1. Chapter 1

She threw her hood back and grinned wildly at the dark, flashing sky above. Hot desert wind cut across her tattooed face, beckoned on by thunder, drawn in by the gaping portal. Its craving reach clawed at the air just as Azeroth pulled in the desiccation from the other side.

"We are nearly ready," reported a subordinate.

She snapped her glance to the stone gate where space spun on a sliver of reality like oil on water. It led to a ruined world - a nearly perfect world, one which fit the Masters' design. The gate's construction had happened long before her lifetime, and no others had come since. A permanent causeway between realms was simply too difficult to create.

Far simpler it would be to redirect it.

"Excellent," she said. She strode toward the gathered cluster of cultists at the base of the gate. The casters had already begun chanting, and some of the non-casters had joined in, inspired by the energy moving between them. They rocked on their feet, moaning in tongues, occasionally raising their hands to the thundering sky and invoking the names of the Masters.

She ascended to the top of the ramp and turned to face the crowd, reaching toward the sky with her own ashen hands.

"Look at the void this gate has given us! Look around and see what its fel energies have given: DESTRUCTION!" Applause met her words.

"A lifeless land! Torn and thrown and blackened, stolen from the spirits' consent! A beautiful breakdown of the Titans' work! But the Legion has too been shaken. They were fought back. Illidan was destroyed, Archimonde was destroyed! All that remains on the other side is death - wrought of anguish, plummeting through the Nether on the wings of chaos! We were never needed on that world, for our Master broke it first!"

Cries of Deathwing's glory arose. Her grin spread wider, revealing a feral smile to the gums. "Now we take this Dark Portal and redirect it to a new world, untouched by the Titans, where the elements rule unfettered! We will draw upon their raw power and take it for ourselves! FOR OUR MASTERS!"

The crowd screamed and cried in feverish glee over the droning of the casters, as she joined them with her own powerful voice and made the ritual complete.


	2. Chapter 2

Katara opened her eyes and winced at the blazing sun.

Realizing this meant she was most definitely _not_ in the building she'd fallen asleep in, she sat up with alarm. She felt for her waterskin and frowned in puzzlement to find it, and further to find herself fully dressed and shoed. This... was not how she slept. She could only conclude then that she had _not_ slept, and somehow, this conclusion made more sense; but then, how did she get here without knowing it?

She stood and assessed the area. Most noticeably it was unbelievably hot; not the tropical heat of Ember Island, but dry, parching heat like the Si Wong. Hot, dry, hard, cracked red earth and stone pillars surrounded her.

"Aang?" she called out to no reply. "Sokka?"

She picked a random direction and walked it, and shortly found herself standing on a cliff side overlooking the sea... and across the gulf, a village!

She squinted at the distant architecture, but couldn't make out the shapes nor the colors under the oppressive orange glow of the sun. (This especially seemed odd to her, but she ignored it for now, packed somewhere in the mysteries folder between 'magic' and 'atmospheric phenomenon').

Deciding the cliff's face was far too steep to attempt climbing down, she instead focused on the water below, and attempted to pull a column up - but it too, was too far and out of reach, and the air was so tangibly dry she couldn't pull more than a pint from it if she tried.

But now she had a destination, and a direction. She followed the cliff's edge downhill, keeping the town in sight as long as she could before having to move inland amongst the rocky columns in her descent.

It wasn't until the first huge, tusked figure charged at her with a roar that she realized she was far, far further than home than she first assumed.


	3. Chapter 3

"KATARA!"

Toph let out a frustrated scream and kicked herself out of the snowdrift that just _had_ to be Fussybritches' doing. She certainly knew _Aang_ wouldn't dump a pile of snow on her in her sleep.

"When I find you... !" Toph snarled as she stood. She then scowled, realizing the snow was thick beneath her as well, enough to keep her feet uncomfortably far from the ground. And numb. "Okay, now that's just fighting dirty," she said, and couldn't tell if she felt anger or approval at the underhanded tactic.

She dug down to the ground with her hands and then planted her feet solidly on the wait she wasn't anywhere near the island anymore.

She concentrated on what she could feel even as her feet became increasingly numb...

Snow everywhere, for one, laying in huge blinding blankets on just about everything as far as her feet could see. Okay, so not Katara's doing. Aang _could_, but why?

For two, trees... but stationary as they were, she couldn't detect more than that, only their presence in the land. She thought she could feel movement, but the snow acted like a muffler, dulling the vibrations of anything that might be in motion.

For three... massive underground fortresses, one in each direction, of roughly equal size. No, not fortresses. _Cities_. In another direction, she could sense smaller subterranean structures, more like bunkers than anything. She could just barely detect movement among all three.

Well, she wasn't solving anything standing there freezing her toes off. She picked the fortress made with the most stone, committed its direction to memory, and began stumbling blindly through the frigid land and hoped to goodness to find some warm solid rock to set her feet on there.

She just wished she knew how she _got_ here.


	4. Chapter 4

"They look like some kind of komodo rhino! ...I'm going to ride one!"

Aang approached the herd of beasts slowly with his hands out wide in a peaceful gesture. "Hey, little buddies," he said, "I'm not going to hurt you."

They didn't seem to think he would anyway. They casually grazed on the lush grasses, paying the child very little attention.

So he sprang onto the back of the largest one.

It panicked and ran forward with footsteps that shook the ground, before seeming to conclude that Aang wouldn't harm it, and it returned to the herd, which had not moved.

Aang sat down cross-legged on its massive hump, and patted its neck. "I've never seen a komodo rhino as big as you..."

He welcomed this diversion, glad for something to preoccupy his thoughts _other_ than defeating the Fire Lord. He also assumed this had to be a dream, because he would've known if he had gotten up and wandered off that night!

Fields of emerald and gold spread out for miles, rolling, rippling with warm breezes, dotted with groves of trees and the distant sparkle of a lake. Birds wheeled in the blue sky, and somewhere he heard a wolf howling the pronouncement of its territory. A paradise like this just didn't exist within the Fire Nation; they wouldn't let all this free space go to waste without planting a big, hideous factory in the middle of it.

Well, _something_ was in the middle of the valley, but he didn't see any plumes of smoke or red banners flying from the top of it. It was a massive collection of mesas, with the tips of windmills just barely visible on top of their towering plateaus.

"I might as well enjoy this dream while I'm having it. Thanks for the ride!" he said the animals, and began leaping across the plains in giant strides enhanced by the wind.


	5. Chapter 5

"High Priestess!"

Tyrande turned to see one of the Sentinels running up the ramp. The warrior immediately fell into a respectful kneel before her.

"What is it, Sentinel?" the priestess asked.

"We found a human just outside the city, wandering alone in the woods."

"That is not so odd. Are you sure it wasn't one of the worgen in human form?"

"Yes, Priestess. He... he's very confused, and he isn't from any known kingdom or affiliation. He does not recognize... _us_, either."

"How do you mean?"

"He has no idea what an elf is, Priestess."

Tyrande's long eyebrows rose in surprise. "Does he have amnesia?"

"I don't believe so, Priestess." The Sentinel stared up at her severely. "I believe he's from another world."

"Is he hostile?"

"No, well, at first, yes. He was alarmed by us. My unit is ready to escort him into the city with your permission, Priestess."

"Very well," Tyrande said with a nod. "Thank you for telling me. I will speak to him myself... if he _is_ from another world, I need to know about it." She inwardly frowned at the thought of Kaldorei land being attacked by yet another alien world. She intended not to let her people be duped or surprised by outsiders again.

Shortly, the Sentinels arrived outside on saber-back, and brought the human in. Tyrande was surprised to see but a scrawny teenager with a ponytail, wearing nothing but cloth pants and a light tunic. She graciously descended the ramp from her balcony overlooking the temple fountain, and met him near the door, bathed in the pale light of the Moonwell.

The boy, to his credit, looked on in wide-eyed reverence and awe, not the slack-jawed way of tourist humans from Stormwind, but as if he truly belonged here in the sanctuary of Elune.

He must have recognized Tyrande's importance as well, for he bowed deeply before her. "Ma'am," he said.

"Greetings," Tyrande said. "I am High Priestess Tyrande Whisperwind of Darnassus."

"I'm Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe."

_No family name?_ she wondered. "We are Kaldorei, or Night Elves in the Common tongue. Do you know where you are?"

"Yeah," he said, with a small smile tugging at his mouth. "Your warriors said this is the Temple of the Moon."


	6. Chapter 6

Suki crouched silently in the tree, motionlessly watching the strange village below.

Their bizarre architecture, made of white stone and blue tiled roofing, confused her as to their nation. Strong stone buildings seemed like Earth architecture, but blue shingles? And such odd animals tethered outside...

She deftly navigated through the canopy to circle the village, then froze as she heard the clank of armor. She narrowed her eyes at a guard in the darkness, and saw from the light of his lantern an icon on his tunic - a golden lion against a blue field.

Puzzled but not entirely reassured, she sat back in the tree boughs, trying to think of a plan. Could her displacement and separation from the others be some strange Fire Nation plot? No way, they weren't _that_ powerful. Spirit shenanigans? Possibly.

"Hey lady, whatcha doing up there?"

The sudden voice caused her to jump and fall; she caught herself and hung there by her hands, looking down at the group of children gathered at the base of the tree.

"H-hey..."

"I'm Aaron. Will you play with us?" the first boy asked.

Suki, instead of continuing to dangle there like a piñata, dropped down on her feet. The children didn't move, but stared vapidly at her. One girl obsessively fiddled with her pigtails.

"Isn't it a little late for you kids to be out alone?" Suki asked quietly, and looked around, wary of more guards.

"No."

"Uh... okay... Can you tell me where I am?"

All six children spoke in unison, "You're in Goldshire!"

She smiled nervously. "Which country is Goldshire in?"

Only the boy 'Aaron' replied, "Stormwind. Won't you come play with us?"

Gold-what? Storm-what? Suki shook her head. "I really don't have the time -" She broke off as she heard heavy footsteps approaching from around the nearest building. Taking no time, she leapt clear over one of the children and began to run, when she stopped as heard a man shout, and knew she'd been spotted already.

"Hey, you kids! Leave the girl alone. Go home and get to bed."

The children, without a word, moved away in unison without breaking formation. Suki turned to look at the man now approaching her; he was a pudgy man in brown and red with a receding hairline.

"Sorry, those kids make a habit of spooking people. You'll see them walking 'round in circles - just walking - they ain't never run fast."

"Oh, alright, I'll remember that," Suki said, stepping back slowly.

"Now what are _you_ doing behind the inn at night?" he asked curiously.

"What, me? Nothing, just got a little turned around." She offered a huge, shaky smile.

"Sorry, I don't mean to pry. I'm Farley, by the way, owner of the inn. There are rooms to spare, if you need to sit down and patch your bones."

"That's okay, I should, I have some friends I need to get in touch with," she said.

"Well, alright," the man said, obviously disappointed. "Just remember the Lion's Pride Inn, if you'd like to get some sleep before you travel." He smiled like a salesman and turned to walk away.

Keenly aware of several pairs of tiny eyes watching her from the shadows, Suki began to reconsider declining.


	7. Chapter 7

Firstly, Zuko was on air when last he'd been seated on stone steps. Secondly, he tumbled over through palm fronds into shallow seawater. And thirdly as he tried to stand and cough for air, a line of spears jutted out at him from figures to quick to have noticed approaching.

He raised his hands in surrender, but only to take stock of his enemies, and he promptly did a double-take to notice they were most definitely not human.

They had long tong arms, long legs and even longer torsos, and painted faces with long noses and even longer tusks. Most noticeably they had blue skin and untamed hair every shade of the rainbow. In their dark leather uniforms, they reminded him uncomfortably of his Blue Spirit guise, somehow come to life and made into an army.

"Uh, hey," he greeted them in an attempt to sound casual and not at all highly perturbed.

They weren't in the mind for chit-chat.

He ducked under the first spear and leapt over the next, and deflected the next few with his forearm swept against the wooden poles. But they were unexpectedly quick for their tall forms, and were rapidly pinning him into deeper water as all he could do was duck, dodge and back away.

He let out a fan of flames that set each spear ablaze, and as the blue folk doused their weapons in the water, he ran to the side and made for land. They shouted strange words and pursued easily, and he rolled onto the sand while kicking flames from his feet. If he could get into the jungle, he might lose them and make it back to the house - although, worryingly, he didn't recognize this part of the island at _all_.

As he broke through the undergrowth, however, he stumbled into an entire village of these strange beings, each of them looking very angry at his presence, and all moving to attack.

He held them off with fire as he tried to navigate away, but found himself backed against a vine-ridden stone wall, and the next moment the vines had come to life and ensnared him. He struggled in vain against their sure hold, and saw a blue woman nearby, obviously controlling them via plantbending. To his surprise, however, she motioned for the others not to attack, and stated something in their language.

The entire village waited with quiet snarls and Zuko wondered for a moment if they were expecting him to do something, until he saw their eyes drawn to an even larger figure lumbering his way. The blue man wore skulls on his pauldrons, their eyes lit with green flame, and he had an impossibly high blood-red mohawk.

"Vanira be tellin' me ya no normal mage, human," the figure growled.

"I don't even know what a 'mage' _is_," Zuko replied, hoping this meant he would be spared... not speared.

"Den ya definitely no normal human, human!" the figure laughed, but seemed suspicious. "Ya don't cast ya fire with magic words."

"No, I'm a Firebender. It's all about using your chi, making the right motions."

"Huhn, sounds like somethin' a Pandaren would say. Where ya be from, human?"

"Fire Nation, and my _name_ is _Zuko_."

"I didn't ask ya name, human! Ya best be careful of da tone ya use, ya be talkin' to Vol'jin, chieftain of da Darkspear Tribe."

_Just keep a cool head, don't make the chieftain kill you..._ "My apologies, Chieftain Vol'jin," Zuko said as respectfully as possible. "So... are you spirits?"

Vol'jin stared in surprised confusion, then laughed again. "Ya be da most addle-brained human if ya don't recognize a troll."

The female spoke suddenly, in a strange, raspy voice. "Do ya meet da spirits often, 'Zuko'?"

He paused, then said, "Well, no, not me personally, but I travel with the Avatar..."

"Da Avatar of _whom_?" Vol'jin said.

"Of... himself? He's a master of the elements, bridge between the mortal and spirit realms, uh, destined to bring peace to the world?" Zuko said hopefully.

"A powerful shaman, den... or a Loa disguised as one," the troll mused. "What be da name of dis Avatar?"


	8. Chapter 8

A massive war axe slammed into the dirt as Katara just barely rolled out of its way. The things attacking her were huge, green-skinned brutes whose entire bodies bristled with preposterous muscles. And without water on hand, she had no chance against them. Her only stroke of fortune was this narrow corridor of rock, where not more than one enemy could come at her at a time.

She ran back up along the trail, hearing their guttural war cries just behind her. She found the cliff's edge overlooking the sea - and jumped clear off.

As she raced down toward the water, she forced herself to remain calm and roll her arms in a lifting motion, and brought the ocean up to meet her in a cushioning pillar, and stood upon it. The hulks stared but could do nothing to stop her. Or at least, so she thought.

