Carved In Rock || ATLA

Get Out Alive

Lake Laogai Continued

"If you wanna get out alive, oh run for your life." - Three Days Grace

🌊🏔🌪🔥

'Do not falter. Do not allow yourself to be bogged down by unnecessary guilt and misplaced loyalties. Your false king controls his generals, and your generals marched innocent men into needless slaughter. What kind of ruler sacrifices their people so carelessly. Not one that deserves the thrones they sit upon. Those that stand by and allow them to throw lives away so easily are just as guilty. You have the opportunity to save your people. Think of those that you love! The blood of two is the only price needed to pay for their future.'

In all of his life Kyojuro had never heard someone regard another human's life so casually before but the way this letter talked about his parents? They were people dammit, a couple with two children that needed them and this monster talked about all of the good that would come from their deaths as if they had been vermin that needed extermination.

"What the fuck?" His broken voice whispered, sounding far more childlike than he had years.

'Your bravery and dedication will allow the Fire Nation to share our wealth and knowledge with a dying world.'

They speak as if their people were gods amongst men.

'Failure is not an option.'

And the thinly veiled threats hidden amongst the praise seemed to have been enough to seal his parents' fates.

Kyojuro Hashibira looked as if he were about to be sick. Perfect. Long Feng was rather proud as he watched the boy attempt to process his emotions. Pain. Sadness. Rage. All of it, the Grand Secretariat needed him to feel every last drop of anguish to keep him in line and cloud his judgment. The less aware the Prince was the easier it would be to bring him down.

Kyojuro was good, Long Feng wouldn't deny it. Honestly, he was better than good even, the boy was one of the best earthbenders Long Feng had ever seen. He had made him that way, brought him here periodically from the time he was ten, and given him no choice but to be strong. Back then his plans had been different. Initially, Long Feng meant to raise Kyojuro up and foster just enough tension between the brothers to make it obvious, and then if the elder ever rebelled then the younger would be left to take the fall for the death of yet another King. The line of succession had been all but snuffed out by then and even the very distant few were either too afraid to step up or too easy to erase from the history books. The throne would've finally been his at long last.

Then the Avatar and Akira came along and had to complicate things. The likelihood of the two brothers remaining so easy to manipulate after the mess the teenagers had made was slim. Long Feng needed a new scapegoat and the little firebender girl was the perfect fit. As long as everything went according to plan there would no longer be a need for his men or himself to stain their hands with royal blood. All that was left to do now was bring the Akira under heel and plant seeds of hatred large enough to start a fight.

"I know that this is a lot to take in Your Majesty, and I do apologize for keeping you in the dark but you must understand," Long Feng reached out and laid a hand on top of the boys, "everything I have done has been with the best interest of you and your brother in mind. You were both so young when we lost the King and Queen, spirits rest their souls, you were an infant after all, and even Kuei was too young to understand the finality of death." He chuckled, surprising the Prince. "Some days it doesn't seem that long ago that your mother told me she was expecting your brother. She was so happy then, she wanted nothing more than to be a mother. That day she made me promise her to always watch out for him, even if she couldn't. I made her that same promise again when she learned she was pregnant with you and I've wanted to do nothing more than keep those promises. There were so many times over the years that I swore to myself that I was going to sit you down and tell you both the truth but every time I tried your brother would ask me to sit with him until he fell asleep or you would ask me to spot the shapes in the clouds from your window. You would do something that reminded me how innocent you both were and I didn't have it in me to take that away from you two. The truth would've forced you to grow up faster than I was ready to let you. You know," He looked the Prince in his eyes and lied directly to his face. "I never married nor had children but I have always thought of you and Kuei as my own."