The Meaning of being the Avatar | Book One | Water

Chapter One | The Awakening

Chapter One
The Awakening

      The night was young as Illumina zipped up her jacket, heading out after her shift. She worked at a Café within a small little town near the Queen City of Cincinnati. She's lived there almost her whole life, and regulars made her work life easy. There weren't many passerby's from afar that came to the Café, but when they do, they always get a warm welcome. Two days ago, she met these four men as she waited on them. They came all the way from Arizona, traveling on the road for a few years. They tipped her handsomely, she didn't mind or think to much about it. She was doing her job after all.
     Although fate seemed all to much to creep upon her. Her walk home turned into a nightmare. Ear buds plugged both her ears, and she was lost in the music. It was a small town and nothing much happened so her guard was always down tremendously. Sadly, anything could happen anywhere at any given time. And it did, as those same men from the Café pulled up beside her in a black van with a fast skid halt. They were dressed in red with an insignia she barely could notice at their left arm. It happened so quick, a sack over head and hands clasped at her arms and legs to pull her screaming body in. As soon as they came, they were gone. A scream in the night but nothing to show for it. They hog tied her, setting her in the corner and began to talk amongst themselves.
     "The elder will be pleased." One said, and she breathed heavily leaning against the side of the vans walls. It was hard to stay calm. How could a simple night turn into this drastic, terrifying situation?
    "Capturing the Avatar, that's the first step to wiping the past completely out and beginning the rightful era." Another voice spoke. It was squeaky, and out of tone. Which meant he was younger than the other man. A loud hiss came from that same guy, and although she couldn't see. The one who spoke first had punched his shoulder.
   "Ow!" The young guy had whimpered.
    "Silence, she's still conscious!" He spat.
    "Okay, fine!" The younger sounding man yielded. "Didn't have to hit me though."
    "Sounds like you need to work out your problems and learn to kidnap better." Illumina spoke. Both the two turned to look at her. She didn't know where the courage to speak came from but it happened. She couldn't see, or defend because she was tied up but the words just slipped out without any filter.
   The older man narrowed his eyelids. "You're right." He took the shotgun he had and butted her in the head making her unaware of anything to happen next. "We do need to learn how to kidnap better."
   "Ouch." The younger one rose his eyebrows.
   Illumina wasn't conscious. Yet she was awake in the dark. She heard a voice ahead of her, and she wondered what was happening. Everything was just completely insane! She heard them speak about the Avatar and she only knew of one thing that really connected. Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra. Two TV shows that she grew up on. She kept hearing an older mans voice within the dark, aged in tone and transcended in time.
    "Young Avatar." The voice rung with higher and lower versions at once. Why? Why was this happening!? And HOW?
    It was a cold feeling that lured her back from her dream and back into reality. Water had been splashed onto her face, she gasped blinking the water dripping down her skin away from her eyelashes. She hastily looked around in fear, there were so many of them in this dark room with only a single light fixture hanging above her. She made out their outfits, and finally saw the symbol. It was that of the Red Lotus. 
    "W-What is happening?! Why are you doing this? What do you want from me?!" She spat lurching forward but only fell back into her original position.
   "Your true transfer, and very purpose to be crushed at the hands of our will for the better of this world." Another man, quite up in his age walked passed those who moved for him. It wasn't the man from her dream, oh no. Something about this older fellow gave her chills running down her spine. He stood before Illumina now, hands at his back staring down with a red hood over his head. "We want you to be dead young Avatar."
   "Avatar." She looked down speaking out. Finally she looked up with burning rage. "Is this some kind of sick joke? You dress up like some crank ass cult from a kids show preaching about me being a fictional being from a fictional world?!"
   "Oh child, fiction is not based on what is not real. It is based on a dream or reality with much meaning. An idea that branches off into multiple realities, multiple possibilities. Many truths within what is believed to be fiction. Those who said to have created the series of the Avatar on that ghastly children network merrily were pawns that brought our bishop's on the board to finally put the king in checkmate." The old man grinned mischievously. "And my dear, you being the Avatar means you're on that same board."
    "I'm not the Avatar." Illumina narrowed her eyelids. She then shook her head. "What am I saying?" She again met the old mans eyes. "You're insane! Whatever you believe me as isn't true, so just let me go!"
    He began to laugh at her, "Filled with such blindness. Not to worry, you'll bear witness to the truth." He turned to one of his bishops that was mentioned on the chess board. "Start the process. We must awaken her state before she learns too much of our plans."