One jumped atop a rock with a bow and arrow in hand and fired without pause. She snapped the arrow in half with a water whip, but the enemy would not be discouraged. The archer continued to fire, and as she focused on blocking the shots while maintaining her pillar of safety, Katara didn't see another green figure slinking up to the cliff, unassuming in a tan cloth robe.

The robed one raised a wooden talisman in one hand and called up to the sky, and a sudden darkness coalesced over Katara. She gazed up to see a black cloud formed from apparently nothing, and before she could split her attention even further to disperse it, its core flashed and struck her with a bolt of lightning.

She had no time to register her surprise. Stunned by the electricity, she fell slack and felt the water fall away beneath her, and she tumbled head-first towards the rocks below.


	9. Chapter 9

"Land, sweet laaand!"

Toph flung herself against the rocky ground where the snow thinned out at last. She'd long ago lost any feeling in her feet, and hadn't even been sure she'd been going the right direction.

"I've nae seen summin so happy to lie on tha ground before," a voice rumbled mirthfully from nearby.

Toph didn't move except to tap the ground with her hands, trying to get a feel for the person. She felt four hoofed feet... a moo-sow? A wooly-pig? Someone was riding it, whatever it was.

"I just don't like to be away from the earth for too long," Toph said casually. "Where'd all this snow come from, anyway?"

"Lass, it always snows here. Where'd ye come from? Ye nae dressed fer tha cold."

"Tell me about it. Last thing I knew I was on a tropical island!"

"Come on then, let's get ye into tha city, put some furs on yer back and some shoes on yer feet."

"You had me up until 'shoes'," Toph said, standing. She stepped toward the voice, already losing track of the person's position. A gloved hand grabbed her shoulder unexpectedly, and hauled her up onto the back of the furry mount. "What's this thing?" she asked.

"It's me ram, lass! Dinnae tell me ye've nae seen one before!" The 'ram' began to move forward and upward.

"I've 'nae' seen anything before, I'm blind."

"Och, me apologies. What's a wee blind lass doin' way up in Dun Morogh? Some kind o' portal accident?"

"Man, I don't know if it's the accent or what, but I have no idea what you just said."

The gruff voice laughed. "Arright then, who're ye family on this tropical island?"

"Oh no, I don't _live_ there, I just..." She didn't know if she could trust this person enough to tell them, just yet. "We were just on vacation, my friends and I. My family... they live elsewhere. They're okay with it, they let me go."

"Did yer friends land here too?"

Toph swallowed. "No. Not that I know of. I really don't know how I got here, let alone where _they_ are right now. One minute we were sitting around talking about - uh... stuff, and the next thing I know, bam! I'm lying in the snow. I hate snow!"

"Then ye'll hate Dun Morogh, lass! But that's an interestin' tale, and smells o' portal magic gone haywire. Any o' yer friends mages? ... Or warlocks?"

"You keep saying these things I've never heard of! If you're asking if any of us can randomly appear someplace else, then no."

"Ye've nae heard o'..." The voice trailed off in bemusement, and she heard the person shake their head. "Are ye even from Azeroth?"

"Nope."

"But ye're human! Were ye born on Outland?"

"No, I'm from the Earth Kingdom, okay?! What kind of a name is 'Outland', anyway?'

"Earth Kingdom... tha plane o' Earth?!"

"Sure, whatever! It's a kingdom, where we have Earthbenders, and an Earth King, and everything's made of earth!" And she was really starting to miss it.

"Now ye're tha one usin' words I dinnae know. But it's pretty obvious ye're from another world, and not one we've ever heard of..."


	10. Chapter 10

After cresting the edge of the plateau and gazing down on the city of tents and windmills atop it, Aang had only time to utter, "You guys look like Appa!" before swift capture.

The horned, hoofed, huge, hairy people questioned him in their deep, bouldery baritones and he answered cheerfully, still assured that this was a dream. They wanted to know who sent him, why he was there, where he was from, were any other humans in the land. It eventually became obvious that he wasn't spy, failing to recognize the name Stormwind other than to say, "it sounds like a cool place".

"You're lucky you came to us and not the Grimtotem," their young leader, Baine, said. Aang was still in binds, tied to a pole within one of their longhouses. Aang was also blissfully unconcerned.

"This place is _so_ awesome, it's like one of the Air Temples! We built all our temples on top of mountains, see, where no one can get us, because _they_ can't fly like we -" Aang halted, and his face fell a little. "I mean, like I can."

"There is no more 'we'?" Baine asked.

"No... not anymore," Aang said, hanging his head. "The Fire Nation wiped them all out. Because they were looking for me."

"Why?"

"Because I'm the Avatar, and I'm supposed to bring peace to the world. The Fire Nation's been at war for over a century now. They didn't want me to be around to stop them. And... I wasn't."

"Unless humans age very differently on your world, you're only a child," Baine said. "It's unreasonable to expect you to stop an army."

"I know! That's what Monk Gyatso said. But that's why the other monks thought he was too soft on me, so I ran away, which is why I wasn't there to save them!"

"Did these monks know the attack was coming?"

"No, it was an ambush. It was the first fight of the war. The Air Nomads don't even have a formal military!"

"Hmm..." The bull-man, or 'tauren' as they called themselves, stroked his chin. "This sounds similar to the Grimtotem coup. They waited until nightfall to attack, slaying innocents in their sleep. I, too, only survived by escaping beforehand."

"But how did anyone survive? How'd you take the city back?"

"Fortunately, the Grimtotem sought those who would be a threat... mere children and anyone unskilled in battle or healing would be passed over. Unfortunately, we still needed the aide of others to retake the city, but that is a tale for another time."

"You said I could've run into the Grimtotem, though. They're still around?"

"Yes, some fled the battle when things began to turn south for them. We offered the rest a chance to surrender, and exiled them. They once lived in our cities as our neighbors, by my father's hospitality." Baine's voice thickened. "He paid for his trust, but even so, once the Grimtotem were defeated, there was no reason to slaughter them all. Even their wicked leader Magatha - though sometimes I question the decision to spare her."

Aang digested this for a while. "I wish we had the same option... we _tried_ to take the Fire Nation city, just long enough to get at their leader. We got all the outside help we could get, from all the other nations, even swamp-people. But it just wasn't enough..." He sighed. "We ended up getting them all captured instead. And everyone keeps telling me I have _no choice_ but to kill the Fire Lord, because he's too dangerous to leave alive!" He looked up plaintively, hoping somehow this tauren, who may or may not be just a dream, could offer guidance.

"War is a complicated burden, and all too often are children forced to bear it..." Baine looked thoughtful, maybe wistful, whilst patting an ornate mace at his side. "If we had the resources to spare... perhaps the Horde would look kindly on your plight and be convinced to help. _If_ they could look beyond the fact you're human."

"But everyone's human where I'm from," Aang said.

"I know, but then I'm sure they'd say it wouldn't matter if you all killed each other off. It's cruel, yes, but the hatred between our races has been sealed virtually since the first moment we met."

"Yeah... I don't know how anyone's going to trust Fire Nation again even if we _do_ stop the war," Aang muttered.

"There's nothing we can do, however, while our own world is under such threat. More than war, crazed servants of the Old Gods are bent on destroying the world. An ancient evil few remember has returned. The elements here cry out in pain, and the walls between worlds wear thin as Deathwing... ah, I'm sorry. I shouldn't add more worries to your shoulders."

Baine released Aang, but asked him not to leave. Aang agreed and remained in the unused building, left to his thoughts, suddenly realizing this was no dream, and he must be here for a reason.

But how could he possibly save two worlds at once?


	11. Chapter 11

Sokka had listened in rapt awe as Tyrande explained Elune, the Goddess of the Moon, to him.

"So _everyone_ worships the Moon, even if they're not a bender?"

The Priestess laughed at his curious terminology. "At least among Kaldorei, yes. Those particularly devoted wield her light in battle, or channel it to heal."

"That's just like the Water Tribes! We learned how to waterbend from the way Moon moves the tides, and there are warriors and healers and... well, I'm not a waterbender," Sokka admitted. "I never got into that spiritual mumbo-jumbo - uhh, no offense! But it was always like, something they're just _born_ with."

"What changed your mind on all that 'spiritual mumbo-jumbo'?"

"Well..." Sokka scratched the back of his head. "I sort of... dated the Moon. Or rather, I dated the girl who had Moon-spirit-juice in her and then she sort of died and reincarnated as the new Moon... spirit... person."

"Oh." Tyrande frowned. He wasn't sure if she was disappointed, sympathetic, or simply confused. "Our Elune is eternal. I've never heard of any mortal ascending to become a god."

"I think it was something the Moon knew had to happen... it took mortal form, see, uh, to be closer to us, but then Admiral Zhao came and killed it, and that's when Yue had to take its place, because the Moon had put a little part of its soul into her when she was born..." Sokka trailed off, feeling embarrassed at how badly he was explaining it. "I know it can't be the same person."

"In any case, we have two moons, but we recognize Elune as not _literally_ being the rocks that orbit Azeroth."

"Whoa, I'd love to see a waterbender in action with _two_ full moons..."

"So you became interested in spirituality because of your encounter with a spirit?" Tyrande pressed.

"When you put it _that_ way, it sounds a lot better," Sokka said. "But, yeah. Even though I never really _got_ it the way the others did. It's like, they can just feel the elements like a part of their own bodies or something, and move it around like nothing. Even before Katara learned how to control it, whenever she got emotional... it's like the water and ice was always just responding to how she felt. But it never did for me." He suddenly puffed out his chest and stated proudly, "Not that it matters! I'm a master swordsman now, and I'm killer with a boomerang."

"Our priestesses are _also_ our warriors," Tyrande said. "Elune teaches us to avoid war if we can, but prepare for it if we must."

"So... do you have to be a Kaldorei to learn this stuff?" Sokka asked, feeling tentatively hopeful.

"Not at all, there are priests in every race, though their exact take on faith differs. Some take the light of the Sun, or the light of the spirit world, or worship the concept of 'Light' itself..." Tyrande sniffed a little at that, clearly not quite approving of it.

"But it's all the same energy in the end?" Sokka asked, and she nodded. "That's crazy! But in a good way, I mean. If bending were like that - I mean, if it didn't matter where you came from, it's just a different expression of the same basic energy, that'd be - it'd change everything!"

"Maybe it is, and you never knew it before," the Priestess said.

"Er... yeah, that's possible too. I mean, the Avatar knows _every_ element, but that's a special case..." Sokka coughed, sobering again. "Would it be possible, I mean... I know I just got here and I don't know _anything_ about this place..."

"You may learn under the Priestesses," Tyrande said with a smile. "If you don't mind working with all women."

"Trust me, that's no problem."

Tyrande suddenly looked past him, and he glanced over to see a huge purple panther charging right for them. He jumped to his feet and reached for a weapon that wasn't there, and Tyrande put a hand in front of him. "No, it's a druid. What is it?" she addressed the panther.

Sokka watched the animal melt upwards into an elven man, wearing a brown tunic with some kind of horned animal emblem.

"High Priestess, please forgive the interruption," the elf panted.

"Let me guess, strange humans from another world have appeared?" Tyrande said.

"No, I report from the outposts on Outland. The Dark Portal has closed!"


	12. Chapter 12

Katara woke with an incredible headache.

She tried to make sense of her last memories, but none of them made sense, and she dismissed them as a wild dream. Maybe she'd come down sick again, and the fever had seeped into her brain. Yes, that was logical.

She recognized the Fire Nation heat bearing down on her, tempered by the night. She laid face-down on the sand - no, stone. Probably the courtyard. She must have gotten dizzy and fainted after the argument with Aang. Of course.

Her muscles ached, and she tried to bring her arms up to summon her water and heal herself, but her arms wouldn't budge. Something bound them at the wrists, she realized. Her ankles, too.

She rolled onto her back, staring blearily up into the night sky, and felt a strange sense of dread as she realized none of the constellations were correct.

And there were two moons.

Was she seeing double? No, the moons were different. One familiar, large and white; the other small and blue. A new moon spirit? Some phenomenon they hadn't noticed in the planetarium?

A heavyset figure loomed over her, blotting out the moonlight. She gasped at its shocking, inhuman appearance - and suddenly remembered what had happened. A strange, desert land. Stranger green monsters, coming at her with weapons and bending. The sea leaping toward her. It came in broken pieces, but she could put those pieces together into a working narrative.

The green, tusked man grunted something she didn't understand, and two more of the things approached, a male with top-knot and sideburns resembling Fire Nation style, and the robed female bender from before.

"Who are -" Katara started to ask, and the top-knotted one silenced her with a boot to the side of the head.

"Do not mistake this for 'mercy', human," he growled. "You live only as long as you are useful."

She dared not attempt to speak again, only looking up at them questioningly and fearfully. She glanced quickly side to side, trying to see any water, a puddle, a plant, a jug, anything.

"Tell us the locations and plans of the Alliance in the area!"

"A-Alliance?"

"Don't play stupid, spy! Your Northwatch dogs are obviously still skulking about."

"Northwatch?" Katara shook her head in confusion. What was even going on? Who did they think she really was?

His foot met her ribs this time. "Pah! For a mage, you make a convincing fool."

She let out a groan of pain. She surprised herself by wishing Zuko were there - if only for the torches and bonfire in this dustbowl that he could make use of. She spotted only a scraggly plant and knew it would not be useful.

No, wait - the smell of fresh stew hit her nose. She pretended to roll onto her side with pain, using it as a chance to look in a direction she hadn't seen yet.

Aha! A huge cauldron full of boiling water!

"Let's turn her over to the Warchief, Kaltunk," said the first male, with an axe on his belt. "She'll spill the name of every enlisted human from here to Theramore!"

"And _we'll_ look incompetent for failing to get anything out of her first!" spit the one with a top-knot, apparently named 'Kaltunk'.

"I'll talk!" Katara said. She tried to think quickly. She just hoped this all worked. "I- I was part of a small, elite force. We camped in secret, o-on the coast, and, we're supposed to meet with warriors from all the nations, and strike the capital during the eclipse!"

She had just described the Day of Black Sun. Assuming this was a different world - or at least a vastly different region - they'd hopefully not notice.

The creature-people exchanged looks. "I'll send scouts along the coast," Kaltunk said with a nod. "And inland, in the likely chance this girl is lying."

"We should warn the capital," the robed female said.

"We would have heard of an all-out assault on Orgrimmar!" said the one with an axe.

"Obviously you don't know what 'in secret' means!" she rebuked.

"I'll send a runner," Kaltunk said. "Or more. Wouldn't want any Alliance scum ambushing our messengers on the road."

Had the lie actually worked? Katara couldn't believe it. In the moments while they talked to each other instead of at her, she used the cover of darkness to twist her wrists, curl her fingers, do what little she could with her limited mobility...

The stew swirled readily. The cook standing near it jumped back in alarm as the cauldron tipped over, droplets of stew splattering on the dust with loud sizzles.

Kaltunk and the others half-turned to look over at the sound. Katara wrenched her arms as hard as she could, and the stew flew up like a snake, lashing them all across the torsos. They shouted in pain as the scalding liquid caught them. She rolled up to her feet.

She was about to see what she could do with two moons.


	13. Chapter 13

"Amazin'," uttered the dwarf. His sentiments were echoed by several others who had gathered around.

