The Officer and the Princess: The Flames Of War

Chapter 29

Almost a day had passed since Sung had left by her calculations he should be arriving in the Capital in a few short hours, Azula had a sense of somberness wash over her. She couldn't help but feel that if she wasn't close to keep an eye on him he would end up getting himself hurt. But at the same time she knew if she was close to him he WOULD end up getting hurt. She knew that Sung loved her just as much as she loved him, but if she were to go into battle beside him he would spend all that time focusing on her survival that he would ignore his own. All she could do was sit tight and wait and trust that Sung would make the right choices.

Though for some reason she wasn't worried about him as much as she had been. Since that so called "cleansing ritual" he had taken part in two nights ago had changed him somewhat, he was cracking jokes again, he was smiling more, and he seemed to be in higher spirits than he had been. He still had a far away look in his eye but he had had that since Azula had first reunited with him when he transferred to the Royal Procession...she figured that look would be with him the rest of his life.

She tried to take her mind off of it, going to the Castles vast library to at least attempt to think about something else. The library here wasn't as vast as the one in the Capital but it was by no means small. The design in here was meant to invoke a sense of calm over those who entered. Fresh polished red maple wood made up the floor, windows were spaced around the left side of the room giving those inside a view of the city and beyond to the harbor beside these widows were three tables each with four chairs where people could sit and read if they so chose to. On the right side rows of bookshelves could be seen, five tiers tall. Glancing over them Azula wasn't surprised in the least to find almost eighty percent of the literature here was devoted to War manuscripts, and battle strategy guides many of them looking as if they were centuries if not millennia's old.

She was surprised however to find not only a good number of cookbooks of all things, but as well as an extensive collection of Action and romance books. She had even found one book that apparently held the detailed history of the sewing needle. She knew that volume would do nothing except put her to sleep. She was almost halfway through the room when she found a black cover bound book that didn't have a title on it, instead it held a engraved golden Phoenix on it. From what she could see it was by far the thickest book in the library she noticed so far.

Out of curiosity she took the book over to the Middle most table and opened it to the first page. It read this. "In the waning years of my life I have found the need as of late to transcribe my life's work onto paper. As to the reason I can't say for sure, perhaps so someone years from now can look back at this record and find something in which they could draw inspiration from, Or perhaps it is because I am an old man who feels the need to write down my thoughts before the darkness takes me. Both are equally plausible possibilities. My beloved wife Kii is under the impression that I am bored and looking for a way to pass the time, somehow this seems a more plausible explanation. Sun Dao is prospering and doesn't need me to guide it as often any more, and our children have all grown and left the nest to pursue military careers, as is our way as Yangs. To us there is no greater satisfaction than to serve one's nation. But still I miss my boys greatly, it seems only yesterday that they sat upon my lap and asked me to fill their heads with stories of my own childhood, back when Clans still ruled the Fire Nation. Those days seem so far away now, in a few more decades they will be nothing but a distant memory. In those days our Nation was divided in everything but name, the Clans had more power than the Fire Lord did. I can remember in my youth my father leaving Sun Dao for weeks or years at a time to fight in these pointless Clan Wars that seemed to happen every so often."

Azula of course had heard of this era in Fire Nation history in school, that and this era of History seemed to have been Sung's favorite Subject, he had once described it as "an era of drama and backstabbing" or something similar. It hadn't been until the reign of Fire Lord Zoyru that it began to change. Zoyru had used a rather clever tactic to turn the other Clans against the Saowon by framing them for an assassination attempt on his life. After that Zoyru had dedicated most of his life to slowly taking power away from the other clans by changing a law here and writing a new one there. A slow process so the Clans wouldn't notice that they were slowly being conquered. It was easier to control a people when they didn't even notice they were being controlled.