The world of the animated sequence Avatar: The Final Airbender continues to develop in quite a lot of media, with the gacha RPG recreation Avatar Generations, the tabletop RPG recreation Avatar Legends, and a sequence of three animated motion pictures in regards to the grownup variations of Aang, Katara, and the remainder of the TV present’s solid on the best way. Because the present’s story strikes ahead in time, the novels proceed to look again on the conflicts and triumphs of people that served as Avatar lengthy earlier than Aang, making an attempt to convey peace and steadiness to the 4 Nations.
F.C. Yee’s newest guide within the Chronicles of the Avatar sequence concludes the story of Avatar Yangchen, an inexperienced younger girl making an attempt to cope with a scheme that may ship the Nations to conflict with one another. However it opens with a brand new perspective on a seeming villain, which you’ll be able to learn within the excerpt under.
Right here’s Amulet Books’ description of the novel:
Avatar Yangchen has succeeded in bringing a measure of stability to Bin-Er, however her successes have been restricted to a single metropolis, and rumors regarding Unanimity—a weapon able to complete obliteration—have led to growing tensions among the many 4 Nations. Determined to revive diplomacy, Yangchen makes an attempt to de-escalate hostilities between heads of state. However within the wake of a brutal assassination and the releasing of Unanimity, Yangchen is compelled to convey Kavik—the trusted former companion whose betrayal crushed her—again into her fold. Because the 4 Nations teeter on the point of battle and she or he begins to unravel the power-hungry Zongdu Chaisee’s true agenda, Yangchen is compelled to measure the value of humanity, and the way a lot might be sacrificed within the title of steadiness. This taut and provocative fourth installment within the Chronicles of the Avatar sequence follows Avatar Yangchen as she charts the course of her legacy, lastly making peace together with her decisions and going through Avatarhood with the braveness it calls for.
The sequence is written in session with Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, co-creators of Nickelodeon’s award-winning sequence, Avatar: The Final Airbender and The Legend of Korra, which reside on in a fandom of thousands and thousands.
Learn a full free chapter of The Legacy of Yangchen under, exhibiting that power-hungry villain in a unique gentle.
Chapter 1: Depths
![The book cover for F.C. Yee’s Avatar: The Last Airbender novel The Legacy of Yangchen, showing a young airbender in orange with the traditional half-shaved head and blue arrow forehead tattoo, with a white-turreted castle on a snowy mountaintop in the distance behind her, and a male waterbender in a martial-arts stance inset below her](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TFMvp0UloqeRv8wp2_6RWeWinB4=/0x0:1688x2550/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1688x2550):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24683243/LegacyYangchen.jpg)
Picture: Amulet Books
Chaisee understood from an early age that to achieve success, you wanted to be prepared to go additional than others thought potential.
To wit—the villagers of her little unnamed island dove for prized cucumber-sponges far under the glistening floor of the waters, the place daylight pale and ears threatened to burst. Nobody within the Mo Ce thought-about such a feat viable or well worth the danger.
However Chaisee’s individuals ignored the prevailing knowledge. With out the help of waterbending, they skilled their our bodies to simply accept the stress, their minds to embrace the indicators that they had been dying. Dive after dive, they compelled their means farther into the depths and scraped their palms uncooked in opposition to the slimy spikes of the reef to provide you with little puffballs of a creature that, as soon as fastidiously killed and dried, would fetch a beneficiant string of cash on the open market.
She and her fellow villagers willingly took on the often-fatal endeavor many times so they could eat for an additional season. And faraway nobles washed their faces with the cured exteriors of cucumber-sponges, the softest contact recognized within the 4 Nations. A mutually useful settlement primarily based on one celebration’s willingness to torture themselves and the opposite facet’s full distaste for the slightest bodily discomfort.