Toph grinned as she performed, stamping her feet, flicking her hands, raising pillars and sliding the ground floor of their stone city around as easily as the wind ruffles the pages of an open book.

Their city - Ironforge - was amazing to _her_, awesome and beautiful. Shaped like a giant, spoked wheel, carved inside a mountain, with the weight of the world above and below. All one continuous mass of rock: homes and business carved from the rock, passages and tunnels, leading out to the air above and deep, crystalline caverns below. And they did all this _without_ Earthbending! She couldn't help but respect anyone who took the time to carve the rock with their bare hands and pure gumption (even if she could do it better).

In the center of the city, she felt the rock fall off steeply where a vat of thick, frothing fluid filled the center. That, her guide had told her, was The Great Forge.

As Toph smoothed over the floor again, the entire world seemed to shake. She felt it come not from deep below, but above, like a powerful, percussive blast of wind had beat down on the mountain. It passed just as quickly as it began. "What was that?"

"Deathwing flyin' over," said her guide grimly.

"Sounds like a fun guy. What were his parents thinking?"

Someone in the crowd gave a snort of laughter, but no one else.

"He's a great black dragon, Toph," her guide said. "Burst from tha ground, tore it all asunder."

"A dragon! Whoa! I thought they were - er, well, they're extinct where I'm from." Toph heard some murmurs of surprise at that.

"Not all dragons are bad here," the dwarf said, "but this one's tha worst. If ye want to learn more, the historians can tell ye. An' if ye ever hear him comin' - run fer cover."

"Hah! I'll knock his block off, no problem."

"No ye won't!" he snapped. She felt him shaking slightly. "He's... he _was_ tha Earthwarder. Ye throw tha earth at him, he'll throw it right back, an' toast ye to be sure!"

Toph wasn't used to people doubting her ability once they'd seen it for themselves. But a dragon Earthbender? She'd enjoy the challenge.

"I mean it!" the dwarf said. "He near tore tha continents in half, tossed up tha sea an', word has it, just about destroyed the Plane o' Earth itself! I dinnae want to see any more casualties." She heard his voice weaken with sudden sorrow on the last part.

"What made him go so bad?" she asked.

"We dinnae know. Like I said, the historians can tell ye more. All tha dragon aspects guarded tha elements, once, on order o' tha great Titans that made us. But only three o' tha five left be any good at it."

"Huh. Dragons were the first Firebenders where I'm from. Other animals taught us the rest. Wait... five? What's the fifth?"

"There's Earth, and Life, Magic, Dreams, an' -"

"Time!" said a bright, bubbly, feminine voice. It came from one of the gnomes, who were the very tiny humanoids that inhabited Ironforge alongside the dwarves.

"Those are some weird elements," Toph said. "I mean, what would a 'Dreambender' even do? Give you nightmares?"

"It's far more complicated than that!" said the gnome. "But I've already - I mean, I'll explain it to you later. This time, it's time to talk about time!"

"You're not making any sense, squeaky."

"Not yet! I've actually come here to make sense of _you_ - Toph, was it?"

"I've never met you before..."

"Oh! That's right. I get mixed up sometimes! In that case, my name's Chromie. I'm a bronze dragon. A dragon of Time."


	14. Chapter 14

A tauren guard stood outside the tent where Aang was held, less to keep him in and more to prevent over-reactive citizens from entering.

The city of Thunder Bluff _did_ remind him of home in many ways, and sitting there in the dark, cool tent, taking in the scents and sounds, calmed his troubled mind somewhat. Somewhere a bonfire roared, and the people played drums and woodwinds around it, singing in their voices like thunder echoing over the plains. He could hear crafters working with cloth, wood and stone in the surrounding structures. The smell of sweet corn as it was mashed reached him.

Of course, he also smelled leather and meat, and _that_ reminded him of the Water Tribes. But it was homey in a different way. He thought of Katara, wondered where she was. Was she back on the island, trying to find him to no avail? Or had she also been brought along, dropped somewhere in this weird, hostile world? If so, he hoped the tauren found her too.

Baine didn't visit again that night, and Aang easily slipped the ropes holding his arms, and laid down to sleep instead.

An hour of tossing and turning passed instead, and he sat up. He couldn't rest, worrying about everything. The Fire Lord, set to use the fire-amplifying powers of the passing comet to set all the Earth Kingdom ablaze. Deathwing, a giant, evil dragon ripping the planet of Azeroth apart at the seams. His own friends, either trapped back home without him to save them by stopping the Fire Lord, or trapped here, possibly getting kidnapped or killed because of a war they had nothing to do with! It was just too much, too much.

But he was here for a purpose, wasn't he? Because of Deathwing. Aang had spoken with dragons before. He had humbled himself before the last living dragons on his world, in exchange for their teachings. He couldn't believe a member of such a noble species could truly be evil. If he had a chance, he believed he could get through to this rampaging dragon somehow, turn him back to good.

He knew what his friends would say about that, of course. The same things they said about his hopes to deal with the Fire Lord non-lethally.

In times of doubt, he often reached back into the minds of his past lives to ask for their guidance. He settled himself into a meditative position, closed his eyes and let his thoughts drift into the midnight of his furthest memories, the ones no longer a part of his living body.

Avatar Roku appeared kneeling before him. Aang opened his eyes. Thunder Bluff was gone, replaced by a blue, misty expanse.

"Avatar Roku, you heard what Baine said," Avatar pleaded. "This world's in trouble as much as mine is! I must be here because I'm supposed to help them!"

"Aang," Roku said severely, "do not forget your duty to your own people. The Fire Lord will cement his conquest in just three days' time. You - _they_ - cannot afford to have you wasting your time on a strangers' world."

"But how am I supposed to get back? As long as I'm here -"

"Use your time to find a way! You were born to be the protector of _your_ world. It needs you, now more than ever."

Aang sighed. He knew Roku was right. But he knew his own thoughts couldn't be wrong, either. Was this supposed to be the greatest test ever? To choose between two endangered realms, or somehow save them both? He had to find a way. Compassion was his people's way. Balance was the Avatar's purpose.

The elder Avatar faded, but the spiritual realm did not. As Aang watched, new forms came out of the mists, standing before him. He recognized them all as tauren.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I am Cairne Bloodhoof, father of Baine," said the one in front. "These are the spirits of tauren who have passed since the war."

There were so many. Aang's heart ached. "Why have you come to me, spirits?"

"All who seek the guidance of those before them may find us here."

"Am I supposed to save your world?"

"I cannot tell you the future, or the minds of fate and the Earthmother. Ordinarily I would tell you 'no'. But I know you're no ordinary child. You house a powerful spirit of nature in you. Perhaps the spirit of our world called out to yours, called for help when ancient evils threaten all. But, perhaps not. I must warn you: Baine and my people may stand with you, but the rest of the Horde will not. Do not ask to present yourself to Warchief Garrosh. Once, he cared for honor, but no longer. In his efforts to prove himself a powerful warrior and step out of his father's shadow, he lost his way. He would slaughter you without a second thought."

_Warchief_. The very title implied a belligerent position. Not a leader of people, but a leader of wars.

"I understand," Aang said humbly. "What about -"

"Deathwing is far more powerful, more dangerous and more corrupt. More than you can know. If your purpose is to help our world, it isn't by battling him. Use your magic to heal the land."

Cairne half-turned, facing north. Aang looked, and saw the Bluffs, but without tents, or firepits, or people. He saw further than a fire hawk, looking on over the green ranges, the mountains above, rising higher and higher, and the crown of a massive tree overlooking them all, as clearly as if it stood in front of him.

"If anyone can help you on this path," Cairne said, "It is Ysera, Dragon Aspect of Dreams, guardian of nature. She and the Ancients have returned at last - perhaps too late - and now dwell on Mount Hyjal, under the shade of Nordrassil, the World Tree. Ask the druids here to take you to her."

The vision began to fade, the darkness of true sleep creeping in at the edges.

Aang held on to those names, repeating them in his mind. Ysera... Hyjal... Nordrassil...

Cairne's voice receded into the mists. "May the Earthmother guide you, on whichever path you choose to take..."


	15. Chapter 15

Sokka watched the elves converse. Although they remained in the 'Common tongue' (whatever that meant), he barely understood what they said.

"What do you mean it's closed? How?" Tyrande asked the man who had just been a cat. Nobody in the room seemed to find someone being a cat strange, so Sokka pretended he didn't either.

"I was studying the fel boars in Hellfire when I noticed the Dark Portal wasn't glowing, like it should," said the man. "There was nothing in the portal at all. You could see straight through to the rocks behind it."

"Did you test it?" Tyrande's face grew more troubled.

"Yes. I could fly straight through it, as well. So I transported myself to Moonglade and flew directly here."

"Have you told anyone else of this?"

"The other druids."

"Then it won't be long before the tauren and trolls know... and the rest of the Horde, as well," Tyrande murmured. "It could be that the magic has worn off, or that concerted forces have closed it intentionally again. But until we know for certain how and why this happened, please refrain from telling anyone else."

"I understand, High Priestess." The man bowed. "What should I do?"

She mused for a moment. "Take the ship to Stormwind. Alert King Varian, but only him."

Sokka spoke up. "Excuse me - I know I'm not from here, so I may be way off base, but - I keep hearing the word 'portal', and if I'm guessing correctly, it means something to do with trans_port_ation?"

The cat-man regarded him as if noticing him for the first time, and found him highly peculiar.

Tyrande merely nodded. "Yes. It's a magical opening through the Nether that allows you to move instantly from one place -"

"- to another," Sokka finished thoughtfully. "If some portal-thing is going wacky, do you think it has something to do with why _I'm_ here?"

"It seems possible. Our people do not generally dabble in the _arcane_," she said with mild, vague disdain (although he had no idea what an 'arcane' was), "so I couldn't tell you the specifics of how it works. But a mage might enlighten you."

"A what?"

The cat-man eyed him incredulously. Sokka was getting used to that by now, every time an elf said a word he didn't know. Tyrande didn't stop to explain this time, instead moving swiftly for the exit. Sokka followed; the cat-man exited after them, but this time changed into a bird and flew away.

Tyrande circled the white marble temple to a grassy patch in the gardens outside, where three more elves stood chatting. They wore intensely gaudy robes of bright red, blue and yellow, with collars whose backs were taller than their heads.

The trio bowed stiffly to Tyrande. "What can we do for you, High Priestess?" asked the male in front, whose robes were the most flashy and silly-looking. Sokka tried not to laugh at the sheer amount of swirly, shiny embroidery.

"Theoretically, if one of the stable mage portals were to close, could that cause another, elsewhere, to open?" she asked.

"Ah, a most intriguing question! It's important, of course, to understand the nature of portals, which in fact access the Nether itself - with the exception to Dream portals - and that portal magic is one of the most powerful yet most unstable of all magicks (the most stable being runic magic, as it relies on mimicking the shape of leylines which is about as close to the source as one gets) and so form a door, or more aptly a bridge -"

"Tarelvir," Tyrande interrupted.

The mage looked disappointed. "Simply put, it is possible, but not likely. Portals do not open themselves. It is a willful act of a mage - or what-have-you - to open it at all, since they are so precise, and holding them open requires a lot of energy. This is what makes the Dark Portal so extraordinary, of course, because it has no attending mages to focus on it. Unsurprising, considering who originally -"

"_Tarelvir_."

"Pardon. Why do you ask? If a portal's opened up somewhere, you can be sure a mage is responsible."

"Or a warlock," muttered one of the candy-robe trio.

"Ehck. Warlocks!" Tarelvir spat the word like poison.

Tyrande narrowed her eyes in consideration. "If someone were teleported, could you learn whose magic was responsible?"

"Why yes, of course. See, whenever a spell is cast or an object or person is handled, the - sorry. In short, yes. Do you have a someone recently subjected to teleportations of unknown caster?"

The High Priestess gestured at Sokka, who gave a little nod and wave of greeting. He thought Tarelvir's hocus-pocus talk sounded a lot like Aang's when the kid went off on his spiritual speech tangents.

The mage came over to Sokka, muttering and stroking his beard in thought. He then began to chant something in a strange language and continued doing so for a full minute.

"Ah!" the mage exclaimed so suddenly and loudly it made them all jump.

"What?" Sokka and Tyrande asked simultaneously.

"The magic is very strong! Hard not to identify. Why, he came through the Dark Portal just recently."

"I don't remember how I got here at all," Sokka said.

"Truly? Interesting, I've never heard of portal-amnesia before... What were you doing on Outland?"

"Uh... nothing? I wasn't there."

"But -"

"Thank you for answering our questions, Tarelvir," Tyrande said. She led Sokka back inside once more.

"What did all of that mean?" he asked.

"I'm not certain," she sighed. "I wish I knew more, but it seems the only way to know what's going on is to investigate the Dark Portal in person, from this side."

Tyrande hailed over one of the female warriors (although it occurred to him that all the warriors he'd seen so far were female). "Sentinel Sunblade, take a small contingent through the portal to the Blasted Lands." The High Priestess lowered her voice. "Report back to me if you find anything amiss concerning the Dark Portal."

"We are not mages," the Sentinel replied, "how would we know?"

"If what I hear is true, you won't need to be a mage to notice."

"Is there anything I should do?" Sokka offered hopefully.

"No," Tyrande said. Sokka's shoulders fell in disappointment. She went on, "We can't ascertain what connection you may or may not have to all this, and I'd prefer to keep you here in the city, where it's safe."

_Or where I won't run away and cause any trouble_, he thought.

"You are free, of course, to study with the Priestesses here. There are people I must speak with, so I cannot personally tutor you." She began to turn away.

"Wait," he said. "If you hear about any of my friends, will you let me know? They're going to be just as confused as I am."

"I will. Elune be with you."

"You, too."

She smiled faintly, before gracefully striding out of the temple.


	16. Chapter 16

Zuko remained bound up in vines the rest of the day. Two of the trolls crouched nearby, armed and on guard for any sudden movements of his. He made no sound except for his stomach growling briefly.

Their leader, Chief Vol'jin, held council with the plantbender woman and a handful of others. Zuko had hoped to learn something from overhearing them, but they spoke in some strange language he'd never heard before. Of course, he'd never heard any language but the only one spoken on his world.

He at least had plenty of time to study the area. Superficially resembling the Fire Nation's tropical archipelago, the sandy string of islands, as far as he could tell, had no humans whatsoever, only the trolls living in their bamboo huts on stilts, roofed with animal hides and woven grasses. Standing around the structures were ancient stone ruins that reminded him of the Sun Warrior city.

Burning braziers cast out orange light on the sea around the islands, although the blue and white moons kept it all lit well enough. Trolls went about, training their weapons on wooden dummies, riding saddled bipedal lizards, and holding discussions around fire pits. Every one of them looked ready for war in some way.

Zuko thought he could see, through the palm trees, a stretch of mainland across the channel, with another troll village squatted on the red-rock desert. Even if he escaped, it didn't look like he had anywhere to go.

Aching in his awkward suspension, he yawned and decided to just let himself fall asleep, having no control over his fate by this point anyway, though he didn't suspect they planned to kill him at this time.

A sound roused him from his half-slumber. A strange, watery sound, like the white noise of the tide suddenly amplified. He lifted his head and saw several trolls standing to their full heights to look toward the water.

