The Princess and the Peasant - (An Azula Epic)

Elder

The team gazed at one another in a captivated silence while the hermit sat before the burning stove.

Before the captain broke the eerie quiet.

"What...is the Elder One?" Zoi inquired with a fascinated undertone to her voice while Azula gazed on with mutual intrigue in her cold eyes.

"An ancient entity that poses a tremendous threat to this world." Mava answered in a blunt voice as the group listened in astonishment.

"And you say that the Avatar is unable to see this...evil?" Azula questioned with her brows furrowing in curiosity while Elle still shook at her feet.

"He cannot. Nor can any of you. The only one here who can see it is young Elle." Mava stated in a rough voice while Elle's amber eyes grew wider in fright.

Her four highborn friends gazed ahead in bewilderment.

"O-only me?" Elle stammered in an apprehensive voice as Azula's lips pursed into a scowl as she glared ahead.

"Explain this, old woman. And with no riddles." Azula commanded with her callous eyes staring hard at the crone's aged countenance.

Mai and Ty Lee gazed on with mutual concern in their distraught eyes.

"Long ago, many thousands of years ago an ancient alien creature arrived in our world. Even I do not know the full history. But I do know that it encountered...and defeated the Avatar." Mava announced in a foreboding voice with her staff pressing into the floor while the team listened in a stunned silence.

"If the Avatar was defeated by this...entity then why does the Avatar still reincarnate to this day?" Azula pondered in an intelligent voice with her amber golden eyes gazing on in grudging fascination.

"My thoughts exactly. Why not kill the Avatar for good?" Zoi queried in a marveled voice with her golden eyes staring about in contemplation.

"Because this creature benefits from the Avatar Cycle. That is why." Mava informed in an eerie voice while the team fazed on in unified disbelief.

"The Avatar Cycle...is to its benefit?" Ty Lee asked in an unnerved voice with her brown-gray eyes agape in confusion while Elle swallowed in fear beside her.

"This being saw that our world's greatest weakness was the Avatar itself. It realized that if it could deceive the Avatar...then the rest of the world would be helpless. And to that end...it cast a rune over the Avatar making the Avatar forget its presence." Mava explained with her wrinkled hand clutching her staff while her audience gazed on in a speechless quiet.

"W-what...what happened after that?" The handmaid inquired in a fretful voice with her hands resting on her knees while she gazed on in alarm.

'The Avatar...just forgot? What sort of creature would have the power to erase the Avatar's memory?' Azula thought with her elegant brows quirking in scrutiny while her girlfriend sat fretfully at her booted feet.

"It cast a cloak over the world that made it so that we would not be able to see its physical form even if it were right before our very eyes. And then it went into hibernation." Mava replied in a serious voice that had the group staring back in shock.

"Hibernation?" Mai repeated with an unnerved look in her tawny eyes while Azula also gazed on in a taken aback silence.

"I don't know much more than that. But I do know that it left the Avatar behind to continue its quest of bringing balance to the world. Therefore, leaving the population weak and reliant...so that it would not be assaulted in its slumber." Mava remarked as she leaned forward while the team gaped on with widened eyes.