ornamental chest as well.
"Raven, I've seen a lot of crazy stuff because of Arzaya, but like come on… that's a pile of bones," Zuko muttered, but then felt some tinge of irritation and glanced to where his bare hand still held Arzayanagi. "Uh, Lady Arzaya, I mean. She can raise the dead? Like no way, if she could do that, then why not—?"
Do you doubt me, Prince?
Zuko shuddered at the intensity of her message. Raven snapped her hand back off the spear and held it close to her chest. He had the quick thought that Arzaya had done something very much like saving or bringing back his life at the temple on Crescent Island, but… a pile of bones? And then why not Asha? He wanted to make another demand, but bringing up Asha's name around Lord Arza seemed like a suicidal act.
"Normally this would be impossible," Shoko breathed out as she let the waterbenders tuck a few more bundles of cloth atop the contents in the chest. "But Our Lady preserves Koani."
"So… Koani's spirit is also in here?" Zuko wondered as he held it up long enough to feel it vibrate more than he liked in the slanted evening sunlight.
"We can't hear her," Raven quickly said. "We're firebenders."
The Arzayan waterbenders, who had been seeming kind of quiet and meek like they knew their place and it wasn't very illustrious, but now the four of them had confident—almost arrogant—postures that made them fit in much better with the Arzayan firebenders.
"We can," one of them said with a smug nod and grin Zuko's way, like it was finally their turn to be special, and he couldn't possibly care less about that competition.
"What is she saying, I am curious?" Iroh stepped in to ask with a modicum of civility, although Zuko picked up a very rare tremor in his tone.
The waterbenders looked at each other, and even Lord Arza and Captain Shoko looked very interested.
"She's singing," a marine said.
"Singing?" Iroh almost innocently wondered.
"And laughing," another added.
And like they didn't want to be late for their date with the ancient pirate queen, the four hoisted up the chest to rest the handles on their shoulders again. Despite the extra weight they were definitely more energetic, taking the lead to march fast towards an incline heading north.
"Great," Zuko flatly breathed. "That sounds just great."
"Singing what?" Iroh scampered after the marines to ask.
The whole procession was moving again, so Zuko and Raven hurried to catch up despite wanting to linger in their pool of misgivings. They were able to catch the silent open mouths of those two marines, who seemed to think better of repeating what they heard out loud.
"Come on, the royal forces are getting impatient!" Captain Shoko shouted back as the leading soldiers pulled too far ahead.
Zuko looked aside, and his heart felt awfully strange in his chest as he saw Fire Nation spearmen rushing to take ground that the water tribe unfortunately wasn't bothering to contest. His eyes drifted higher, and he saw streaks of flame crashing against the frozen walls, sending glittering ice and slush in bursts that rained down on either side's forces. Heavy bumps of water surged along the high-up palace canals, and dumped as uncontrolled deluges to force back advancing invaders again and again, but it was only a stalling strategy. At least the detachment heading in his direction also got side-swiped by a rolling wave not even meant for them, so they'd be spending precious time fishing boots, spears and trembling men back out of canals.
"Wow, why do the northern waterbenders suck so much?" Raven said between breaths as she hustled to keep up and pulled tight a fire-resistant hood, what with Azula's men so close.
"Dunno…" Zuko distantly replied. Then, sharper than necessary, he groused. "They should ask that waterbender girl you like so much for tips."
"Zuko, for fuck's sake…" Raven instantly sighed.
He shot her a narrow glance. "This is all very confusing and infuriating," he stated, apparently his idea of an apology.
At the next visible gap where they were forced to round and gently curving ramp up towards the far back cliffs beside the palace, Zuko caught a glimpse of several more bursts of flame being swallowed up by another bulging wave flooding down from the palace grounds.
Then he winced at the next bright blast.
A smoky trail still accused the late Admiral Zhao's flagship of the gaping, rapidly further collapsing hole in the palace's defensive wall.