    And with that he began to walk off but Illumina wasn't done. "Hey, get back here you asshat! What do you mean by process?!" She yelled with all her might, but he only kept walking — ignoring her. "You can't just leave like this and not explain what the hell that means!" But the old man didn't stop, and he had disappeared up the stairs. She realized by now she was in a basement of some kind. Trapped, and alone with those followers. It was silent, and nobody moved to her. "So, y'all gonna stand there like total creeps or are you going to do what you're leader told you to do?"
"Shut up." A woman said with annoyance. She walked passed Illumina and put her hand on a chain.
"Oh boy, what does that do? Open up a pit beneath my feet? You plan to fed me to some fictional Avatar animals?" Illumina baited her, trying to pry information. Even though she was all that bit terrified for what will happen to her.
"Something like that." The woman then pulled the chain causing the chair Illumina sat in to turn upside down and hang her mid air a good eight feet above the ground. She screamed the whole time with closed eyes. "Oh my gosh no! I don't want to die!" Illumina kept letting words past her lips anxiously without a clue on what was happening.
"Oh my gosh, will you just be quiet!? You're not dead. Not yet anyway." The woman rolled her eyes with her arms crossed. Illumina looked to her from her upside down state.
"Oh." She breathed heavily."Oh thank goodness."
    "Begin the transformation." The woman said, still keeping her arms crossed. Then the followers began to set up four stations at her front, back, and sides. Each station had something to do with the four elements. The front, candles lit with fire. Behind her, pebbles and sediments. At her left side, a large bowl filled with water. Her right, a few spin top with an old necklace that had the Air Nation symbol on it.
    "You know you can't kill me if I'm really the Avatar, right? I'll just be reincarnated into a new body making your search harder for the next sixteen years or so." Illumina spoke. Shifting eyes from each person to the next. No one spoke, so she continued. "I'm sure you do understand how impossible this belief of yours is." She furrowed her eyebrows now. The pressure of being upside down making her feel fuzzy and weak. "What's this supposed to do, huh? I've been in life or death situations. Triggering the Avatar State would have happened by now if I'm really the mystical Avatar you all say I am."
     "Can't you just be quiet for once!" The woman took a step forward and tapped Illumina's mouth shut to silence her. "We have something we didn't have all these years. We know this will awaken you. We know you're the one because it lead us to you, and you will not be able to escape the destiny of your fate." She burned into Illumina's vibrant greens. As if searching, and then the woman looked behind her. The followers moved to a cart with a cover over something to her. They pulled it to where it was before Illumina. Uncovering the tarp, there was a fossilized piece of animal. And a serge of energy flowed within Illumina veins. It took a few pushes but they managed to topple it two feet before her onto the ground and move the cart away along with the tarp. "This, is the prize given to us by the ancestors of the Red Lotus. The tip of the dead lion turtles claw."
"Mmmph?!" Illumina tried to speak. But the tape completely disabled any speech and made her inaudible.
"Yes Young Avatar, the only reason our past has been covered — our bending taken from us and you in a dormant state because the Red Lotus many centuries ago done the unthinkable. Slayin the Lion Turtle of fire."
"Mm mmm mmphm mm mm mmmmph mmmm, mmm?" Illumina still began to try and talk.
"What?" The woman asked with a narrow of the eyelids.
"Mmm mmm mmphm mm mm mmmmph mmm, mmm?" Illumina repeated.
"Oh for the love of-" The woman ripped off the tape on her mouth.
"Ow." Illumina closed her eyes in pain.
"Speak you insolvent child." She ordered.
"I said, and you expect me to believe you, how?" Illumina blinked losing sight from being upside down so long.
"You'll see." The woman grinned devilishly. And that's when it really started. That serge of energy felt, is strengthened as torches began to be lit. They leaned them on the tip of the claw circling the whole thing. It began to do something unbelievable. The bone cracked, and looked as if lava was pulling it apart. The fire in Illumina's eyes shimmered, and she was unable to look away and move. She heard drums being played around her. Sounds of distant voices. It was nothing she ever felt before, a calling. The calling for her.
With one second, Illumina's eyes glowed. The glow of the Avatar. And just like that, it was gone. The woman's hand went up to stop her people from drumming. "It is done."
She walked over and pulled the chain, pulling the Avatar back upright. She blinked, as if returning from a daze. She looked around, meeting eyes from each of the people in the room.