As Chaisee grew older, she started to handle the village’s books. She took over from her father the negotiations with haulers who got here to gather the sponges, pearls, dried shellfish meat—the key was to spy on different suppliers whereas utilizing uncharted islands as stashes to manage market costs. She had no purpose to suspect her future would include any disturbances to this association apart from the occasional monsoon.
The ship that broke the cycle arrived with battened sails and swooping foredecks. Unusually, it bore flags of each the Hearth Nation and the Earth Kingdom. The celebration that got here ashore in longboats was led by junior ambassadors from each nations. In entrance of Chaisee’s assembled village, they learn a proclamation decreeing that the inhabitants of this island would now not be allowed to provide sure items of the ocean. By a vanishingly uncommon settlement between Earth King and Hearth Lord, the unique rights had been granted to some service provider they’d by no means heard of in a faraway metropolis that was fully landlocked.
This may’t be, Chaisee’s father had mentioned, hushing her with a raised hand. Out of the blue the negotiator once more. We protest this choice. You have to not less than give us the prospect to formulate a response. To purchase time, he resorted to their island’s customs of hospitality. Allow us to entertain you tonight as honored company. We will discuss of bargains within the morning.
The officers agreed. They wanted to reprovision and tackle contemporary water anyway. Whereas the ship’s quartermaster negotiated the acquisition and loading of provides, a feast was rapidly put collectively for the essential guests and their crew.
The overall nervousness among the many villagers ebbed as they shared good foods and drinks with the sailors across the burning fireplace within the sq.. The meal would remind these strangers that the island was residence to households like theirs and {that a} measure of humanity ought to prevail over dictums despatched from afar.
Chaisee didn’t partake wholeheartedly. She stayed eliminated and noticed, as was her behavior, which meant she noticed in full when one of many sailors picked up a torch and flung it into the biggest hut. Like one may provide a bone to a guard animal. She wasn’t quick sufficient to cease him or communicate out.
The constructing was the one used to retailer the drying cucumber-sponges, and of their uncooked state the dusty, porous our bodies of the ocean creatures had been higher than the very best tinder. The roof blew out with a roar, spewing warmth and flame and embers over the adjoining huts. The hearth unfold so quick that half the village was ablaze earlier than the screaming began.
Chaisee remembered the reactions of the ambassadors who had clearly given the order, their faces lit by the blooming, dancing flames. They rolled their eyes, snorted in contempt, and departed as calmly as they got here. Irritated with the entire affair at finest. Her father was too distraught, occupied with combating the fireplace, to stop the outsiders from reaching their longboats and leaving the shore unimpeded.
She watched the delegation go, understanding {that a} confrontation would have achieved nothing. The letters they bore granted them the ability and voice of their rulers. There have been no criminals right here; her livelihood burning away was the regulation enacted. She may as effectively have tried to precise justice from the leaders of the 4 Nations themselves. What idiot might aspire to that?
We weren’t sturdy sufficient to maintain this from taking place, she thought as her neighbors desperately tried to hold water to the fireplace in buckets, gourds, cupped palms, wailing as their futures dissolved into smoke. We didn’t have the suitable pals.
Working your self to the brink of oblivion was pointless if you happen to couldn’t defend the life you made. Maneuvers, offers, negotiations had been merely dance steps. Pageantry. The true arbiter ready on the finish of the efficiency was violence.
Chaisee’s ruined village was a kiln that baked the lesson into form. She stored it in thoughts as she sought work on islands nearer to the official Hearth Nation archipelago. The shape held arduous and with out cracks as she made her title in commerce, mastering the codes of enterprise spoken in each nation whereas accumulating leverage over her companions and rivals alike. When the Platinum Affair clamped the world over, she was fast to see alternative and predicted appropriately how it could condense energy even additional into just a few palms.
By the point she turned eligible for the function of Zongdu in Jonduri, the conflict had already been fought and gained. Within the minds of the shangs, there have been no rational decisions apart from Chaisee to guide town. Her choice was unanimous.
