Chapter 43.5- And so the Dragons Danced

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The next few weeks passed without any news from the capital. I spent my time in a cross between training with Azula, sparring against Toji and Toph at the same time, and whipping my soldiers into shape. A Prince laid dead at my hands, and for some reason, that fact had made the other generals fall in line even more than anything else. My best guess was that the fact that Azula stuck so stubbornly to my sides even after I had killed her family member meant that they were beginning to realize that separating us would be a difficult task and when the wiser ones capitulated, the foolish ones had to follow suit to avoid sticking out like sore nails. The nail that stuck out would be hammered into place or that sort of thing.

That was what brought me here- watching hundreds of firebenders move in unison, executing each step of the difficult kata flawlessly. All the Generals had submitted their troops for my training and I had been whipping them into shape as a single unit. If they thought I’d be returning the men to them then they were sorely mistaken. These would be my tools. I knew that they muttered about me being battle crazy behind my back. Sung had put down all resistance in miles of here, and I had taken most of the Earth Kingdom before coming here. The only places that did not fly the Fire Nation flag at present were villages so small that they were rounding errors in the grand calculus of the earth kingdom’s population numbers. With no enemies to fight, they wondered why I spent so much time training. I did the same, but training was all I knew how to do and there was no point allowing the troops to go lazy when the Northern Water tribe remained unconquered. What truly worried me though, was Iroh’s words.

The Avatar hadn’t even gotten close to succeeding in his original attack on the Firelord during the Eclipse, but if he had Iroh on his side, then it was possible that they might have managed something. Azula had mentioned that there was a standing policy for the eclipse. The Royal family and trusted advisors would retreat to the Fire Lord’s holiday home instead of their residence in the Palace to deter attacks. If that was the case, then Iroh would be aware of that, and there was no chance he wouldn’t have told the Avatar about that. In that situation, it was difficult to see a situation where Ozai left that matchup intact. Well, he could have delayed them for the length of the eclipse but that was doubtful. Aang on his own was a bender that I didn’t even know if I could beat with my bending. Holding him, and his water bending master, and all their allies at bay for seven minutes would be far from believable.

The fact that all our messenger hawks had gone unreplied and our physical messenger was yet to return was another point in favour of Iroh’s words being valid