The slime was full of human teeth.
Kyoshi was so scared that she wanted to die. Her heart, her lungs, her stomach had been turned into instruments of torture, clawing and biting against each other like frenzied animals. She wanted to reach the void. Pass into oblivion. Anything to end this terror.
As the ooze reached for her knee, Yun opened his eyes. Summoning his strength, he lunged at Kyoshi, shoving her away, throwing his body between her and the spirit. He choked in surprise as the rasping slime shot underneath his clothing. A damp crimson spot bloomed on the back of his shirt.
Kyoshi’s foot lay next to the brazier of incense. A meager contribution after what Yun did, but she screamed with her whole body this time, instead of her vocal cords, and kicked at the little bronze vessel. The burning ash landed on the slime and fizzled out. The plasm nearest them shrank from the heat and the spirit hissed angrily.
Yun struggled to his knees beside her.
“I’m surprised you can move,” Jianzhu said to him, more impressed than anything else.
“Poison training,” Yun spat through clenched jaws. “With Sifu Amak, remember? Or did you forget every darker exercise you put me through?”
They were distracted from the slime regrouping, wrapping around Kyoshi’s ankle, until it latched on tight and ground away, sanding her skin off with the rows of teeth. Her blood formed clouds inside the living mucus.
Yun saw her writhe in pain. He grabbed her hand and tried to pull her away from the spirit, their palms clasped hard enough that Kyoshi felt their bones roll over each other. But the tendril held her fast, tasting her, lapping at her wound.
“It’s this one,” the spirit said. “The girl. She’s the Avatar.”
Kyoshi and Yun were looking each other in the eye when it happened. When she saw Yun’s spirit break inside him.
He had been lying to her with his body and his smile and his words this whole time. He’d thought it was him. Truly and utterly. He’d never once entertained the notion that it might not be him. Any kindness and warmth he’d shown to Kyoshi since the iceberg hadn’t been signs of his acceptance—they’d been layers of armor that he’d furiously assembled to protect himself.
And that armor had failed. Piece by piece, Kyoshi saw the only Yun she’d ever known, the boy who was the Avatar, slough and flake into nothingness. His mantle had been stripped from his shoulders, and the shape underneath was merely wind.
He let go of her.
Jianzhu was on top of them in a flash. He sliced at the branch of slime with a sharp, precise little wall, and using the care of his own two hands, dragged Kyoshi away to safety.
Just Kyoshi.
He laid her on the ground and turned around. But it was too late. The spirit’s slime reared into the air between them and Yun, a snake guarding its prey. The eyeball in the tunnel swelled with fury.
“You call me forth, ask for my boon, and then assault me?” Its roar nearly shattered the bones in Kyoshi’s ears.
Yun, she tried to shout. Run. Fight. Save yourself. The Avatar—it never meant anything.
Jianzhu took an earthbending stance, cautiously settling his feet the way a swordsman might slowly go for his blade. “I couldn’t risk you taking your revenge on Kuruk’s reincarnation. You had your blood, Father Glowworm. Your price has been paid.”
“I’m raising it!”
Instead of attacking the two of them, the tendril wrapped around Yun from neck to hip. His face was as pale as clay. He wouldn’t move his limbs. Every fear Kyoshi had of taking from him what he treasured most had come to pass in a thundering instant. There was only one more thing left for him to lose.
No, Kyoshi sobbed. Please, no.
The spirit pulled, and Yun flew backward into the tunnel, disappearing into the darkness. As Jianzhu punched his fist upward to seal the passage shut once more with solid mountain, Kyoshi found her voice again.
She screamed pure fire.
The flame shot out of her mouth like the rage of a dragon, in a single explosive burst. It doused the terrace and rendered swathes of lingering ooze into blackened, flaking char. But the tunnel was closed. Her fire washed impotently against the mountainside, until it petered out entirely.
Kyoshi stumbled to her feet, barely able to see past her sticky eyelids. The inside of her mouth was blistered. She could sense Jianzhu’s presence in front of her, looming.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “This could have been avoided if you had—”
She surged forward and tackled him off the edge of the terrace.
The trip down this time was worse than the iceberg. Kyoshi lost her grip on Jianzhu the instant her shoulder smashed into a withered, hardened tree root. She tumbled wildly, tail over tea-kettle, and came to a stop at the bottom of the slope.