The sea was pulling away, pulling inland, as if scooped in by a giant, invisible hand.

Trolls shouted in alarm as the water lifted and gathered, leaving only dry land between the islands and the mainland. Then at once, the water came bodily off the ground and slammed into the desert. The fires twinkling in the village on the coast went out, leaving the shore ominously dark. Zuko couldn't see what else was going on, from this distance.

He heard someone on the island shout something and understood one word: "Deathwing", in a terrified, questioning tone. The one shouting scrambled up a tree and searched the sky.

The water lifted again, moving with an unnatural will, swinging and smashing around. Zuko recognized waterbending easily. But were they friend or foe to him?

The water surged back toward the sea - and toward the islands. He suddenly felt very nervous, hoping the tsunami didn't drown them all. Or at least not him. He pulled against the vines as much as he dared while the guards still stood there.

He then noticed a dark shape on the water. As it came closer he saw it was a canoe, riding the wave!

The water towered over them all, the moons gleaming through it like blue glass. Trolls scattered in alarm; others stood their ground and raised their weapons.

The wave crashed down into the middle of the village, sending out frothy ripples that doused the fires and knocked the surrounding trolls down, as well as drenching Zuko. Sigh.

The canoe spun briefly on the sand before the rider put a foot out to stop it. Wait... was that? It couldn't be -

"Katara?!"

She turned her head toward him and gasped. "Zuko! What - "

"Watch out!"

She raised her hand, the water responding like an extension of her, whipping aside the thrust spear of a troll. They had regained their footing and surrounded her.

"Someone - explain - to me - what's - going - ON!" she shouted, every word punctuated with a parry against the trolls' attacks.

But apparently, two trespassers went beyond the natives' patience for discussion. Spears and scimitars and elements and bolts of magic came at Katara from all directions.

Katara had little patience left for being attacked. The seawater lashed away their strikes with ease. Zuko boggled at the sheer volume of water she moved at once, having never seen her bend so powerfully before.

"Hey, cut me loose!" he called.

She sliced the vines away with barely a second glance. He slid quickly to the nearest troll with a sword, using a low spinning kick to send their feet out from under them, and then snatched up their scimitar the moment it hit the sand.

"Katara, we've got to get out of here," he said, running up to her side. "There's too many of them!" Not to mention no reason to stay and fight in the first place.

"What are they?! First those huge green things, now this!" she shouted. He now noticed several bruises and cuts on her. Apparently she'd been fighting for a while already.

"Trolls or Darkspears or something," he said quickly. "Come on, we won't get any answers out of them!"

She finally acceded, and used a wall of water to throw the trolls back. "Hop in," she said, bringing both feet back into the canoe. He sprang into it, and the seawater welled up from below where it had seeped into the sand. He sat down hard and grabbed the sides to keep from falling out as the entire boat was practically thrown into the ocean.

Arrows whistled by, barely missing them. "Hurry!" he shouted, pressing himself as low into the boat as possible.

"Don't need to tell me twice!" she said. Swinging her arms rapidly, she surged the water beneath them, pushing the canoe forward with incredible speed. Even if it had oars, attempting to use them would only get in the way.

She didn't stop her frantic waterbending until they were well away from land, keeping it in sight only enough to keep from getting lost at sea.

She then sank down to sit on her end of the canoe, letting out a sigh of exhaustion. "What happened, Zuko? Where are we?"

"I don't know," he said, with an apologetic shrug. "One minute, I was in the old vacation house with you guys, talking to Aang. And then I was here, getting attacked by blue people."

"I was getting attacked by green people." She relaxed as much as she could, resting her head against the crook of the boat. It continued moving forward, carried along by inertia for now. "Have you seen the others?"

"No, you're the first human I've seen."

"They thought I was a spy for some... enemy nation, or something... Northwatch, Alliance, I don't even know..." She put a hand to a large bruise on the side of her face.

"Same. They stopped to listen only because firebending is weird to them, I guess, and they wanted to know how I did it. Apparently when people bend around here, they're called 'mages'."

"What are we going to do?!"

"If there are humans here, maybe they'll be friendly to us. Especially if they're enemies of... all those other things. We should try to find them."

"You're right." She sat up, and made minimal motions to keep the canoe moving. "I hope the others aren't here, too..."

"I think they can all handle themselves pretty well. I mean, you managed to beat me every time I caught up with you," he said, with a half-hearted grin.

"Yeah, and you were the one that got captured this time," she said teasingly.

"Hey, they surprised me! And outnumbered me like, thirty to one."

"Yeah, yeah..." She sounded just a smidgen less totally stressed out. That was good, at least. "Two moons... Can you believe it?" She lifted her head to stare at them. "And both full. It's like I was supposed to escape."

"We're definitely not on our own world anymore," he murmured thoughtfully. He then yawned. "Uugh, I feel like I haven't slept in days."

"You probably haven't. It was night when we were on our own world, and it's been a whole day since that."

"Then I'm going to try to sleep. Wake me up if there's trouble."

He laid down, half-curled (the canoe didn't have room for him to stretch out without kicking Katara), finding the uncomfortable wooden boat surprisingly restful after being tied to a tree all day long. With the steady sound of lapping water lulling him, he fell asleep within minutes.


	17. Chapter 17

Katara was achingly sleepy, but she dutifully kept awake, kept the shore in site, kept an eye out for signs of humans. Although, in this strange world, she didn't know what to actually look for.

She felt too anxious to sleep yet, in any case.

At one point she saw huge warships, their bronze figureheads fashioned into fearsome hawks. Though they lacked the foreboding smoke of fuel-burning Fire Nation ships, she couldn't be sure they were friendly, and didn't want to risk getting shot out of the water by an overeager cannoneer. She gave them a wide berth, glad that they made some much noise in the water lest her own movements be audible instead.

In the distance, she saw the pillars of red rock that she swore she'd walked amongst earlier. She scanned the horizon for the city she'd seen, but either she was mistaken about recognizing the rocks, or the cape went deeper inland than she thought. She didn't feel like skirting close enough to the desert to find out.

Soon, the parched red land gave way to yellow grasses instead, looking a strange green under the blue moonlight. She saw several tiny island off the coast, dotted with palm trees and brown wooden buildings. Docked were more large ships, these ones with ominous red and black sails, their prows decorated with massive spikes.

Her eyes grew heavy, and her bending started to wane in strength as the larger moon sunk below the horizon, replaced by the early glow of twilight. Her arms ached, her head throbbed. She didn't want to stop to heal herself yet; it wasn't critical and she could always do it later.

The rugged land suddenly stopped in a ragged split, like someone had driven a hammer and chisel directly into the continent and formed a wedge so huge the sea spilled into the canyon. It extended far beyond sight, and pieces of broken land tilted into the ocean at the front of the split. She mused, wondering if some great earthbender had done this, similar to the tale of Avatar Kyoshi.

Katara then gasped as a flaming projectile flew through the air, arcing high over the canyon and exploding against the walls of a stone fortress on the other side. As the canoe came closest in passing, she saw tiny figures engaged in battle all across the tattered shores, catapults and archers firing from both sides. She couldn't discern any of their species, and quite frankly it didn't matter. She wasn't about to stop and ask for directions in the middle of a warzone.

Sighing, disappointed but not surprised that even on other worlds war was a constant fact of life, she kept pushing the canoe onward.

Eventually the sun peeked up from over the ocean, turning the turquoise water a brilliant gold. Katara had never been so tired in her life. Zuko snored once and she gave him an envious glare.

Desperately needing some rest, she was elated to spot a seemingly uninhabited island among many, with what looked like an ancient, abandoned rowboat beached on the edge. She moved the canoe forward slowly, eyes peeled for buildings, fires, or anything else to warn her of potential hostiles. Seeing none, she pushed the canoe up onto the sand.

A rowboat sat half-buried and half-decayed to oblivion, but with its oars still thankfully intact. Old barrels and crates were scattered around, their wooden shells green and black with mold. She couldn't assume their owner would ever be back to reclaim them.

Zuko woke as she stepped out of the canoe to gather the oars. "Huh- wha?" He sat up with a yawn. "Why'd we stop? Everything okay?"

"I'm exhausted, Zuko," she said. "Look, I found some oars." She yanked them out of the sand and tossed them to him. He caught one; the other one clonked him on the head.

"Watch it! And okay, I get the hint, I'll row. What's this boat doing here though?"

"Who cares?" she said in exasperation. "The owner's long gone, I can't feel bad about taking them."

"Yeah, well... Let's just get going again. I have a bad feeling about whatever happened that made the last person leave all their stuff behind like this."

"The boat's so rotten, it was probably ages ago," she said. "Can you pry open these containers? There might be something useful inside."

"It's probably all rotten, too," he said, not moving.

She gave him a huff and a glare, but was far too tired to press the issue. "Okay, let's - what is that?!"

She pointed past him. Zuko jumped to his feet in an instant, dropping the oar and grabbing up the scimitar. He looked at the water and saw a hideous, slimy face the color of bog-water rising up. It had a wide mouth full of shark-like teeth, huge bulbous eyes, and spines like anemones on its back.

More of them began to appear, in shades of gray and green, uttering noises that sounded like frantic gargling. They emerged from the water, wading on bony legs and webbed feet. Their gangly arms held axes and staves.

"Now we know what happened to the last person. Let's get out of here!" Zuko said.

Katara needed no encouragement. She jumped into the canoe and started to push them away, though she lacked the power to move them as swiftly as before. "I need help! Start rowing!"

He dropped the sword and regathered the oars, sitting and rowing, pushing them against the sandbar. The fish-men gurgled and ran at them, weapons raised. An axe whisked by the side of the canoe just as it slid fully into the water and began to speed away.

"They're swimming after us!" Katara exclaimed. She was just too tired of fleeing and fighting, and she heard the note of desperation in her own voice.

The monsters' slimy forms moved easily through the water. But the second moon was setting, and she had almost no energy left, either physical or spiritual.

Zuko didn't try to stop to fight them off as they neared the canoe. He kept rowing, building up speed. Eventually the fish-men gave up pursuit, and turned to head back to their island.

"Is everything in this world trying to kill us?!" she said, and dropped her heavy arms on her lap. She couldn't bend a dewdrop by this point.

"We'll find someone who's not hostile eventually," he said. "Those things are off our tail. Go ahead and sleep."

She collapsed wearily where she sat, and was out cold.


	18. Chapter 18

If Toph had to listen to the gnome-dragon-girl, she demanded to have some food first. Chromie gladly whisked her off to the nearest inn and bought her some fresh bread and hot chocolate. The dwarven guide had bowed out, perhaps not wanting to meddle in the affairs of dragons.

"Every type of dragon has a domain that we watch over. Bronzes keep watch over all of time: past, present and future," Chromie explained. Toph sat on a low-slung chair (as they all were, here) and warmed her feet by a fire.

"Huh." Toph didn't really believe it. "So what's my future like?"

"As much as it pains me to admit, I do not know. You're one of several anomalies in this timeline. I can only presume you're from a world completely undiscovered by the Titans. However -"

"Wait! You said several. Does that mean my friends are here too?"

"We detected several humans heretofore unknown in this timeline. I don't know if they're your friends."

"Let's assume they are. How do we get out of your timeline or world or whatever? We're sort of needed someplace else. Like, right now."

"If I could be certain it wouldn't cause any paradoxes, I'd gladly find a way to send you back - proper time and all, right where and when you left. But I know very little about you at all, or how you might fit into things."

"So you're basically telling me that you have nothing to tell me." Toph snorted.

"There was already, a, shall we say, rough outline of events. I believe they are the future, from this perspective. And several that are merely concurrent, but tied together nonetheless..."

Toph yawned dramatically.

"What I mean is, the events I've already witnessed did not include you at all. Ever."

"So what? I'm not from here, why would I be in any of your events?"

"Because you _are_ here, and will continue to be here, in a manner which changes many of these events."

"Okay, so... Are you going to keep me from doing whatever is it you saw me doing? Or are you just going to run it all by me so I can get to doing it right away?"

"Neither, yet. I'm just here to learn. Until we know the correct path, we're not going to act for or against these changes. We keep the timeline tidy, see. Anyone who goes back in time to start changing events has to be stopped! But there's no temporal magic on you. You came into 'right now' from another 'right now', not a past or future, which is rather unprecedented."

Toph groaned and slung her arm over her head. "All this weird time talk! I don't get any of this. Just get to the facts. I mean, the important ones, that I actually need to know."

"Well, there aren't any of those," Chromie said. "Tell me facts about you. Where were you before being here?"

"On an island in the Fire Nation."

"What world?"

"What do you mean, 'what world'? The only world I knew existed! THE world!"

Chromie went silent in thought, tapping her chin. "Interesting. Do you know how that world came to be?"

"Uh, no. I wasn't exactly around for that."

"Have you ever heard of the Titans?"

"Nope."

"The Old Gods?"

"Nope."

"The Burning Legion?"

"Just the Fire Nation... legion... I guess. They do a lot of burning."

Chromie waved a hand, looking relieved. "No, no, not the same. Thank goodness! So you haven't been exposed to any of the major forces that shaped our realm. Hmm. You have elemental magic there, yes?"

"Yeah, I'm the greatest earthbender alive!"

"What about the elemental spirits?"

"I'm not into all that spirit-y stuff," Toph said dismissively. "Aang is, though. He's the Avatar, which is like, an everything-elemental-spirit that gets reincarnated as a new person each time it dies. He's gone into the spirit world. I haven't, though."

Chromie sat forward in earnest interest. "Everything elemental?"

"Yeah. Air, water, earth, fire. He knows 'em all. Anyone else can only learn one type of bending, and most people can't do it at all. He gets reborn with a new element each time, then has to go out and learn the rest."

"Most interesting. Was he with you when you came here?"

"Yeah. Him, and... Zuko, a firebender... Katara, a waterbender, her brother Sokka and his girlfriend Suki. They don't bend."

"How does one 'bend'?"

"Oh, well..." Toph scratched her head, thinking of a way to explain it. "It's different for every element, I guess. Earthbenders have to be tough, strong, resolute, stubborn. You have to be the rock! Feel the rock! Then you can move the rock. I can move metal, too," she said smugly. "No one else can."

"How?"

"I don't know, I just... do! I just feel it... and I move, and it moves for me... I learned it from the badger-moles, who were the first earthbenders. Firebenders learned from dragons, and they have to be... hot-headed, I guess. Kind of over-emotional sometimes. And waterbenders learned from the moon, and airbenders learned from flying bison."

"So you don't interact with the elemental spirits directly, except for the Avatar. I'm going to tell you about our elementals - I'll be as brief as possible."

"Good."

"All the elements are alive, in a way. Anyone who uses any magic, gets it from them. Shamans ask permission. Mages do it by force. Warlocks steal and corrupt. The elements always existed, long before people. Nothing but the raging war of elemental forces, clashing and destroying everything!

"They once did the bidding of the Old Gods. To put it bluntly, those are the most malevolent entities in this world. Literally - they're inside it, now. The Titans came, saw what a mess Azeroth was, and reordered it. They put the elements in their place, and buried the Old Gods deep, deep within the planet.

"Unfortunately, the Old Gods managed to cause trouble anyway, in a lot of ways not even worth listing, but in short they'll make you go insane and evil if they can. Which is what they did to Deathwing."

