The Forgotten Princess (SokkaxOC)

ii. IV

Sokka and Katara both ended up diving headfirst into the mucky water below them, while Aang and Azami both used their bending to slow their decent before landing upright.

After assuring himself that the others were alright, Aang took a quick look around him and realized - the four were alone.

"Where's Appa and Momo?"

He quickly scaled a nearby tree, leaving the others behind. Once he reached the top, with a pretty good view of the swamp, he called out to the two animals, but to no success at all. After a moment, he climbed back down in defeat.

Azami P.o.V.

As Aang searched for their missing companions, Azami helped Katara and Sokka back up. The swamp water was kinda gross, but after wading through that disgusting sewage in Omashu, this was fine.

"Sokka, you've got an elbow leech!"

The boy in question immediately panicked as Azami just rolled her eyes, having grown accustomed to his antics by this point. "Where! Where!" he screamed.

"I'll give you a hint, Ponytail," she muttered. "It's called an elbow leech. You know, the outside part of where your arm bends?"

He didn't even seem to notice her comment as he yanked the leech off. "Why do things keep attaching to me?"

As he was rubbing his elbow, Aang swung back in on a vine hanging from the canopy above. "Were you able to find them?" Katara asked hopefully.

"No," Aang sighed as he dropped back into the swamp. "And the tornado, it just disappeared."

The others all looked ahead into the darkness of the swamp that lay before them, but Azami... to her right, she noticed a strange light in the distance. It was faint, but something about it seemed to transfix her, and she slowly started walking to it. What am I doing? she thought to herself, but her body seemed to have a mind of its own as it kept heading towards the light.

At least, it did before a hand quickly yanked her back by the shoulder. "Are you okay?" Sokka asked her nervously, and Azami shook her head as the weird feeling and the light disappeared.

"Y-yeah," she replied shakily, still unsure of what just happened.

Hours later, and they were still stuck in the swamp. The whole group was getting impatient, none of them liking the situation they were now stuck in. Azami had repeatedly seen that same light appear, each time its hold on her mind and body getting stronger. Thankfully, one of the group had always managed to hold her back, but that wasn't going to last.

"We better speed things up," Sokka announced as he started cutting away at the vines ahead of them with his machete.

"Maybe we should be a little nicer to the swamp," Aang suggested nervously.

Sokka scowled back before he just continued onwards. "Aang, these are just plants. Do you want me to say please and thank you as I swing my machete back and forth?"

"I think you should listen to Aang," Katara muttered, and Azami felt herself starting to agree with them as the waterbender's words echoed her thoughts. "Something about this place feels... alive."

Unfortunately, Sokka remained skeptical. "I'm sure there are lots of things that are alive here, and if we don't want to wind up getting eaten by them, we need to find Appa as fast as we can."

As Sokka kept hacking, Azami felt a strange prickly sensation on the back of her neck. It was almost like she was back in the Northern Water Tribe again... like she was being watched, but she didn't know from where.