A Young Princess's Guide to Usurping The Throne | Chapter 10 (Patreon)

The smell of smoke invaded his nose. It hung high over Ba Sing Se, the afternoon light dim to a copper haze. Broken carts, splintered doorframes and the bodies that painted the floor really make it all seem much worse.

The broken skull of a young girl, her skull shattered with brain matter covering the floor. Iroh looked at it all with a frown, his stomach hurt just looking at the scene, but it wouldn't do well for his men to see their general showing weakness at this time. He would cry in private, in his own comfort.

He moved through it all, with his posture and expression controlled. Years around men and women who grew delightful at the sight of such graphic scenes allowed him to control his facial expression to impressive heights. He had blood on one sleeve, and human fat colored his boots, he had dropped his Jii (halberd-spear with crescent moon-shaped blade) long ago after he spilled the guts of a civilian who tried sneak attacking one of his men.

A deep weariness settled in his bones that no amount of discipline could fully erase. But his feelings be damned. He couldn't allow his grief, his anger or sorrow to compromise this moment thousands of lives were in his hand, and it was his mission to allow them to venture back home alive.

With his mind clouded, alarm bells rang through his body. Years of war produced a sixth sense for danger, which allowed Iroh to act as an Earth Kingdom soldier lunged from behind a collapsed wall, wielding a spear with clumsy hands. Iroh pivoted lightly on the balls of his feet, letting the weapon pass close enough that he could feel the blunt rush of air against his cheek. His hand flashed out, catching the spear shaft and yanking the attacker off balance.

Before the soldier had time to recover, Iroh stepped inside the line of the thrust, drove his shoulder into the man's chest, and sent him stumbling backward into a broken cart. Iroh could just stare, bags had settled under his eyes as he sighed.

He marched forward, grabbing the man by his arm and with a sharp twist, Iroh broke the man's arm with an efficient crack.

The man cried out, collapsing into the dust. Iroh released him and turned away before the pain in the soldier's face could become something to dwell on.

"Are you alright, General?" One of his men asked, somewhat worried. Iroh waved his off, "I am very much fine. We continue forward to meet my son before sundown."

Around him, his troops surged forward and marched with trained discipline. Steel flashed, with each step they took, cutting through any scattered resistance left within the district. There was little fighting and more scrimmages. The city itself was a maze, every street was filled with some sort of dispute, Iroh watched as a Fire Nation soldier drew a blade, as a family of a husband, wife, and daughter begged. The blade came down quickly, decapitating the husband as the wife and daughter screamed and cried.

An old knot of exhaustion in his chest manifested. Sometimes he wondered whether he had been born with it. They would soon meet with his sons' forces. Lu Ten held a sizeable amount of men who had applied pressure at the center, tearing at the inner circle of Ba Sing Se.

His son had come up with it all, with Iroh himself adding his own insight. Break the chain of command, sever the nerves that allowed the city to breathe, and leave Ba Sing Se's nobility unable to regroup or coordinate. Hold them long enough, scatter them far enough, and the reinforcements would bleed in the chaos.

It was unpleasant work. Iroh had never pretended otherwise. When younger, he had once believed war could be fought cleanly by honorable men making hard choices for a worthy cause. Age had taught him that war would eat up your beliefs and spit you out with nothing but fresh scars on both the mind and body. Now he understood that with every victory came the stench of grief, and every banner raised over a wall had to be paid for in the lives trampled beneath it.

Was Iroh depressed? Possibly, Self loathing? Perhaps, but he would never give in to the whispers of an easy release from all of this.

"Spears up!" he shouted, and his voice rang across the broken street. Though exhausted, the force of his voice commanded attention: "Keep formation!"

His spearmen, their armor dented and dust-streaked, snapped to attention and raised their weapons high. They answered him with a thunderous roar.

"YESS, GENERAL!!"

"Forward!" Iroh cried, lifting one arm and driving it ahead like a blade. The line advanced in a controlled surge, and the remaining Earth Kingdom fighters gave ground in a staggered retreat, their own morale fraying under the pressure.

Steel met stone, fire met earth. Anyone caught in the path of the charge had little choice to flee or fall.

For Iroh, the sigh of his men pressing onward should have brought pride. It did, in some distant way, but it also brought a heaviness that settled on his shoulders that he could not shake. This was what he had spent years cultivating and commanding: men willing to trust his orders enough to follow him into chaos. These men would bleed because he pointed them toward the place where blood needed to be shed. He had carried that responsibility for so long that it had become a second spine within him.

But this campaign, the siege on Ba Sing Se, would be his last.

After this, he told himself. No more. No more fighting, no more mass graves, and no more will he command an army. He would retire, he would go home. He would lay down his armor, his title, and learn to be a man again instead of a weapon.

A stone cracked through smoke, arcing straight toward his head. Breaking his line of thought.

Iroh lifted one hand, without even fully turning. The underside of his palm struck the rock with a dry, explosive snap, shattering it into fragments that fell around him. He followed the path of the attack with calm eyes and found a lone Earth Kingdom officer standing amid the debris, jaw clenched, chest heaving, one hand still half-raised from the throw.

The man's expression was a mixture of fury, and exhaustion as he stared at Iroh.

"Even now," Iroh said quietly, "they throw their lives away."

The officer's lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl. "You bastards won't get away with this."