Chromie paused briefly, her heart giving a small flutter of melancholy and fear.

"Many people fell under the sway of the Old Gods, and began to worship them. They call themselves the Twilight's Hammer, a cult that wants to break Azeroth open and release the Old Gods, ushering forth the chaos of the original, ancient world."

"...Whoa." Toph shook her head. "That's crazy! At least the Fire Nation just wants to conquer the world, not blow it all up!"

Chromie nodded grimly. "There are other interfering forces that make keeping things as orderly as the Titans would like darn near impossible. The Burning Legion are demons actively opposing the Titanic order. They want to destroy everything, too. They destroyed many planets before, including Draenor, now called Outland -"

"I've heard of that! The dwarf was asking me if I came from there..."

"It's nothing but a few chunks floating in the Nether, now. It will never be whole again. Deathwing, too, is responsible for that."

Toph began to grasp the gravity of these names. "You mean these Burning Twilight guys are going to go blow up _my_ planet?"

"I... I don't know. They're working hard on destroying this one. But I have a feeling they have something to do with your sudden appearance. They often summon elementals and force them to do their bidding. Perhaps, in attempting to do this, they called _you_ - 'the greatest earthbender alive', and your friends. Whatever the case, I believe it has placed both our worlds in great danger."


	19. Chapter 19

Aang woke the next day when one of the tauren guards brought in a plate of breakfast for him. Aang said thanks, and proceeded to heartily enjoy a meal of spiced bread, pine nuts and fresh fruit. He left alone the seasoned fish, and felt a little bad it had to die for nothing, and ended up giving it to the guard so it at least wouldn't go to waste. All in all, he was surprised at their hospitality, considering he was still their prisoner.

But then he guessed Baine did his best to act civilly in these circumstances. Aang bet the chieftain didn't really expect leadership to fall on him so soon, let alone in the middle of a war.

Baine eventually came to visit the Avatar personally. Like the guard, he noticed Aang had long since slipped the ropes, but didn't comment.

"If I could let you tour this city peacefully, I would," the chieftain said. "But..."

"Not everyone would be okay with it. I know," Aang said. "That's how it is right now with Zuko. He's the Fire Nation prince. He used to be a bad guy, but then he joined us so he could stop the war. But now everyone thinks he's a traitor, just for wanting peace!"

"Ahh, yes. You do know," Baine said with a heavy nod. He lowered his voice. "Any who resist the war efforts tend to be branded a 'traitor', here. The eyes and ears of Garrosh Hellscream are always upon us, as they say."

Aang gulped. "I wish I could help."

"I know. Of course, you can do nothing from inside a tent. And, as fortune has it - I have no use for you inside a tent, either."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm letting you go, Aang. I see no need to keep you prisoner any longer." Baine frowned. "I don't know where I can send you, however."

"It's okay, I know where to go." Aang smiled reassuringly. "The World Tree!"

Baine's eyebrows lifted in surprise. "How did you hear of that?"

"I had a vision last night. I, um... I spoke with your father. He told me to go to N... Nordiss..." Crud, he couldn't remember all those weird names now that he was awake.

"Nordrassil?" Baine scratched his chin. "Yes... This makes sense. The druids are there, under Ysera. They are neutral in this war. Or at least, they do not belong to either Horde or Alliance."

"Cairne said I should ask the druids to take me there." Aang paused, then smiled self-effacingly. "What's a druid?"

Baine was briefly at a loss for words, probably never having to explain the word to his own people. "They are guardians of nature, to put it simply. They draw power from the Earthmother, the Sun and Moon, the Emerald Dream. The druids can explain themselves better than I can, I'm sure."

Aang liked the sound of them. He stood up. "So when do I leave?"

"Soon. Come with me," Baine said, turning to leave. Aang followed after.

He marveled at the city of Thunder Bluff now that he had a real chance to see it. The tauren had built their entire city on top of a series of mesas in the middle of a wide open valley. Everything was green and lush, and the breezes carried the scent of soil and verdancy. The tents and lodges were decorated with colorful beads, kites and feathers, and massive, multi-colored totems stood over them.

The locals, of course, stared at the lone human in their midst, but saw that he accompanied their chieftain and nodded deferentially. Aang smiled and waved.

Baine led him across a wooden rope bridge spanning the gulf between two mesas. The city was like a set of islands, floating on a sea of open air.

A gigantic tent almost completely dominated the other mesa. The top was open, letting sunlight in and campfire smoke out. Tauren filled the single space within, most of them in robes.

"This is the Elder Rise," Baine explained, crossing the dirt floor. "Our druids convene here. Our Archdruid Hamuul is already in Hyjal, but one of the others can take you there."

They stopped in front of a female tauren with tan and white fur and two long braids made of her brown mane. She eyed them curiously, but bowed before the chieftain.

"Sheal, this is Aang, host of an elemental spirit from another world. Aang, this is Sheal Runetotem," Baine introduced.

"Hi!" Aang said. "He said you can take me to Hyjal?"

Sheal glanced between them several times, before nodding in surprise. "Yes, I can. But why?"

"He had a vision of my father," Baine said, "and was directed to Nordrassil by him. And it is too dangerous to have him use the Hyjal portal in Orgrimmar..."

She nodded in understanding. "Yes. I am ready to leave any time," she said.

Baine looked down at Aang, and seemed concerned, in a way most adults never seemed to on his own world. They were probably too used to war there after a hundred years to worry about kids anymore.

"Be safe. It would not do for this war of ours to claim the life of one uninvolved," Baine said. "May the Earthmother guide you both." And with that, the chieftain left the Elder Rise.

Sheal began to move her hands like a bender, speaking in her own language. Aang watched in fascination as an emerald light formed between her hands, a circle growing in shape, as if she weaved the air into a green dreamcatcher. In the center betweens the threads, a hole gradually opened, soon large enough for even the towering tauren to step through.

She had opened a hole straight through to another location!

Aang moved all around the opening, to see if he could look at the back side of it, but it seemed to follow him, always facing him. "How did you do that?"

"It is a simple portal. Please step through quickly; I can't maintain it for long."

He jumped through and she followed soon after. The portal closed immediately, leaving no trace of itself behind.

Aang gazed around in awe at where he stood, an incredibly lush field of thick grasses and huge flowers colored like opals and amethysts. A lake that shimmered like white crystal spread out before him. Surrounding the vale were tree branches - no, roots! Each moss-coated root was as wide as the widest tree on his own world, some as big around as Appa's head. They all arched up and up, forming a dome that could have easily housed the entire palace of Ba Sing Se. Their bark had so much moss, vines and flowers that each root was a garden in its own right. Birds and fireflies flew far above, and white and blue moths fluttered close to the ground.

On the edge of the lake was a lodge made of white wood with silver filigree. It was open to the air, having only the minimally necessary amount of pillars and walls to remain standing, and leaves covered the floor, and the giant white flowers grew all over the walls.

Aang stood breathlessly a moment, taking in the sights, the scents of pure air (and, he recognized, the crispness of a mountain altitude), the sounds of animals all around. Even Sheal was awed and reverent, before striding toward the lodge.

Aang followed, and saw many people in and around the lodge. Some were tauren, but the rest were like very tall humans, with long ears like lemurs, glowing eyes, purple skin, and hair in bright, flowery colors. They gave him puzzled glances, but otherwise didn't seem to find him as strange as he found them.

"What are they?" he whispered to Sheal.

She blinked at him. "They are night elves..."

Since she said it in a way that implied this was common knowledge, he didn't bother clarifying for now, figuring there were more important things to learn.

She led him out to a veranda overlooking the lake. A night elf woman stood there, with long green hair and a long green cape, and two long horns sweeping back from her head. She wore a coronet shaped like a crescent moon, and had tattoos like leaves on her face. She stood with three other druids, who channeled beams of green energy onto her, which she coalesced between her hands in a motion like what Sheal did earlier.

Sheal bowed before the elf, and Aang followed suit.

"This is Ysera, She of the Dreaming, Aspect of the Green Dragonflight."


	20. Chapter 20

Garrosh Hellscream, Warchief of the Horde, stormed back and forth in Grommash Hold, a fearsome fortress of black iron walls decorated with weapons, and red tapestries decorated with the black symbol of the Horde. The only light in the sharp-edged room came from the flaming braziers behind his steel throne, and small lanterns of wrought iron along the walls. Hides of prey-animals covered the hard floor, stitched into a map of the world in the very center.

He booted feet stomped back and forth across the map, his tusked, brown face drawn into a snarl.

"Those wretched Alliance curs!" he shouted. "I should have known the moment we found Northwatch dogs setting up camp in Durotar, that Theramore would betray this pitiful truce! They have enjoyed our mercy too long. Thrall was a fool to trust that Proudmoore bitch!"

Two messengers, one orc and one troll, stood off to the side, afraid to invite his wrath by sin of having delivered their news in the first place. The assorted delegates, ambassadors and other trusted few who lined the walls watched Garrosh with bated breaths.

"It is just like those cowardly humans to turn on us during a cease-fire. Pah! And laying waste to our villages. As if Sen'jin had any value to us in the first place!"

The troll winced at the dismissive mention of his home village, which had just been flooded by a mage's tsunami. He said nothing, however, knowing he was lucky to even have audience with Garrosh at all - trolls had fallen out of favor of the new Warchief after Vol'jin bluntly expressed dissenting opinions on Hellscream's warmongering. Vol'jin was one among many who longed for the return of the more peaceful Thrall.

"If they thought they could make this move and live to regret it, they were wrong," Garrosh snarled, orange eyes glittering hatefully. "When all is done, the Alliance - and the world! - will look on a smoking crater once called Theramore, and none will dare challenge the might of the Horde again!"

IIIII

Jaina Proudmoore quailed and fretted, her stomach turning loops, her mind overflowing with grisly futures.

A canoe of troll design had drifted into the bay of Theramore. The local fishermen had pulled it ashore and discovered two unconscious human teenagers inside, wounded and starving. Apparently they'd been adrift for quite a while and eventually fainted from dehydration, an ironic if not uncommon fate for those lost at sea.

The town had brought them in, nursed them back to health. Jaina hadn't heard of them at this time - why alert the sorceress to nothing more than a couple of stranded children?

But it turned out the kids had come from another world, one wholly unknown to Azeroth. They'd somehow landed in Durotar, where the orcs and trolls had captured them under the reasonable assumption they were Alliance spies.

And then the children escaped with their marvelous 'bending' magic. Unfortunately, their escape left many trolls and orcs injured, not to mention flooded no less than three villages with a tsunami.

Jaina heard of them after this knowledge got out, because everyone knew what this would mean, what it would look like to the Horde. If Thrall were still warchief, he'd no doubt contact her personally and ask for an explanation; he'd wisely realize there had to be some misunderstanding, that these children were not affiliated with her nor acting under her orders.

But he was not. Thrall stood on a stony precipice in the middle of the ocean, overlooking the raging Maelstrom, trying to quell the destructive elemental forces that Deathwing had awoken.

Garrosh would take any excuse he could to justify spilling Alliance blood. And he'd assuredly make Theramore his first target.

She needed to warn someone to avert disaster, but who could she tell without tipping off an even greater one? If she told Varian, he'd only take this as an excuse to strike the Horde pre-emptively, which would only further cement Garrosh's misguided opinions. She couldn't warn Thrall; his duties were larger than war itself. Who amongst the Alliance could benefit from this, could help her smooth out this misunderstanding? Who amongst the Horde would listen to reason, let alone convince Garrosh of it as well?

The answer came quickly, and she nearly bonked her own head over its obviousness. Prince Anduin and Chief Baine! They had both come to her for guidance and aide during the Grimtotem coup, which had, ultimately, been set off by a belligerent misunderstanding by Garrosh due to Twilight Cultists sabotaging a peace talk. Tauren had always been more level-headed and open to peace than their Horde brothers, and Anduin, Light bless him, served as a foil to his impetuous father Varian.

Asking her fellow mages to evacuate the city's residents through portals if an attack came too soon, Jaina whisked herself away on the winds of the Nether to bring the warning along.


	21. Chapter 21

As _The Moonspray_ pulled away from the island, Sokka leaned back to gaze up and marvel at what he wouldn't have believed on word alone.

He saw now that the sheer cliff they passed was in fact a sawed-off root, and all the island was made of roots, like giant dragons twining together until forming the trunk of a tree that simply should not exist.

As tall as Omashu and its mountain combined, with a canopy that spread out to blot the sky, was Teldrassil. And up in its leafy crown somewhere sat the entire city of Darnassus, the Night Elves' home.

Of course, he couldn't help but think, briefly, how vulnerable such a home would be against the Fire Nation.

The sleek elven caravel cut swiftly over the ocean, as the tree receded into misty silhouette, and Sokka could almost trick his eyes into believing it was a normal tree just behind them.

Not many were aboard the vessel. Captain Windsinger and his small crew of elves, Sokka and a contingent of sentinels and priestesses, and the High Priestess herself. Tyrande looked forward over the waters with a disquieted gaze.

Sentinel Sunblade had sent a report from another city, the closest one she could get to from the 'Dark Portal', apparently. Sokka understood very little - the Portal led to another world (but not his), and even though people could still get to that world with mini personal portals, closing the big one (which was also Dark, he supposed) was bad news. The people behind it were all cultists, who were, as far as Sokka knew, in league with every one of the most evil and destructive beings in the universe.

He really hoped they had just exaggerated that bit.

At the same time, some reports had come in undoubtedly about Sokka's friends landing in some of the other cities, and one of the kings in one of those cities called a meeting about it. Were they really _that_ important?

The voyage was long, but Sokka was used to long trips at sea. He passed the time practicing with the throwing glaive the priestesses had given him - it wasn't Mr. Boomerang or his space sword, but it was deadly sharp, well-made, and returned when thrown. Eventually the captain put a stop to that when he nearly cut the sail in half, though.

The rest of the time he learned as much as he could. He sat and talked with everyone aboard about everything he could think to ask about this world, the political climate, the fighting and magic (not quite bending) styles of different nations. He knew he had been pulled into a war, and needed to prepare himself for conflict. He sparred with the sentinels, and listened intently to the priestesses' lectures on Elune.

Elune. The White Lady. Sure, spirits were real. But such a powerful one, so powerful she could lend power to mortals all around the world? He _wanted_ to believe that. He just didn't know if he could.

IIIII

The moons were full again when _The Moonspray_ docked at Stormwind. From the name, Sokka had expected an Air Nomad temple, worn smooth by winds and lashed by lightning. Instead, he saw a massive stepped city of white brick and bright oak, with golden lion emblems and statues at every corner, and flowering apple trees lining the cobbled streets. On the city came bright sunlight, salty winds off the coast, and the sounds of gulls and bells.

It was also full of humans, which gave Sokka immense relief. He felt out-of-place around the purple-skinned, seven-foot-tall elves all the time.

A guide met them on the docks and led them through the city, which Sokka barely had time to take in. Humans and other species - more elves, and very small human-like people, and the occasional tall blue person with horns and hoofed feet - crowded the streets, which wound around narrow wooden buildings and towering stone spires. The crowd parted for Tyrande, many bowing or saluting as she passed.