In some ways, Zongdu Henshe, her counterpart in Bin-Er, was of an analogous mindset as Chaisee. Although he was a idiot who squandered info and sources with no regard for technique or long-term penalties, he had efficiently floor her plans to a halt by threatening to show over the whole lot he knew to the Earth King. He’d stolen the fruits of her labor, her technique of turning into resistant to hurt in all of the methods her little childhood village was not.
![The book cover for Avatar, The Last Airbender: The Dawn of Yangchen, featuring a female Avatar in an abstracted robe, with a row of past Avatars behind her, stretching into the distance](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7-6gzzlCFjbAdbXgM6CtAUU-r40=/0x0:1000x1512/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1000x1512):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23898595/Avatar_Dawn_of_Yangchen.jpg)
Picture: Abrams Books
Henshe’s waywardness had posed a better risk than any of the good women and men whom Chaisee had tangled with prior to now. The smart might be counted on to do what was smart; there was no predicting the actions of a buffoon. However now Henshe was gone, and with him her belongings. Chaisee had been left with no transfer. She might solely sit and wait.
“Mistress.” Chaisee’s latest attendant introduced herself, pausing on the warped floorboard by the door of the nursery. Every shift of the woman’s socked ft produced a squeak like a pained fowl. “Mistress, you might have a—”
The child woke. A scorching wail rose from the teak crib within the nook.
Chaisee rubbed her brow, taking care to not cowl her face fully. “I simply acquired him to sleep!” She needed to elevate her voice, one thing she by no means used to do, with a purpose to be heard.
“I’m sorry, Mistress, however you might have a letter and—”
“Depart it and get out!” The attendant scurried over, laid the envelope on the desk within the nursery, and fled for her life.
She didn’t see Chaisee drop her snarl as quickly as she was gone. The woman would report again to Hearth Lord Gonryu that her mistress was cracking below the pressure, uncharacteristically exhibiting extra emotion. Maybe annoyed by her baby. Distracted, and subsequently much less of a risk.
Nothing might be farther from the reality. Chaisee’s son was a pointy reminder for her to remain targeted. And his cries had been an ideal deterrent to eavesdroppers. Taking her time, as calm as if she had been listening to the serenade of a babbling brook, Chaisee opened the letter. She drew a chair over to the crib and rocked it gently whereas she learn.
The message was nonsense. However it was written in a hand she acknowledged and contained hidden indicators that allow her know precisely the place to seek out the one who’d despatched it.
Her son quieted down, however she knew he would begin howling once more if she stopped rocking. Maybe his pores and skin was susceptible to rashes. A irritating prospect, when she already bathed him with cucumber-sponges, which had been way more costly as of late than again when she was a woman. She went by an quantity that may have made her youthful self gasp, however there was no softer contact she might resort to.
Chaisee folded the paper again up with one hand and appeared round. The nursery she’d constructed within the mountaintop property was darkish and funky, a respite from the sweltering warmth outdoors. However your entire home would move to the subsequent Zongdu of Jonduri as soon as her time period ended.
She’d have to depart this place behind quickly and begin over once more. These had been the foundations laid out by the heads of state, who by no means needed to fear about shifting on from what they’d constructed whereas they had been nonetheless alive. The Avatar, younger Yangchen, was like that too. She could be the bridge between people and spirits for her personal little eternity earlier than she handed and a brand new Avatar was born.
There have been loads of highly effective individuals in the best way of Chaisee’s ambitions, laying unique declare to permanence. They’d be sovereigns of their domains till the very day they died, by no means having to concern their standing being stripped away, by no means understanding what it was wish to be bare and susceptible.
Chaisee might be the final individual standing amongst them, if she selected the suitable path, proved herself prepared to go to depths past reckoning, and remained a step forward of the opposite gamers in a recreation that might reshape the 4 Nations themselves. An outrageous folly, however one she had the means for. And the need.
She appeared on the letter once more and smiled. With the suitable incentives, something was potential.