"Hah… hmm… it does not—hah—look like they will last the evening," Iroh tensely said as he huffed, and was happy to get to stop where everyone was clustering behind Lord Arza and Captain Shoko. "So much… ahh… for Azula trying to wear the Arzayans down in a long siege?"
"She's on to us," Captain Shoko flatly shot back. "Jinai—the wall."
Zuko caught that. Weird she used his given name. Weirder he didn't call her out. And when he looked to Raven to ask, she had the most obvious guilty look with eyes wide, lips pursed, and head fully reeled back like she was putting it away for the night.
"Uhh… Raven?"
It was getting darker out fast.
Zuko took a look around as Shoko and Lord Arza hissed back and forth, giving suspicious glances his way that Iroh hated more than anyone. They were in a shadowy corner behind the palace, where massive icework bricks were firmly stacked far too high to climb with that big chest in tow, and there was no way around as they were built straight into the glacial cliffs up to the lifeless frozen wasteland of the north pole.
He really wanted to demand Raven explain all her bizarre guilty expressions, but it just wasn't his day.
"Prince Zuko!" Lord Arza bellowed, way too loud for how close he was. Zuko blinked as the towering, scruffy-man pointed to the expanse of wall with inscrutably wild eyes. "Take it down!"
Zuko almost forgot he was holding Arzayanagi and said something extra stupid. Not quite.
"Uh…" he muttered as he turned the spear at an angle and stared at it like a bit of a dope. "How?"
Point it like a javelin.
"You point it like a javelin, Zuk—" Raven started before Arzaya finished.
Cut short by Lord Arza bellowing, "Point it like a javelin, Prince!"
"Yeah! Just point it like it's a javelin!" Shoko called back as she stepped out of the line of fire.
"Shut up!" Zuko snapped. "I heard her the first time!"
To keep anyone else from saying it too, he hoisted Arzayanagi over his head, and he noticed his uncle carefully getting as behind him as possible, which was fair but a little disheartening. Raven tucked herself so close behind him he bumped her forehead with his backside.
"Whaddya—?! Scoot back, weirdo!" he barked at her.
"Rrghnnghyaahrgh!" she yowled back in discontent, and waddled back until she bumped into Iroh instead.
"Pardon me, Lady Raven!" he chuckled.
"Okay, so—AH!" Zuko belted out a yelp as he felt a surge in his hand. He scrambled to hold the shaking spearhead steady. "Whoa! What's it—?!"
Again it wouldn't let him speak.
A purple-blue flash.
An ear-splitting crack-KOW! like he deeply did not expect.
Zuko slid back far enough to have toppled Raven if she hadn't scrammed. Streaks of jagged light ate up his vision, but they slowly dulled in shifting neon colors bleeding into each other as he blinked and stood woozily in place. An absolute catastrophe of rumbling and booming followed as the blasted inwards massive ice wall crumbled around the small hole he'd apparently punched through it with… lightning?
"Why did… that… did anyone get hurt?!" he stammered and panicked.
Zuko looked around with genuine tightness in his chest, glad to see Raven and Iroh only had their hair raised comically in all directions.
"Hmm." Raven hummed as she slowly stood up again with a knowing nod, and raised a ringer to somehow confidently say, "We may have failed to explain it does that when royals use it."
"Thanks, Raven," Zuko stated.
"You're very welcome," Raven said and nodded, her calm tone unmatched to her shuffling steps. "Also everyone is fine," she insisted, but flickered a glance to where her father was already gracelessly scrambling up the slushy shattered mess still pouring from the breach.
"Unless they were on the other side of that wall, in which case I suspect they are properly fucked," she went on.
Zuko hated that he showed a grin. Her tone had stayed so formal and noble that it got him anyway, despite his best efforts to remain fed up. He tried to bring things back to discontent with an eye roll, but she wasn't even looking anymore!
"Stop rambling!" Lord Arza barked at the newlyweds. "Azula's men won't hesitate after that."
