The Traitor Princess

Chapter 59 - The Western Air Temple

Overwhelmed.

That's the word Eziri used to best describe her pool of emotions. She had just escaped her father's clutches.

Torture. Isolation. Execution.

That's all she thought she would experience after seeing her father's cold, amber eyes for the first time in years. It was a hard pill to swallow, but swallow it she did. She knew there was no way for her to escape—no way for her friends to rescue her. And yet, there she was, gliding away atop an eel hound. She thought the salty, sea air would bring a sense of calm or comfort, but it only seemed to heighten her anxiety.

Was this all real? Was she truly following the faint shadow of a Fire Nation air balloon? Or was this all some elaborate isolation-induced hallucination that her brain concocted to cope with the horrors of her imprisonment?

No, this had to be real.

She had seen Mai—spoke to her. She could feel the sun on her skin and the splashes of water against her tattered, prison clothes. She could hear the sound of the waves and the grunts from her animal companion. Surely her brain couldn't concoct something so concrete within a hallucination, right?

But if this was real, what did that mean? Would she be reunited with her friends and pick up where things left off? What happened during the invasion? Were her friends hurt? Alive? And who was in the air balloon? Soldiers? Azula? Would she make it to her friends before they were attacked?

Spirits, it would be cruel for her to escape certain death only to realize all her loved ones were gone. The thought alone made her feel sick. Fate couldn't be so cruel to grant her a second chance at life only to rob her of all her reasons for living.

Eziri clutched the reins tightly and murmured soft praise to her new companion. She had followed Mai's instructions and traveled north. She quickly caught sight of Appa's figure high in the clouds with a red air balloon not too far behind. Since then, she'd been struggling to keep up for hours. Eventually she lost sight of Appa and could just barely see the balloon far in the distance.

There was no way for them to see her—she was much too far behind and her animal wasn't large enough to be spotted from so high in the air. She just hoped that she would be able to keep up.

At one point, the clouds thickened and she lost sight of the red balloon. She took the time to stop and give the eel hound—which she named Jade— some rest. The pair stopped when they finally made it to land. Eziri unsaddled Jade and let her drink from a small stream. Thankfully, Mai packed a small bag with a bit of food and a map. Eziri munched on some dried meat and flattened the map out on the ground.

It looked like they were fairly close to the Western Air Temple. Eziri originally thought her friends were headed to the colonies in the Earth Kingdom, but now she realized that was wrong. If they were headed to an Air Temple, it was likely that Aang was alive and leading the group there. As far as she knew, the temple was abandoned and uninhabited for years. It would be a good place to hide out and regroup if they were waiting to gather what was left of the invasion force.

Mai didn't say much about the invasion, but Eziri just assumed that the invasion force lost and ultimately retreated. She wished she could have warned them about the bunker but there was no way for her to sneak messages outside her cell. She only hoped that the little bits of false information she fed her guards aided her friends enough to make a difference.

Eziri planned her route to the Western Air Temple and secured the map back in her bag. She only hoped that she was right in assuming her friends' destination.