Chosen by the Spirits | A male reader x Avatar the Last Airbender story

Chapter 30- The Earth King (part 1)

"What was that?!" Toph shouted, unable to see what was happening. On the surface, just in front of the entrance to the palace, I could barely see earth kingdom soldiers loading the huge rocks onto some sort of trebuchet powered by earth bending.

"Surface-to-air rocks!" Sokka yelled. "More incoming!". Appa harshly steered from left to right as he was barely able to avoid the rapidly approaching rocks. We had to get to the ground safely, or else we were going to be launched through the air. A boulder almost hit straight into Appa's right side, but luckily Aang was able to block and dismantle it using earthbending. This gave me an idea.

"Sokka, hold onto my leg," I barked at my friend as I shakily stood up on Appa's back. Sokka gave me a perplexed look but nonetheless did what I asked. With Sokka clutching onto my leg, I felt more steady so I wouldn't fly off of Appa's back. As one of the many boulders rushed closely past my face, I inhaled deeply through my mouth and nose. By now I was already an expert at feeling the heat coursing throughout my body. Instead I focussed on the clouds above me, and worked on creating many electrical imbalances within them. At the same time, I saw a huge rocky projectile rapidly coming straight towards Appa. Just as it was about to make impact, I released the energy that I had built up, and a strike of lighting accurately hit the boulder, completely shattering it. I did this a few more times, dismantling a number of deadly boulders, as thunder rippled through the sky a few moments after each strike. Aang helped me out by using earthbending to destroy the projectiles I couldn't quite get to in time.

After about a dozen lightning strikes, we were closing to reaching the ground. Aang jumped off of Appa early, using his earthbending to clear a landing bay on the palaces' courtyard. The rest of us quickly followed suit, jumping off of Appa and landing on the long, wide earth pathway that led to the staircase of the Earth King's palace. As we ran across the grey pathway towards majestic palace in the distance, I saw numerous earth kingdom guards running to intercept us.

"Incoming!" I yelled at my friends, warning them of the danger as the earthbenders began punching cubes of rocks at us from a distance. Aang and Toph quickly sprang into action, using their earthbending to counter the guards' strikes, causing their projectiles to crumble mid-air. Myself and Katara soon joined in on the action, using long water whips from our waterbending pouches to slap away nearby guards. In the corner of my eye I saw Toph topple many small walls of earth so that they trapped the guards against the ground.

"Sorry, we just need to get through to see the Earth King," Katara apologised to the men, who were simply just trying to do their job and protect the king.

As we continued to sprint towards the two looming staircases, we all noticed a large number of earthbending guards between the staircases, lifting up two huge, heavy badgermole statues. They lobbed the statues down the staircase, right towards where we were. To our fortune, Toph and Aang rapidly bent a shield of earth around everyone, Appa included. I could hear a huge crashing noise as the statues presumably made impact with the earth covering, and the whole thing rumbled, but it managed to protect us.

Once we left the earth shield, we passed by a small bridge just before the first staircase, with a small river of water slowly running underneath. I couldn't help but grin as I saw the supply of water, and instantly I controlled the river to rise up in a large wave, before throwing it into some nearby guards, throwing them metres away and crashing to the ground. Then, I used a few accurate water bullets to knock down some more guards, before bending the water in the river to make multiple tentacle arms of water expand from the river, grabbing nearby guards and pulling them into the canal. At the same time, Katara and Aang both threw a few guards into the river, too, before Aang froze the water in the river, trapping all the guards and rendering them useless.