Zuko and Raven both looked southward, where there was no view whatsoever due to an extension of palace walls.
"Right…" Zuko muttered under his breath, and started scrambling up the chunky slush he'd made after everyone else.
-
Sokka waited until the last of the Arzayans vanished deeper into the narrow courtyard behind the palace before he stopped his decorative statue impression and breathed again.
Breathe was perhaps generous. What came out of him was more discontent than air.
"Okay," he whispered, still staring at the oozing slushy collapse of the wall that would never dare get in Prince Zuko's way again. "That was… a lot."
Yue was silent.
Stepping out enough to look the mess up and down, he saw it steamed and sloughed slush in ugly unstable chunks, and there was no chance at all of the two of them scrambling up after the Arzayan strike team without being seen by somebody who would ignite them both without hesitation. Below, farther out toward the broken western approaches, warriors were already shouting over each other while more distant booms rolled in from the harbor line. The whole city seemed to have decided the battle for the palace was the real one right until Zuko spear of doomed the whole situation.
It would be a moment before anyone of either the royal or Arzayan forces climbed up to figure out what in the world was happening around back of the palace, but not a long one.
Sokka sighed as hard as he could at the all too familiar half-hidden seam in the ice wall, and pointed his bent spear.
"Hope you're not getting too tired," he said. "At least we have practice?"
Yue blinked at him, and only then seemed to realize he had started moving. She followed at once, long coat gathered just enough to keep from catching, one hand to the wall as Sokka dropped to the little ledge beside the secret passage entrance and reached back for her automatically.
She took his hand without comment.
That felt ominous.
Usually she would at least look graceful about it.
This time she just came after him like she was obeying.
Furious boots hitting the ice stairs up to them from the city were just audible as the hidden way swallowed them up in blue dimness and still cold. Those footsteps and the sounds of the city at war turned muffled at once, softened into distant tremors and the occasional deep whomp of something exploding.
As soon as they were well out of sight, Sokka let out a breath.
"Worst part?" he muttered as he turned sideways and started the awkward shuffle through the first narrow stretch, "That lightning thing Zuko did isn't even a tenth as deadly as what spear of doom did at Omashu." He twisted a little farther and looked back at Yue over one shoulder. "But… they could have artillery barraged the palace flat, and didn't! So… silver lining?"
Yue was still behind him, still following, still far too quiet.
He got through the worst of the squeeze and turned to help guide her hand around a jut of ice. She was doing it right, stepping where he stepped, ducking where he ducked, but with the slightly delayed precision of someone whose mind was several paces away, and she was avoiding eye contact. It was unreasonably painful for him that she wouldn't look at him, but he kept it to himself.
"Yue?"
Her eyes finally lifted to his, but not for long. He gave her the moment she needed, even in the time crunch.
"I can hear her," she said.
Sokka did not need to ask who, and it made every hair on his neck stand at attention.
"Koani."
Yue nodded once. "She's… very loud now," she whispered, like she was afraid the ancient pirate queen would hear her.
Sokka really wished there was something he could just do. For the moment, all he had to offer was his hand to help her over a crack they'd both stumbled on before.
"Loud how?" he asked. "Like—is she messing with you? Making you feel things? Arzaya did that to Aang and Katara." He sounded rather incensed as he went on, "Because if she's doing something to your head—"
"N-no," Yue said quickly. Then, because she knew how that sounded, she added more carefully, "Or, I don't think so. I'm not sure why. She's just…" She swallowed and looked away into the glowing blue ice. "Singing…"
Sokka stopped dead enough that Yue nearly bumped into him.
"Singing what?"
Yue made a face he had never seen on her before.
Not composed. Not delicate. Just raw disgust.
"I really don't want to say, um, any of that."
Not knowing definitely made it worse for Sokka, but he was willing to take the hit for Yue's sake.