The city had an impressive system of canals, which forced the group to take a more circuitous route over the bridges, until they arrived at the castle of white stone.

A long white hall lined with guards in silver and blue led them all to the throne room, where a massive bear of a man stood with other presumably important people. Sokka's eyes darted immediately, however, to three familiar faces.

"Katara!" he exclaimed in relief. Everyone looked at him. "Sorry, I -"

"Go ahead," said the large man.

Sokka needed no further encouragement. He dashed forward and hugged his sister. Toph happily joined in, and pulled Zuko into the hug as well. They parted after realizing they were holding up the proceedings, and Sokka got a better look at them. Not much had changed, except that Katara's waterskin had been exchanged for a glass gourd, and Zuko seemed to have a new sword. This did tell Sokka that they must have disappeared at the same moment when they'd all been unarmed.

"I am Varian Wrynn, King of Stormwind," said the large man. He had a dark, wild wolftail and a scar cutting across his face. "This is my son Prince Anduin," he said, gesturing at a blonde boy about their age. "Lady Jaina Proudmoore." Varian indicated a blonde woman holding a staff. "And Chromie of the Bronze Dragonflight." That was a tiny girl - woman? - with blonde hair in two buns.

Sokka did not bother to question why people had yellow hair around here. He supposed it was as normal as elves having blue skin.

He did bother to ask, "Where are the others?"

Varian frowned. "We do not know. I have contacted our other allies, but none have reported finding humans from other worlds."

Anduin and Jaina shared a glance, as if mutually asking each other a question.

Varian went on. "We do have a clue how you got here, however. Sentinel?"

Sentinel Sunblade stepped forward. She was recovering from semi-recent injuries. She bowed and said, "The Twilight's Hammer have seized the Dark Portal. It appears closed from the Outland side, but from this side it remains active. Whatever they're doing, the area around it is abnormally charged with magic. I was the only one to escape the ensuing battle." Her expression darkened.

"I believe I can expand on this gap in your knowledge," Chromie said. Her voice was ridiculously high-pitched. Sokka still couldn't tell if she was an adult or not.

"I hypothesize that the cult tried to summon elementals. Since our new friends here are almost all imbued with elemental power, it seems logical to assume they were summoned instead. Obviously something went awry, likely because the Portal isn't intended to be used that way."

"So we ended up all over the place," Sokka said. "But what happens if these cultists actually _did_ get one of us?"

"I saw no children with them at the time," Sunblade said.

"The cultists have spells to control elementals of _this_ world," Chromie said. "But you're all technically human. They probably wouldn't be able to control you directly."

"They aren't incapable of affecting the human mind," Varian said darkly.

"Indeed. They resort to brainwashing and torture -"

"No!" Katara shouted suddenly. "They can't do that to Aang!"

"Well -" Jaina started to speak.

Zuko's generic scowl turned into more of a concerned kind of scowl. "He's the Avatar, they won't be able to keep him," he said in a vaguely reassuring tone. "Even the whole Fire Nation couldn't keep him."

"The cultists have magic, weapons and numbers," Varian said. "If they're after him now, we can't underestimate what they'd do to control the power he wields."

"I don't think -" Jaina tried to say.

"What is the plan now?" Tyrande said. "Send more forces to retake the Dark Portal?"

"If they're trying to use it for whatever end, we must stop them," Varian said.

Jaina suddenly raised her staff, emitting a flash of light from its green crystal head. "Everyone!"

She successfully held everyone's attention.

"I know where Aang went. The last I heard he had gone to Mt. Hyjal to aid the druids in the fight there."

"How did you learn this?" Varian asked in surprise. The only ones not surprised were Chromie and Anduin.

"I have my sources," Jaina said. "In any case, I believe he is as safe as anyone can be right now, surrounded by archdruids and Ysera herself."

"Why didn't you tell anyone about this sooner?" the human king said.

"What could we have done about it?" she replied. "We don't know how to send them back and we don't need to keep them prisoner!"

Just then, the air split open and several humans rushed out of it. Toph looked briefly startled. "Did a bunch of people just appear?"

"Oh, no," Jaina whispered.

"What's the meaning of this?" Varian said, bristling. The guards nearby prepared to defend him, setting hands on their sword hilts.

"I told the other mages in Theramore to evacuate people here if..." She gulped.

No one had time to ask 'if what'. One of the people who'd just come through the portal announced: "Theramore is under attack by the Horde!"


	22. Chapter 22

The room was full of people Zuko didn't know talking about things he didn't know anything about. He _did_ know the city of Theramore, and about the Horde, though. He also knew this new attack was ultimately caused by his and Katara's appearance.

Jaina had asked them not to talk about their capture by the Horde to anyone else. Apparently King Varian would've used it as an opportunity to attack first. Zuko frankly didn't know if that was so bad, but he understood the value of peacetime, however brief or tenuous, and that secrecy, even from your own side, was sometimes necessary to forestall conflict.

Unfortunately in this case it only let everyone else get caught unawares.

"What are their numbers like? Where are they coming from?" Jaina asked the people from Theramore.

"From the sea, with ships and airships. We're not sure on their numbers. As soon as we saw them on the horizon, we evacuated like you said."

Varian glared. "How did you know this attack was coming, Jaina?"

"Because the two off-worlders appeared in Horde territory," the sorceress said curtly. "I thought an attack in retaliation was possible."

"Retaliation for what?! They're two children, not an army!"

"Excuse me," Katara said. "But we happen to be benders, and pretty good ones too."

"And we sort of... flooded a village or two when escaping," Zuko said.

Varian's already impressive chin became even more sharp and protruding. "Why wasn't I told?! Of course the Horde would attack after that! You can't expect those tusked savages to act any better, not when they think they've been provoked!"

"Because you still think of them as 'tusked savages', that's why," Jaina said. "And it was Theramore's business. I took measures to ensure my people would be safe if something happened, because _I _am Theramore's ruler."

Varian glowered, nostrils flaring. When he finally spoke, his tone was terse. "Would you accept my aide, or am I no longer allowed in Theramore's business at all?"

She sighed. "I would."

He immediately turned to the nearby guards and began shouting commands for gathering troops. Jaina rubbed her head and continued to question the portal newcomers. Chromie quietly nodded to herself as if this all made sense somehow.

"Do you get any of this?" Toph asked no one in particular.

"Yeah," Zuko said. "Looks like we sort of tipped off a war."

"Oh, no," Chromie said. "The war has been going on a long time, taking a break now and then."

"But we got Theramore attacked."

"Actually..." Chromie looked up at him. "If it's any consolation, this was going to happen anyway. Just a bit later on, under different circumstances."

Zuko gawked down at her. "What?"

"She's a time traveler, just roll with it," Toph said. "So, are we gonna go knock some heads?" She pounded one fist into the other with a grin.

"Somehow I doubt they'd let us go," he said. "They actually have something against teenagers getting involved in battles here."

Anduin had moved over to them by now. "Jaina may be persuaded to take you, knowing your abilities. But don't feel pressured to go." His voice had the slightly stilted, well-enunciated quality of royalty, without all the harsh bite of the royalty Zuko was used to.

"Thanks for your concern, but we've sort of been fighting a war in our own world for a while now," Katara said. "Besides, I _did_ cause a tsunami and Zuko, well, he shot a bunch of fire."

"Hey!" Zuko said.

"I'd really like to do some good here, not _just_ because we caused a lot of trouble," she went on, "but because I know we're good assets."

"Katara, no way!" Sokka said. "Do we have to get involved in everyone's problems? Can't we just let them fight their own battles for once?"

"It's a double full moon tonight!" she said. "I'm even stronger than I was on the full moon back home. I know I can help them!"

"Just because you can doesn't mean you have to!"

Anduin looked like he felt out-of-place standing there with them, but didn't have a way to politely retreat now. Katara addressed him. "You're a prince, right? You must have some influence."

Anduin smiled self-deprecatingly. "My father barely lets _me_ participate..."

"Doesn't want to let you go to war, huh?" Sokka said.

"He doesn't believe I'm fit for combat, although I'm good with a bow. My main calling, however, is with the Holy Light. Of course, I'm sure even if I could wield a sword as good as he can, he'd still say I should stay home. But that's just him being overprotective."

Sokka nodded. "Dads can be like that. But don't worry, someday they come around and really see you as a man."

Zuko felt a sharp jab of jealousy.

"I don't know about that," Toph said. "Even when I totally kicked all the bad guys' butts with my Earthbending, my parents still wouldn't let me leave!"

"I thought you said they let you go..." Sokka said.

"Uhhh... That's not important! What's important is letting the grownups let us go fight! I'm getting bored sitting around listening to everyone talk!"

"Apparently so is Garrosh," Anduin sighed. "Jaina and I spoke to Baine - Chief of the tauren - to see if he could get through to Garrosh, but it obviously didn't work."

"What does Garrosh hope to gain?" Zuko asked.

"What do you mean?"

"What are his goals? Why is he at war?"

"To take more land, primarily. He makes any grab for land he can, and constantly pushes into Alliance territory. But he also dislikes our races on principle. He believes we're weak and not fit to rule." Anduin said this all matter-of-factly, as if merely repeating what he'd been told.

"Where I'm from, my father is the one doing that."

"Oh, um," Anduin said. He didn't seem to know what to say. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Oh no, Zuko," Katara said, suddenly fearful. "The Comet!"

They all gasped collectively with the exception of Anduin.

Helpless dread washed over Zuko as he realized all the implications of their absence, as he remembered the Fire Lord's plans for their home planet, and that no one was around to stop them from happening.

The day of Sozin's Comet had come and gone. And with it, all their hopes of saving their own world.


	23. Chapter 23

Katara imagined the forests of the Earth Kingdom all set ablaze, all the enemies of the Fire Nation killed or enslaved, and any spark of rebellion extinguished forever.

She didn't have time to dwell on it. They weren't there, they couldn't act; they were here and had to do what they could.

She turned to Jaina. "We're going with you," she said resolutely.

The sorceress regarded Katara and the others. "I don't think that's-"

"You know how powerful we are. We can help."

Sokka looked unhappy about this, but didn't try to argue anymore.

Jaina finally, slowly nodded. "Very well. But don't try to be heroes and go off on your own. Stay with the rest of our forces and follow orders."

The group nodded in return. Jaina glanced to Anduin. "Are you coming as well?" she asked the young prince.

He appeared surprised to be asked. "I can lend my healing..." he offered.

Varian overheard. "No. Absolutely not, it's too dangerous."

Anduin acquiesced without further argument. So much for his royal influence.

"You will have our aide in this as well," said the elf that had brought Sokka.

"Thank you, Tyrande," said Varian. He looked toward Toph and Chromie. "A shame the dwarves aren't here as well. Not that I can expect better from Moira..."

"Now's not the time," Jaina said. "The rest of the refugees should have appeared in Stormwind by now. I can create a portal for our forces to go to Theramore. We won't be able to bring ships or extra artillery, but we will get there in time."

The king considered it, then nodded. "My forces will be assembled soon. And then we fight for Theramore."

IIIII

Jaina formed the portal, and the combined forces of Stormwind's infantry, Tyrande and Sunblade's contingents, Jaina and her mages, and Katara, Sokka, Zuko and Toph went through.

Theramore was another coastal city, in a misty marshland, with a lonely lighthouse beaming out over the sea.

The lighthouse light fell on an iron Horde warship. Three approached Theramore, with two airships above. They were nearly upon the shore.

"Archers, mages, line up on the walls and begin firing!" Varian ordered. "Anyone trained in manning artillery, get behind those cannons and ballistae! Aim for the hulls and balloons!"

"What should we do?" Katara asked.

"What _can_ you do?"

"I can control the water. I might be able to capsize them."

"I can shoot fire," Zuko said. "But it's better at close range. Do you have any projectiles I can set on fire?"

"I can move rock!" Toph said. "And metal! Tell me where to build a wall or hurl a boulder and I'll do it!"

"Right." Varian paused a millisecond to consider. "Katara, go on the docks near the ballistae, use your water magic there. Zuko, go on the walls and light the archer's arrows. Toph, go with Katara, launch boulders at will and cover my men from incoming fire."

"I'll tell you where to aim," Katara said to her.

"What?" Varian said, confused.

"I'm blind," Toph said.

"What?! I can't have a blind little girl -"

Toph stomped one foot, rumbling the earth beneath the king. "Don't even start with the helpless little girl stuff, because I'm not!"

"It's fine, really," Katara said. "She's really great. She just needs some help aiming at targets in the air."

Varian grunted. "Too late to send you back anyway."

Katara and Toph dashed down to the rocky shoreline and docks, which were lined with ballistae already manned.

"Toph, when one of those shoots, just throw rocks in the same direction," Katara said. Toph nodded.

"Got it!"

The mighty contraptions began to fire, launching their massive missiles at the oncoming ships. The enemy was prepared, however, and several of the giant arrows exploded in midair when Horde mages hit them with fireballs.

They had more trouble stopping boulders, though.

Katara focused on the ocean. She rocked and swung her arms in a motion to mimic the tide, falling into rhythm with the waters, until they had perfectly synchronized and she felt the ocean like an extension of herself. And then when she had the water under her thrall, she moved quicker, pulling the tide with her heightened movements. Waves frothed at the shore, and then she pushed the water away, rocking the ships on the sea.

A cloud of flaming arrows arced over them from the walls. Magical shields blocked many, but many more got through, pelting the enemy and their ships.

One airship turned, facing the city with its port side. Katara wondered why they'd expose the long side of the balloons like that, when she saw the swivel guns.

She barely shouted a warning before the airship let loose a full broadside of mortar shells.

"Toph, walls!" Katara broke off her waterbending to raise her hands, pointing at the incoming missiles.

Toph managed to read her movements quickly enough to raise a single, solid wall of stone in front of them and the nearest ballista. A second later, the shore shuddered with explosions and the splintering crack of a destroyed ballista she hadn't shielded.

Toph lowered the wall while the artillerymen reloaded the ballistae that survived. "Have I even hit their ships at all?!"

"Not much, they're still far out and your rocks are mostly hitting the water," Katara said. "They don't have any catapults here."

"Figures."

She looked up to the walls, where archers discharged flaming arrows, and mages shot bolts of fire and ice. While many connected with the ships, their metal hulls were barely damaged by such small projectiles, and the balloons didn't lose air quickly enough from such tiny punctures. None of the fire had gotten close to the balloons; the Horde's defensive mages quickly prevented that. The ships weren't coming any closer either.

A shout of warning came from someone on the walls. "Horde troops coming from the north!"

Katara couldn't see them yet, but she heard a hundreds of roaring orc voices, shouting one battle cry in tandem, followed by the drone of wolves howling.

"Toph, you should go fight with the infantry," she said. "You're a lot more dangerous at close range."

"Now you're talking! But what are you gonna do?"

Katara looked over the water at the ships. "They're too far for me to effect from here. I need to get closer. Maybe I can board one."

"I thought Jaina no one should try to be a hero."

"I'm not! Okay, maybe a little. But I'm also trying to be efficient! I'm not doing much good over here on land."

"Hey, I'm not stopping you. Just expect the king-guy to throw a fit about it afterward."

"I know." They said no more. Katara slipped away from the ballistae to find a place where she could slip into the water unseen, while Toph ran inland to join the infantry against the swarm of orcs.