"What- What happened?" Illumina asked, she met eyes with that woman again as she approached her.
"The beginning of your end." She said, bending down and stabbing Illumina's leg with a syringe.
"Ahh!" She screamed in pain, "What are you doing..." She began to feel woozy, her head becoming weighted. Her eyes began to become heavy, and she spoke again slowly. "What are you doing to me...?"
"Sleep, young Avatar." Illumina saw her, a filtered mist of threes the woman had become. "Sleep."
Again. Illumina was unconscious. In the dark yet again. She sat, hugging her legs and buried her face within her arms. That same voice spoke. But she didn't look up or try to listen. Not until at her feet, she could see a mist of light.
"Awaken Avatar." The voice spoke clearly. She looked up, seeing the tall figure glowing before her of that of a man wearing water tribe clothing she knew all to well. "Awaken!"
She gasped for air as she woke in that same basement. Only she was alone. The fire lion turtle's claw still before her burning to cinders. The four elements still at her sides, front and back. It wasn't a dream, and she couldn't believe all this was happening. She was an Avatar? Like Aang, and Korra? And the Red Lotus have her in their grasps. She felt something she never felt before until this very night. The serge of energy flowing deep within her veins, deep within her soul. She kept looking around thinking of ways she could get out, she had to get out! These are the people who once almost killed Korra, and now that they could bring the Avatar State forth from her, she doubt she'd be strong enough to stop them from killing her and truly ending the cycle of the Avatar. There was no room to panic, no time to waste. She had to leave, she had to get out.
Closing her eyelids, she took a breath in. "Okay." Another breath. "Okay." She opened her eyelids, and looked to her feet. They were tied by rope, easy to burn. Her hands tied by rope at the chair handles as well. Deeply, she breathed feeling the heat at her hands and up her arms. She watched as steam rose, and the stench of something burning flew within the air. The rope began to blacken, and she pulled upward at her arms. Then, a brush of release and her hands and arms were free from the ropes. Now that her hand were free, she shaped her hand like a gun, and at her finger tips came a flame. She smiled, she could really bend. She could bend fire.
It wasn't long and she burned away the bindings at her feet, getting up and looking around the room. She heard that soft call, and turned back to the lion turtles claw. She furrowed her eyebrows now in pain within her heart. What tragedy, what monstrosity. She walked closer and kneeled down, placing her hand on the burning claw tip. "Thank you." She spoke, and then just like that she calmed the flames and silenced the pain of the spirt whom possessed this piece of bone. "Rest now." She said softly. And right now she realized, she needed to bring peace to this creatures spirt. She needed to bring justice, and just as Aang did — restore balance to his world. She must restore balance to hers.
Standing up she looked over, her means of escape only a few feet away. The cellar door called her name so she walked close and grabbed the metal chains. Narrowing her eyelids, heat radiated from her hand and began to melt the metal chains until she could pull them off and open the wooden doors. She carefully began to peep her head out. Peering into the dark of the backyard. She had no clue where she was but all she knew is she had to run. And that's what she did. Ran, and climbed, and snuck and listened. She did everything to get as far away as possible from that place until she found some other place that was familiar. A school close to the entrance of her town.
It would take her fifteen minutes to walk there, watching her surroundings anxiously. She crossed the field, eyes peeled hoping to get home as soon as she could. Not even a few seconds later and something miraculous happened, at her feet she halted due to what she witnessed. The soft glow that brightened, and then caved beneath her. She screamed, looking up and reaching for anything, yet nothing was there. Illumina watched as her world grew small as she kept falling further away into this portal she had no control over. None what so ever, and as she thought this was the end. She spun and turned in this abyss until she faced down, watching the end of the portal appear closer with each second. She plopped straight into the cold of snow, a soft landing. Her body began to freeze from that temperature and the snow that enclosed her. She jolted up, regaining her senses and shivering. She stood in three feet of snow, looking around with fear. What, just happened?!
A soft roar in the sky caught her attention, and she looked on. With widening eyelids she realized that was an animal. That was a flying bison. Walking forward mesmerized, she realized that was Appa. A tumbling scream emerged from her lips as she lost footing, plummeting down the cliffside cushioned by the snow. It felt like it wouldn't stop, and she couldn't gain control of herself. Not until she hit metal and rolled right before some one new, yet someone completely familiar. As she groaned, she began to sit up placing her hand at her head and gaining back her vision. That's when her breath hitched as she met eyes with none other than, Prince Zuko.