They kept moving because standing still might give them heart attacks. There was no room to stand there and process ancient pirate-ghost songs with any dignity. Sokka turned sideways again and edged past a place where the wall narrowed enough to make him angle his spear this way and that 'til it wiggled through.
Yue came after him like a sad little shadow.
He couldn't hear Koani, but he could feel something. No foul singing, just the effect of it. An ugly, wicked glee in the air, as if the city's fear had made her more real.
Yue's voice came quietly from behind him.
"It doesn't feel like she's singing at me." A pause. "She's just… delighted."
Sokka winced hard enough for nobody to see it, which was one of the many advantages of a cramped death-crack in a glacier.
"Well," he muttered, "that's a terrible sign for pretty much everyone except her."
"Very much so, Sokka—" Yue's breath hitched. "I-I… I don't want to hear her, I d-don't—" Her lip trembled as she looked at him with such despair. "What are we even supposed to do? When we get there, what can we—?"
"Hey," Sokka said as he snatched her trembling hand, and squeezed. "We'll figure it out." And he gave such a confident, slow nod it genuinely affected her, but not as much as him saying, "We already kicked Arzaya's sorry butt back to whatever pit she crawled out of, and Koani should be easier than her."
She gave a weak smile. It was enough to get them a little farther.
The passage bent down and left. Sokka ducked. Yue ducked a breath later. Overhead, somewhere well above all the blue-packed silence, a heavy boom rolled through the ice and set fine white dust sifting from a seam in the ceiling.
Yue didn't flinch, and just gazed upwards at a new, slightly luminous crack. She might well have been hoping to get crushed by tons of ice, rather than find out what Koani had in store for them.
"If you want," he said, and had to stop there for a second because the words were annoyingly hard to make normal, "we don't have to keep going."
Yue looked at him, genuinely uncertain.
He shrugged one shoulder, trying hard not to make it sound like an offer and also very much making it one.
"It's obvious where they're going," he said. "You don't have to come."
The passage shuddered again, faintly this time. Just a distant impact swallowed mostly by the old glacier.
Yue's eyes lowered for only a moment, with the slightest smile.
Sokka very carefully did not say anything else. He didn't point out that they had the only reliable way out of the city available still, or that he really would just run away with her if she begged at all.
He just waited.
Yue drew in one breath. Then another, deeper one, until whatever had gone hollow in her shoulders eased by the smallest amount. When she looked up again, she still looked shaken, maybe not resolute? But less divided.
"No," she said softly. "We should keep going."
Sokka nodded resolutely enough for both of them.
"Okay."
Behind them, Agna Qel'a kept shaking. Ahead of them, the light of day heralded a meeting with a pirate queen that Yue desperately wished would stop introducing her to new vulgar concepts. At least the notion of turning back was dead and buried behind them.
As they peeked ever so carefully out into the now much busier narrow courtyard, however, something scuffed the ice right behind them. Yue squeaked, barely escaping a full on shriek, and Sokka was instantly prepared to get his bent spear caught on the ceiling and bonk his head on a jutting hunk of ice.
"Wassat?!" he hissed.
Standing there was… another girl? She was hard to see clearly just in the dark, but stepped just close enough to make out that she was young—too young to be Koani, surely? Her fluffy parka seemed a couple sizes too big, obscuring her but for her dimly lit eyes.
"Oh, hi there!" she beamed.
Sokka slowly lowered his spear from the successful ceiling implantation, and even slower opened his mouth, but there was only the drip-drip of frosty water coming down at the glowing white exit, forming a small pool. He looked to Yue, hoping for an explanation.
"Who are you?" was all Yue had, unfortunately.
"Oh, uh…" the girl started, her voice way too cute and calm for the dire context. She glanced around at the steamy wisps drifting in over the drip-formed pool. "I'm Misty!" Ty Lee said with an energetic nod that made her hood fall over her face.
She awkwardly tugged down her misfit parka until at least her wide smile was visible. "Misty Pond," she declared.