	24. Chapter 24

The cacophony of battle nearly deafened her. Shouting voices, howling wolves, clanking armor, running feet, all punctuated by the booms of cannon fire that simultaneously screamed and growled, rattling the air 'til it split.

Toph managed to make her way to the Alliance army, though the din and vibrations from every direction made it something of a challenge.

She heard Sokka call her name from somewhere nearby and angled toward him. "Toph," he repeated when she reached him, probably just to let her know it was him.

Varian and Tyrande shouted orders at the same time, and the whole crowd moved and merged in different directions. Sokka pulled Toph along with him, and she sensed the tall elves around them.

"Okay, start hurling boulders that way," he said. She oriented herself the same way as him, as he and everyone assumed a combat stance. The enemy hadn't closed in yet.

Toph pounded the earth, bringing up boulders and kicking them forward as rapidly as she could. At the same time, Sokka and the elves flung their razor-edged glaives, the circular weapons whistling through the air, cutting into the enemy without stopping, and returning to be caught.

They had no time for another volley before the wolf-riders met them head-on, and then everything dissolved into chaos.

Massive wolves sprang on them, biting and tearing anything they could bite. The orcs riding them swung bladed weapons to cleave whatever got in the way. The tall elves made easy targets, and in seconds many had been cut down.

Toph flung a dozen wolves into the air with a single, sudden pillar.

The Alliance forces engaged in melee, and soon swords and axes met each other with a constant, discordant song of ringing metal. The two armies became one, and Toph could no longer tell who was on her side anymore, as it seemed orcs on foot had joined the battle, and now everything was a mess of bipeds going one-on-one.

She felt uncharacteristically confused, and incredibly small, as everyone around her was unnaturally large. She lost track of Sokka, and tried to hear or feel him nearby, but the stomping of hundreds of soldiers made it impossible to distinguish any one person among them.

A huge set of wolf jaws suddenly clamped down on her shoulder.

She shrieked in pain as the animal lifted her off the ground and began to shake its head furiously, jarring her body and tearing deeper into her flesh. She had no contact with the earth and instantly lost all sense of direction, of anything. She was blind and deafened and senseless and terrified.

The wolf yelped suddenly, dropping her. The moment she hit the ground, she jabbed towards the wolf with her hand, slamming a block of rock into its torso. Its ribs collapsed on impact. An orc voice above growled and she then heard one weapon striking another very close to the top of her head. She heard her savior breathe out in exertion, and recognized it as Sokka.

She solidified her stance and tried to bring up twin pillars to smash the orc betwixt, but searing pain in her torn arm allowed only one pillar to rise. It was enough - it struck the orc in the head and knocked him off his dead wolf. Sokka moved around her to finish it off before it could get its bearings; she heard the snicker-snack of cut flesh.

"Are you okay?" he asked, kneeling next to her.

"I'll live," she said, which was the most optimistic way to put it. In truth, the pain was intense and she could barely move her arm.

The din of battle seemed to recede suddenly, as if everyone made the decision at once to just give it a rest. Toph could only assume something very dramatic and visible was happening.

"What's going on?"

Sokka didn't answer. He held still, turning towards something, the same way soldiers on both sides were beginning to turn. Many hadn't acknowledged whatever it was yet, and continued fighting, until they noticed the descending silence around them and quieted as well. Soon they all stood still.

Toph's pulse sped up in anxiety. "What is it? I can't see!"

Someone on the walls shouted the answer: "DEATHWING!"

Panic broke out. Both armies began to yell and flee for cover, while Sokka and Toph stood still.

"It's huge! There's no way- what are we supposed to do?!" he said.

A terrible voice boomed across the sky: "**THE WORLD WILL BURN!**"

She heard the cannons and ballistae firing, followed by the dragon's hideous, mocking laughter.

Working as quickly as possible, she broke open the ground beneath them, and both she and Sokka dropped into the sudden pit. With a swipe of her good arm, she sealed it off with a stone slab.

"The others!" Sokka said, his voice high. "Katara's still out there!"

"We don't have time to go get her!" Toph said. In reality, the thought of emerging from this hole to find her friends dead squeezed her heart with cold fear.

There was a roaring sound, a sound of flame too immense to measure. Screaming and shouting, and trampling feet in all directions. A sudden series of explosions that shook the air. Splintering ship hulls and toppling stone walls.

The unbroken roaring continued, enveloping any other sounds. Toph could feel the boiling heat even through solid rock; she began to sweat, and pushed more earth out of the way, deepening the pit they sat in and pulling them away from the inferno above.

She didn't know how long they waited down there. The screams stopped, and the fire went on. It seemed like ages before the heat receded.

She opened a small wedge in the rock ceiling. She didn't hear the dragon anymore. "See anything?"

"No, bring us up."

She opened the pit and lifted the ground beneath them, bringing them above ground again. The air was still hot, but not with the immediacy of an inferno in progress. She smelled smoke and burnt flesh, and tried not to gag.

Sokka was silent next to her, shaking slightly. She could feel his pulse racing. She didn't want to ask him what he saw.


	25. Chapter 25

Aang landed with the force of a bellows, blasting wind forward. The fire choked and sputtered out.

"That's the last of it here," he said. "This would be a lot easier if I had my staff, though."

"I've never seen a human use nature magic so easily at all," Sheal the tauren said.

"It's only humans where I'm from." He walked among the charred trees, looking for any embers that might restart the fire.

After the green dragon Ysera explained that here, on Mt. Hyjal, the Twilight Cultists had been pushing up the mountain with their fire elementals, he'd volunteered to help the druids fight them back. Unfortunately, it was easier to set a fire than to put it out, let alone repair the damage left behind. Half of the mountain had already been burned, and in many places, the cultists had warped the very earth into dark metal that resisted growth and healing.

"Oh no!" He knelt down at a tree stump, next to which a rabbit huddled, its hindquarters severely burnt. As he reached out to take it into his arms, it started up and pulled away, shaking with its eyes full of fear.

"No, little buddy! I'm here to help!" he pleaded with it. The rabbit turned and bounded away, despite the injuries to its leg and the pain it must have felt. Aang ran after it, ignoring Sheal's confused questions.

It raced down a steep path at a quick clip, through brush and ash. He didn't want to try to snare it with earthbending, afraid he'd only hurt it further.

He saw it heading for a burrow, and he made one last leap with his arms outstretched - missing it narrowly as it slipped past his hands and disappeared into the ground.

Well, if it could run like that, maybe it would be alright after all. He could only hope.

He stood up and brushed dust off his torso. Below, the narrow path curved down into a cliff-walled valley, littered with elven ruins, which he'd grown accustomed to seeing. The short growth of grass ended abruptly on the far side, as the unmistakable Twilight taint had converted the entire half of the valley. Spiked iron railings and twisting edifices punctured the ugly landscape. On the overlooking cliff, creatures made of whirling air and lightning stalked, and below, the huge lumpy beings known as 'ogres' growled about with giant maces.

And they had slaves.

Even from a distance, Aang could tell the people in the encampment weren't cultists. They wore chains and shabby clothes, and mined the rock while the ogres looked on.

He paused, unsure of how to proceed. Should he return to the druids for help, or could he rescue the slaves himself? They wouldn't expect him to have elemental control, and once the slaves were freed, they could start to fight back.

But he didn't want to rush in if he didn't have to. And the slaves looked starved and tired; they might not stand up well to the ogres after all.

Taking advantage of the fact he hadn't been spotted, he turned to go back up the hill, when he heard an ogre's shout echo across the valley, and an immediate yelp of pain following.

He recognized that voice.

He didn't want to believe it.

He bit his lip, fighting the anger that urged him to protect his friends. He knew he shouldn't make things worse by jumping in. The druids could help, he'd go get backup and they'd get all the slaves out together.

The familiar voice kept shouting, on and on. He took a step up the path.

But what if they died while he was gone? What if something happened and then it was too late anyway?

He couldn't take that chance. He had to move in now before they spotted him, extract the prisoner, and get out to go get help for the rest. One person he could save, at least, right now.

He charged down the hill, letting gravity propel him forward, and moved his hands to build the wind with him. He cut swiftly across the grass, and the ogres noticed him, and shouted while hefting their maces. He didn't need to deal with them yet, he could dodge around their bulky forms.

Aang jumped at the last minute, twisting his body and ripping the gale forming around him into a small tornado that surged into the camp and threw the closest ogres backward while leaving the slaves unharmed. He'd aimed high, for their tall heads.

He landed and ran across the metallic ground, which seemed to whisper at the touch. Kneeling down, he grabbed the fallen slave by the arm.

"It sees!" she shrieked, writhing and gripping her head. "The shadow sees me!"

"Suki! It's okay, it's me, Aang! Let's get out of here!" He tried to pull her up.

She raised her head and he stepped back. Her face was drawn and dirty, with heavy bags under eyes, her cheek and collar bones pronounced from starvation. Her hair was unkempt, her eyes glazed and shining like a sick animal's.

She let out a strangled noise, uttering gibberish with a choked voice, as if the words forced themselves out of her against her will. "Gul'kafh an'shel!"

The ogres had stood and begun to charge.

"Come on!" Aang said desperately. He tried to yank her to her feet; she flopped forward onto her face. "Yoq'al shn ky ywaq nuul!" she cried into the dirt.

He didn't have time for this. He dropped her and pounded the earth, but instead of raising boulders, only tore up scattered pieces, and realized the dirt had somehow truly become metal, resisting his bending - if only Toph were there!

He used a gust of wind to scatter gravel at the ogres' faces; it hardly impeded them, and soon a massive spiked hammer fell down at him. He nimbly dodged away, but now the ogre stood between him and Suki, who was in no state of mind to help herself.

If wind and earth wouldn't work, maybe water would.

Aang backed away toward the small pond in the center of the valley, not quickly enough for the ogres to lose interest, letting them get close misses as he jumped and rolled. He saw their frustration rising as he darted around, making mocking faces at them, drawing them away from the camp.

When his foot hit damp earth, he raised the water up and surged it over and around the ogres' feet, and twisted his hands, hardening it into ice before they could react. While they yelled and tried to free themselves, he ran by them, back to Suki.

"Come ON!" he said as he tried to lift her once again. She was taller and heavier than he was, and he couldn't fly them both out of there, at least not without his air glider to help.

Frustrated, he grabbed both of her wrists and dragged her across the ground, away from the eerie, shining Twilight earth and onto Hyjal's natural living dirt. Maybe air couldn't live her, but the earth could!

Once there, he kept one hand holding onto her and used the other in tandem with his feet to raise waves of earth, surfing it quickly. He knew it would chafe and scrape Suki, but he had no choice; the ogres could free themselves any moment, or other cultists might notice and attack. She'd thank him later.

He nearly ran Sheal over at the top of the path, and halted with a flying of debris.

"Aang! What happened?" the tauren asked. "You suddenly ran off!"

"I saw a rabbit -" he started, stopped, and said instead, "It's not important! My friend's hurt! And crazy, I think!"

Sheal's eyes widened at Suki's gibbering and drooling. Without a word, she hefted the girl in her arms, and ran back toward the druids' camp at Wolf's Run.


	26. Chapter 26

Sokka put a hand on Toph's shoulder, not to guide her but to steady himself. Even during their own war, he had never seen so much fire and destruction.

Thick smoke filled the air, and bodies covered the ground, flesh burnt and armor warped. He tried not to be sick as he led her across the battlefield, stepping carefully around the corpses.

He couldn't see out to the water, and didn't know how the ships had fared. He only caught glimpses of the city ramparts through plumes of smoke, but couldn't be sure if he saw movement.

Was Katara alive? Or Zuko? Or anyone?

He heard coughing, and ran for it, beginning to cough himself. He used his spare hand to cover his mouth and thought of how useful airbending would be right then.

"You... you are alive!" Tyrande said, on her knees on the ground. She was ashy but unharmed, as were several sentinels around her.

"How did you survive?!" he asked.

"Elune..." The elf stopped to cough again. "The light of Elune protected us, but... I could not save us all."

"We have to find the others."

"I know." She and the other elves stood. "Are you hurt?"

"Toph is," he said before Toph could disagree.

"I will do what I can." Tyrande set a hand on Toph, and began to chant in the Night Elven language a prayer to Elune. A pure white light emanated at her touch, and the severity of Toph's injury lessened, but did not disappear completely.

"Thanks," Toph said quietly.

"I'm going to look for Katara," Sokka said, before quickly walking away to do just that. Toph kept his pace, even as he hurried into a jog, and then a run, bolting through the city toward the beach.

The artillery looked no better than the infantry. Splintered ballistae lay mingled with charred soldiers. His pulse raced as he frantically ran among the bodies, looking for a mane of long brown hair and praying for movement if he found it.

"Wait! Sokka!" Toph yelled as he left her. "Katara ran into the water, she was going after the boats!"

He waded out into the water immediately, feet sliding on the silty shore as it sloped steeply into the sea. Toph waited at the water's edge, as he swam out to the ships.

Both airships had fallen, all four balloons detonated, their hulls smashed into the sea vessels below. Fire lit them all, a roaring blaze that turned the water golden and the sky black around them. Sokka heard screaming Horde soldiers, splashing, burning, shouting.

"Katara!" he called. Panic choked his voice; his fear made him sound like a child. It made him _feel_ like a child.

He reached the wreckage, huge, looming, burning above him, all five ships turned into a conglomerate, mangled mass. He pulled himself forward on floating timbers and barrels, ducked under iron framing and ashen sails. The few living orcs he passed ignored him, intent on their own survival.

In the narrow space between an airship and a half-capsized warship, he saw the hem of Katara's red skirt before it disappeared under the water. She did not swim; she sank.

He gulped in air and dived after her, plunging into near total darkness. Only flickers of occasional firelight pierced the depths shadowed by the ships, like lightning through the clouds.

He grabbed her foot and swam up again, but where he'd dived no longer had a surface, as the airship had sunk and tilted to occupy the space. His lungs burned as he searched along the wood and metal for a place to breach.

He finally surfaced through a window to the airship's gun deck, and pulled Katara onto one of the beams so he could hold her right-side up. She was unconscious, or barely conscious, and blood ran down her face from a wound he couldn't locate yet.

The airship was fully sideways and sinking quickly. Water surged up through the windows, and the fire-weakened wood began to splinter under the weight of the ship's iron framework. Sokka wrapped one arm around Katara's waist and half-climbed, half-swam through the deck for the windows on the opposite side. Cold, dark water frothed around him.

He emerged starboard amidst a flurry of embers, muscles aching. "Come on Katara, wake up..." He couldn't bend the water away, he couldn't heal her!

The airship creaked loudly as it settled into the sea. Only the remains of its balloons, laying over top of the warship, kept it afloat for now.

Sokka could barely see the shore through the smoke and diminishing sunlight. The ship shuddered beneath him. Katara continued to bleed, and he saw the gash on her head. Could he swim her to the shore and find one of the priestesses in time?

He quickly unwound the cloth from his wrist and wrapped it around her head, trying ineffectually to stymie the blood flow. He knew nothing about healing; he always saw it as something for girls and grannies to learn, while the men did the fighting. He only vaguely knew about treating hypothermia, that was all. He realized he'd always taken Katara's skill for granted - always assumed she'd be there to take care of him, and after she learned healing, he'd always assumed she'd be around to do that, too. It never occurred to him that someday she'd be disabled and he'd be left helpless.

