Breaking the Wheel

Chapter 1

Only once the old order has burned, can the world be made anew.

Zaheer closed his eyes and slowed his breathing, feeling his heart rate drop to a familiar, steady pulse. His new cell, deep in the earth, was less spiritually connected than his mountaintop had been, but that didn't mean there was no way to access the spirit world, particularly not now the spirit and physical realms were so closely intertwined. There were places in the spirit world that had affinity with cages, and cells.

Slipping between the worlds, Zaheer felt the telltale brush of cobwebs against his face, and rose stiffly to his feet, the chains that had bound his limbs gone. He stood in the entrance to a cave, a lake at its centre and the rest of it strewn with cobwebs, all glowing with a soft yellow light. The place was near to the fog of lost souls, and it had a tendency to trap lost items, and sometimes travellers.

"Zaheer! You came back!" called a voice from above. Aruki, the lantern spider spirit, squeezed himself out from a narrow crevice in the ceiling, legs tipped with hands preceding his eyeless torso, and his wide mouth split into a grin. "I guess you're in jail again, huh. No way you'd let yourself get so scruffy if you weren't."

Zaheer frowned, but the spirit's observation was accurate. Even the metalbenders that guarded him were too wary of him to let a sharp object anywhere near him, and the fine fuzz of hair that now covered his head had followed him into the spirit world too.

Aruki crawled down the webs on the wall, stopping when his body hung little above Zaheer's face. The ball of light within him glowed a happy yellow. "You're my favourite human, you know that?"

Zaheer's expression was wry as he stepped inside, treading carefully round the deformations in the webbing. "You try to kill me every time I come here."

"Yeah, well-" Aruki rotated himself in his web, as he followed, his light ebbing a little with embarrassment. " That's just my nature. I can't really help it. And honestly, I would be very disappointed if I ever caught you."

"I'm sure you would," Zaheer agreed.

The lantern spider went still, his light taking on a cold white cast. The surface of the lake became blacker, the strange shapes in his webs more sinister. "What's wrong, Zaheer? You're not yourself."
"I'm not?" Zaheer raised an eyebrow. The spirit had never called attention to his state before, aside from lamenting his failure to entrap and eat his guards.

"Mm... you know what I mean." Aruki circled round him, trailing a filament of bright silk, as thick as a man's finger. "You usually talk back more than this." His body tilted thoughtfully. "It's probably dehydration- I'll make us some tea."

This was definitely unusual behaviour from the spider, observed Zaheer as Aruki vanished up into the web. Shaking his head, he brushed the silk from his sleeves. Left to harden, Aruki's thread could become stronger than steel, but the spirit hadn't even bothered with a strong anchor point for it. It was a murderous gesture, rather than a genuine attempt. Maybe the spirit was actually worried for him.
Aruki returned with a tea-set, a table, and a small portable stove, setting them out on the floor between them.

"Where did you get that?" Zaheer asked.

The spider shrugged with two spare arms as he arranged the tea set with the other four. "I have friends other than you, you know," he said. Reaching into his mouth, he plucked out a portion of his light and placed it in the stove, where it flickered into life as a flame. "So what happened? You'd been gone so long, and no-one has seen the Avatar. I figured maybe you'd won, maybe settled down with that nice lady you were always pining after."

P'Li. Zaheer breathed in. Hearing Aruki talk about her was like being back in the moment. Like watching her go again. An almost physical pain, as if his sternum were about to crack. She had died, and for what? So he could fail? It must have showed on his face, because Aruki stopped what he was doing.
"I... guess she didn't wait for you, huh." The spirit reached out, squeezing Zaheer's shoulder with a small, dark hand. "It'll be okay, buddy."