Winding Legacies: A 'The Legend of Korra' Rewrite

Episode 9: The Guide Part 2

Eska narrowed her eyes at the closed Northern Portal that they approached and asked, "So if we were to travel through the portal back home, would we end up here once this portal is open?"

"No. Not unless you wanted to come here," Unalaq answered stiffly as he circled around the small rut in the ground.

"And could you get from the North's portal to the South without coming through here?" Desna asked.

"Yes," Unalaq started irritably, "It would take a long journey across the Spirit World, but you could. The Spirit Portal in the oasis at the north is located by a strikingly similar oasis in the Spirit World. The same distance away as in our world is the Southern Portal that is open in both manners now. I've said this many times, children. Why did I have to say it again?" Unalaq raised a strict eyebrow, flaring at Eska and Desna as he stopped right in front of the hole in the ground.

"We're just trying to wrap our head around it, Father," Eska sighed as she hid her rolling eyes.

Desna shared his sister's annoyance and grumbled, "How do you plan to open it in order to enact all your other...stuff." He stuffed his hands deep into his coat and waited for a reply.

"We are going to spur the portal ourselves with our bending." Unalaq gave them a firm nod as he readied his stance across from his children. Eska and Desna shared a glance, their eyes both mocking and unconvinced as they silently argued over whether or not they would actually entertain their father's nonsense. "Join me! Together we can open this portal." Despite his encouraging tone, Eska and Desna knew him better and quickly slid into the same stance he stood in.

As Unalaq began pulling a soft stream of water from a pouch at his side, his children did the same and they twirled the water down to the small rut in the ground. They then stretched the water upward in a cylinder, its crystal clearness beginning to twinkle in a shine that seeped up from the ground beneath them. The ground began to shake and fissure underneath them as they continued to pull the last of their water from their pouches and into the cylinder.

Desna tipped back and fell over as a seam in the ground ripped open underneath him, his head slamming against a protruding rock down below. Unalaq rushed to take control of the part of the water that Desna dropped before it could dip too far, and Eska cried out for her brother. "Desna!" The ground around them continued to rumble, and Eska abandoned her post with her father to help Dena out of fissure the ground and up to his feet. Desna grumbled, dazed and confused, as Eska checked his pulse. "He needs a healer at once!"

"Leave him and keep bending! This is more important!" Unalaq demanded. He panted under the weight of controlling all the streams of water as he pushed them up into the sky, and he curled his lips in anger at Eska as she carried Desna away and back to the Southern Portal.

"I'm taking him back," Eska snapped behind her, not even caring if her father was still listening. Even as she made it all the way back to the portal they came through, Unalaq was still having at the Northern Portal, trying to force it open, but to no avail. Eska turned away from watching her father and hurried through the portal, rushing Desna through the woods and back to the encampment to get him to a healer. "Serves you right, Father," she muttered under her breath as she held tightly onto Desna, hoping he would be alright.

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Escorted by two burly bodyguards, Mako was led into Varrick's office on the mover set and forced down into a chair across from his desk. Varrick spun around in his rolling chair, staring intently at Mako each time their eyes crossed. "I heard you have some ideas about me. Wanna share?"

"I'm not gonna talk," Mako said bitingly as he eyed the bodyguards still behind him.

Varrick brought his chair to a sharp halt with the heel of his shoe and his hands folded calmly over his chest. "I heard you've been investigating the recent attacks on the ships and my ship and whatever, and I think you know that I know that you know, you know?" Varrick raised a suggestive eyebrow at Mako with a wicked grin, and Mako furrowed his brows, pretending he was confused at what Varrick had just said.