The makeshift bandaging didn't seem to do any good, and he could hear the rattling in her lungs when she breathed. She'd inhaled a lot of water already, but he didn't know how to treat that, either. _She_ did. She knew everything he needed to know right now!

"Katara! Come on, breathe, throw up the water!" He pounded a fist on her chest, reckless with panic, trying to wake her up, or force the water out, or anything. "You have to wake up and heal yourself!

"This would be a great time to suddenly find out I'm a waterbender!" In desperation, he mimicked waterbending hand motions, trying to imagine the fluid rising out of her lungs. Nothing happened. "Katara, come on, we've still got a world to save, remember? We've got to take out the Fire Lord! You're not supposed to die yet! Didn't that oracle say you'd have grandchildren first? Well she was right about everything else, wasn't she?!" He shook his sister by the shoulders, his voice rising and cracking. "This isn't how it's supposed to happen, we don't even belong here! Wake up! _Wake up!_"

He slapped her hard across the face; her head lolled and she didn't respond. His heart beat hard in his chest, his hands shook, his throat and eyes burned. He pulled her up against him, wrapping his arms around her. He felt her temperature ebb away, her breathing slow.

"What were you even doing out here? Why do you always have to be a hero?" He gripped her tightly.

Looking up, he tried vainly to catch glimpses of either moon in the sky, but all he saw was smoke and broken masts. "I know I've only been here a month, and I'm not an elf, but I could really use your help right now. I promise I'll - I don't know, I'll help out with this war, and tell people how great you are, and...

"Don't let her die. Moon spirit - Elune - whoever you are, don't let her die."

The ocean breeze parted the smoke like curtains briefly. The white moon shone down. Sokka's hands shone in response.

Snowy moonlight spread from him to Katara, enveloping her head to toe. It felt cool as a night breeze, calming and soothing, and for a moment Sokka closed his eyes and felt like he was in his mother's arms again.

The light reached a peak and then faded with a gentle whisper. Katara coughed and sputtered, water falling from her mouth all at once. She took a deep breath, her airways clear, and lifted her head to look at Sokka in confusion. "What happened?"

"You got knocked out and -" The hull of the ship suddenly plunged into the water fully. "No time to explain!"

They stood as the water came up to their ankles. She needed no prodding to waterbend, creating a path of ice all the way to the shore. They ran across it, Sokka feeling buoyant with relief and disbelief.

He turned his head up to look at the moon, now clearly visible, and mouthed the word, "Thanks."

When they arrived, they found Toph moving injured soldiers up the beach with conveyor belts of stone. "Hey," she said. "I could feel which one's hearts were still beating. Sweet, huh?"

"Toph, you're alive!" Katara said.

"Yeah, so are you! What even happened out there?"

"I- it's hard to remember. I was swimming out there and suddenly that dragon..."

"Deathwing."

"Everything was exploding and on fire and the airships fell and something hit me on the head," Katara said, reaching up to touch her scalp. Blood still slicked her hair, and Sokka's wrist-wrappings were still there, but the wound was gone without a trace. "I don't remember healing myself."

"You didn't," Sokka said. "I did. Or Elune did. Whatever! The important thing is you're alive."

"Well whoever's got the healing juice had better use it on these soldiers," Toph said. "I can't stitch them up with rocks."

Katara nodded, and lifted seawater over to begin healing the soldiers. She moved quickly and easily, as if nothing had happened to her at all.

Sokka looked at his hands. The light hadn't _come_ from him, but it had moved through him, like pouring water through a funnel. Could he do it again?

He knelt down by a burned soldier and put his hands on the man's shoulders, concentrating on what he'd thought and felt earlier - a desire to act, to reverse harm, to help, though it lacked the same edge of desperation. What he didn't need to trick himself into feeling was _belief_. He knew Elune was real.

It was hard to believe that just this morning he had found it hard to believe.

Katara looked over and gasped in shock when she saw the white light spread from his hands over the burns and relieve them. They weren't entirely healed, but at least stabilized.

"How did you do that?!" she said.

Sokka smiled sheepishly. "Well, I've been studying their moon goddess here..."

"That's amazing!"

"I missed it, what happened?" Toph said.

"He used bending to heal someone!"

"I told you," he said.

"I didn't - well, no offense, but..."

"Hey, I get it. But now I'm not just the boomerang and meat guy! Now I can do stuff too! Magic stuff!"

"Wait, so you're telling me you can just _learn_ new types of bending here?" Toph said.

"It's not really bending, it's a whole different kind of magic," Sokka said. "But basically? Yeah."

She mused on this a moment, then slapped a hand on her chest. "The greatest earthbender alive doesn't need any fancy-schmancy new magic. It would only detract from my natural greatness."

After partially healing one more person, Sokka's magic had noticeably waned, and he wasn't sure he could do much more. "Hey Katara, you feel alright, right?"

"I'm wet and cold, but that's nothing new. Why?"

"I'm going to look for Zuko and any other survivors."

"I'll come with," Toph said.

While Katara continued to heal - her powers seriously boosted by the presence of two full moons - they set off through Theramore, toward the walls where Zuko had gone with the ranged support.

Many of the walls and towers had been destroyed. Piles of rubble filled the streets, and Sokka felt glad that the general populace had already evacuated beforehand. "Feel any more heartbeats?"

Toph stopped to concentrate, digging her toes into the dirt. "That way!" She pointed ahead, and they ran forward to a collapsed stone wall. She wasted no time in digging it out, flinging boulders aside.

A groan came from underneath.

"Zuko!" they both exclaimed at once, and pulled him from the rubble.

He was burned, not mortally, but either way Sokka lacked the energy to heal anymore. "Toph, get Katara. I'll look for Tyrande," he said. He was glad for the moons that night, and the boon they gave to both waterbenders and priests.

Toph ran back to the beach without question.

"You'll be okay, it's not that bad," Sokka said. "Don't go anywhere."

Zuko nodded weakly. Sokka ran for where he last saw Tyrande and the other living elves; he found her on the ravaged battlefield still, tending what very few survivors they had found. Of the combined forces that had met today, only handfuls lived, and most of them only barely.

"High Priestess - " he called.

He stopped when she turned and he saw the intensely mournful expressions on all of their faces. They stood over a large body, a blackened silhouette.

Tyrande drew herself up and announced in a steady voice, "King Varian is dead."


	27. Chapter 27

Zuko folded his hands over his chest in thought. He had nothing else to do at the moment, really.

The dragon had been terrible, monstrous, not at all like the dragons of his own world. Instead of sinuous and graceful, it had been huge and bulky like a bear, covered in black jagged scales whose seams bled lava. He remembered the dragon's false jaw made of black iron - just before it opened wide and engulfed the peninsula in flame.

Zuko had reacted on instinct, fighting away the flames with his own, expending all his energy to do so. But he'd survived, unscathed, and so had the few archers standing next to him - at least until the wall melted at the bottom and collapsed. He didn't remember much after that.

He peered up through the smoke and saw Jaina Proudmoore and several other mages moving through the ruins, using their spells and summoned water elementals to extinguish the flames. She spotted him and jogged over.

She was likewise unharmed, though the hems of her clothes were burnt and her hair was sticky with sweat. "Are you alright?" she asked. Her voice trembled slightly with fear, but she remained calm and poised.

"Yeah," he said, sitting up to prove it. He coughed, and then groaned as it pulled his bruised muscles.

"Have you seen anyone else?"

"Toph and Sokka. Apparently Katara's alive too, and Tyrande."

Jaina nodded, looking somewhat relieved. "That's good news. Come," she said, reaching down to help him stand. She then turned aside, sweeping her gaze over the ruined city, her blue eyes wet with sorrow.

"Listen, I, uh," Zuko said, "I'm sorry that Katara and I -"

"No," the archmage said. "Garrosh would have taken any excuse to attack. And if I didn't have forewarning, all those people would still have been here when Deathwing came."

"That's one way to look at it," he murmured, then asked, "Where did the Horde go?"

"I saw their survivors fleeing. There's no need to pursue them. Perhaps Garrosh will think our civilians are dead..." She sighed, and moved on to find more survivors.

IIIII

The survivors numbered few, and once reconnoitered, returned through a portal to Stormwind. The mood was morose, tense, exhausted. Several of the veterans had tears on their faces; others stood wide-eyed and shivering.

Jaina and Tyrande went aside to speak quietly together. Zuko sought his friends to stand near, though he had nothing to say. Castle guards approached the group to question them about the battle, but their questions were met with shaking heads and quiet stares. No one wanted to describe what they had seen.

Anduin Wrynn entered from a side corridor, bags under his bright eyes. He stifled a yawn as he went to the two women, asking, "How did it go?"

Priestess and mage exchanged a heavy glance before looking back down to him. "Anduin," Jaina said softly, then halted.

"What? Has something happened? Did the Horde win?"

"Nobody won," she said. "Deathwing came."

Anduin's face froze in shock. He looked over those assembled, and seemed to realize they were all who had returned, or would ever return.

"Where is my father?"

Jaina closed her eyes and bowed her head.

Anduin let out a ragged breath, and then pinched his eyes shut, forced himself to stand straighter and smoothed out his tunic. He swallowed hard and opened his eyes, clearly struggling to retain composure. "What is the next course of action?" he asked stiffly.

"We don't know yet," Jaina said. "But the Horde have also taken severe losses, and are unlikely to attack again soon. We have time to plan."

He nodded. "Your people can stay here in Stormwind, of course," he said, and cleared his throat. "E-excuse me." He turned sharply and exited down the hall from which he came.

"We should go talk to him," Katara said suddenly.

"What? Why?" Sokka said.

"He just lost his dad!" she hissed in a low voice. "We all know how it feels to lose a parent, we should comfort him!"

"But we barely know him, and besides, he's a prince and we're just some strangers, he's got stuff to do."

"So? Zuko's a prince too!"

Zuko raised his hands. "But -"

"And you're both going to be leaders of your nations soon."

"What am I supposed to say?! 'Hi, sorry your dad died, want to come hang out with me and my other half-orphan friends and chat about losing parents'?"

"I don't know," she sighed. "But nobody else is talking to him."

"Maybe he wants to be alone."

"Well, I'm going to talk to him," she said.

She began to move, but Sokka grabbed her shoulder. "He's got his own friends to talk to him, alright?" he said.

"Does he? I haven't seen another kid or teenager here at all," she said.

"It's the middle of the night, they're probably asleep," Zuko said.

By then, most of the survivors had filtered out, the room steadily emptying. Jaina and Tyrande discussed strategy, their voices occasionally rising in some disagreement, before they both stopped and seemed to remember the kids were still present.

Jaina approached them. "You all need a place to stay, don't you? I'm sure there are quarters available here." Without waiting for a response, she ushered them all down a hall and asked the first servant she saw to find them some rooms.

Zuko dreamed of Deathwing descending on the Fire Nation, standing over the bodies of dragons Ren and Shaw like a firehawk on its prey, before turning to speak in Fire Lord Ozai's voice, even while clutching Ozai's body in its massive claws.

Zuko fearlessly looked up at them, looked at his father's body, and only uttered, "Thank you."

IIIII

Zuko woke before dawn and wiped his brow of sweat. He did not enjoy dreams like that - but recent events had turned his thoughts to home, and the similarities between Deathwing and his father were too strong to ignore, as was the selfish wish that someone else had dealt with Ozai by now.

He rose from the plush bed in the guests' quarters. The room was large and lavish, but at least not decorated in red and gold like the Fire Nation palace. The white walls and blue tapestries were refreshingly cool-colored.

Across the room, Toph slept like a rock on the floor next to her own bed.

Zuko exited quietly, shutting the door with care, before walking down the hall. He had no destination in mind, only hoping to clear his head before sleeping again.

He found himself in the open, grassy courtyard, quiet but for the songs of night birds and crickets. The walls had open arches, allowing an impressive view of a lake below.

As he made his way for the ledge, white cloth caught his eye, and he turned his head aside and saw Anduin sitting at the base of a tree. Noticing him in return, Anduin stood quickly. "Is there something you need?" the Stormwind prince asked in a courteous tone.

"I didn't know anyone was out here," Zuko said. "I'll just g-"

"It's ironic, isn't it? How _because_ of the attack on Theramore, there were fewer casualties overall."

"There were still a lot of casualties," Zuko said, and immediately regretted it. How stupid! Of course Anduin knew that!

"But they were all soldiers. People who... who knew it could happen, who risked their lives anyway. I think that's how my father would have wanted it. Him, instead of innocent civilians."

Zuko tried to think of something positive to say. "He was pretty brave out there."

"He was a soldier at heart. He had always hoped I'd -" Anduin broke off, clearing his throat.

"Sometimes parents want their kids to turn out a certain way. But it doesn't mean you have to. If he hadn't told you to stay behind..."

"I know. I... I almost didn't listen. I was tempted to sneak in with the rest of you, to do my part."

"What are you going to do now?"

"I wish I knew. There'll be a funeral, a huge one, all the other leaders will be there probably, then a coronation ceremony... I wish Bolvar were here."

"Who?"

Anduin smiled weakly. "An old friend." He sat down on the edge of the courtyard overlooking the lake. "He stood in as Regent when my father went missing, when I was a child."

Zuko sat as well, secretly relieved not to have to stand anymore. "What about the Queen?"

"She died when I was an infant."

"Oh." Zuko frowned. "Mine went missing when I was young, too. No one ever found her."

"I am sorry to hear that." Anduin paused thoughtfully. "You mentioned your father earlier..."

"Yeah, he's... trying to take over the world, where I'm from." And probably succeeding, by now. "My friends and I are on a mission to stop him."

"That must be very difficult."

"Yeah. Well, at first I was trying to stop _them_," he admitted with a sheepish shrug. "I was obsessed with his approval. I thought I could reclaim my honor that way. But joining them was the smartest thing I ever did."

"I pray you succeed, then, and bring peace to your world," Anduin said, staring off at the valley below.

"Yeah. You, too."

The Stormwind prince looked over, his expression troubled and torn. "I don't know how easy it will be. Garrosh won't stop until we're dead, neither will Deathwing. There's so much hate between all sides that no one even _wants_ peace except a few of us! And now I- I'm going to be King. The people will expect me to follow in my father's footsteps, to be a warrior, and aggressive, and try to take back Azeroth from the orcs. But I'm not like him. And I'm just a boy. Will they even listen to me?"

"I don't know what to tell you," Zuko said. "It's the same for me. My father's Fire Lord. We've been at war for over a hundred years, and my people think I'm a traitor for trying to stop it. I have no idea what I'm going to do once I'm Fire Lord instead."

"You- are also a prince?"

"Yeah. But, I have my friends, I have the Avatar and a lot of others on my side. A lot more people want peace than it looks on the outside. I'm sure it's the same here. You have Jaina and Tyrande, right?"

"Yes, and Prophet Velen and the dwarven Council..."

"...Uh-huh." Zuko nodded absently, not knowing what those were.

"When this is over, it would be good to have you and your friends as allies," Anduin said, forcing another faint smile.

Zuko nodded. "We'll both need all the help we can get."


End file.