Iroh's gaze did not harden, though it could have. Instead, it deepened with sorrow.

"My friend," he said, "cease this and surrender. Let no more blood be spilled."

The man's eyes flashed. "It's honestly funny how you speak about blood when it was your people who started this ridiculous war." His voice trembled with barely contained contempt. "I was only a child when I watched the Fire Nation ravage my people's land and burn them all. I came to Ba Sing Se to become a soldier, thinking it would change, thinking I'd grow strong enough to never let that happen again."

He stepped forward, fists trembling at his sides, and his green eyes shone through the soot on his face. Iroh looked at him and felt the shape of the man's pain before he ever heard the rest.

"May the spirits haunt you," the soldier said, voice think with hatred, "and may the Avatar seek vengeance on you with fire in your blood. But now I'll die like my forefathers before me in battle."

Then, with grim resolve, he added, "My name is Lin Fu. Remember my name in death, Fire Nation scum."

He rushed.

The earth under Iroh's feet bulged at once, and a pillar surged upward with a violent crack. Iroh twisted aside just in time, the stone rising where his ribs had been an instant before. He moved swiftly, side-stepping through broken houses as another ridge of rock chased him.

It seemed this Lin Fu was not only experienced but strong, a man who knew of using terrain to better suit his fighting style and the battlefield instinct to go for the kill.

Impressive, Iroh thought.

He let a breath escape slowly, then shifted his stance with only the smallest of steps. A small burst of fire flared beneath his heel as he redirected his movement, using the heat as a controlled push. It carried him far enough to keep Ling Fu from trapping him between rising stones that threatened to crush him. He jumped, gripping onto a wooden pole and swung, and in his place a stone spear appeared.

His eyes remained fixed on the man's center of gravity.

"You fight well," Iroh said, his voice coming slow with his breaths, "but bloodlust clouds your mind."

Lin Fu answered with a growl and lunged again, abandoning distance in favor of direct force. His fists came in hard, straight punches, one after another, each packed with enough weight that catching them wrong would have meant a fractured wrist or a shattered forearm. Iroh parried the first, turned the second aside, and absorbing the third by yielding with it just enough to blunt the impact. Still, through his gauntlets, the strain bit into his wrists.

The man had power and was committed to bashing Iroh's skull in. Lin Fu pressed him against a fragment of a broken wall, forcing Iroh to sidestep and roll. The Earth Kingdom fighter hammered forward with a ferocity born of grief. Iroh saw in the man's clenched jaw and unblinking glare.

Iroh watched as Lin Fu mis-stepped and used the opening given, turning his body inward, slipping under the next strike, and driving himself into Lin Fu's guard. His knee lifted in a sharp rising motion, then his foot snapped out in a kick that caught the man square beneath the chin. Lin Fu lurched backward with a grunt, his teeth snapping together. Iroh did not let him recover. He drew his hands together, cupping the air as he exhaled and sent a controlled stream of flame curled around his forearm and across the side of Lin Fu's face.

The soldier staggered with a guttural scream, clutching at the burned side of his head. "Aaarrgh!"

Rage immediately flooded into his pain. Lin Fu slammed his free hand into the ground, and the earth answered with a violent shudder. A slab rose beneath him like a platform, then split outward in jagged motion. Iroh's eyes widened a fraction of a second. He shifted again, but no quickly enough. The stone platform crashed down and burst apart in a spray of shrapnel that ripped across the air. Several sharp fragments tore apart Iroh's leg armor and pierced into his left thigh and shoulders. He bit back the sharper part of the pain, but a hiss escaped him all the same.

Lin Fu tore his hand away from his face, now blistered and scorched, and glared with fury so absolute it seemed to sharpen his features.

"DIEEE YOUUU BASTARRDD!"

He charged again, this time encasing his arms and torso in clinging plates of rock that hardened around him like a crude suit of armor. He came forward with enough force to make the ground groan under his boots.

Iroh steadied himself, breathing through the pain in his leg, and watched the man approach with an expression that was almost regretful. "To see such talent wasted on someone like yourself is disheartening," he said. "You could have lived, my friend. You could have taught the next generation. But even now, I cannot blame the hate you bear for me or for my people."

Lin Fu's armored fist drove toward his face.

Iroh shifted just enough for the blow to pass by, then brought one hand up beneath his chin and drew air in with a sharp inhale. The breath seemed to gather inside for a moment. Then he exhaled.

Iroh was many things: a prince, a general, but he had one title that ran among those who followed his command.

Dragon of the West.

Fire erupted from his mouth in a roaring torrent.

The flames engulfed Lin Fu at close range, swallowing the stone armor in a blistering wave. The heat was intense and unlike any other firebender alive.

The rock on the man's body began to crack, then to soften, then to glow with the first signs of collapse. Lin Fu stumbled, his arms flailing, a sound halfway between a scream and a choke forcing itself from his throat. He tried to push through, tried to drive forward on sheer hatred alone, but the fire had already taken hold. It ate at the armor, curled around the edges, and found the spaces where human flesh still lived beneath the stone.

For a moment, he seemed to pause, suspended between fury and unbreakable truth of his defeat. Then his knees buckled. The flames swallowed the rest of him. When the fire finally thinned, Lin Fu lay motionless, reduced to a blackened figure.

Iroh could just stare at the fallen soldier for a long moment...

"May you find peace, my friend."

\o/