--CHAPTER THREE: CLUES --
Jean leaned forward. “Tell us about the vision,” she said in clipped tones. “What exactly did you see? You said something about some symbols, but apart from that and the temple, you haven’t told us anything.” She paused and squinted suspiciously at Steve. “Hold on… If you don’t know where your vision showed you, how are you so sure it was China?”
Steve tried to think. “I don’t know how,” he replied, slowly at first but then with more certainty. “But I’m sure of that. I just know.”
“It’s probably your avatar spirit,” Chris said. “Unlike the U.S., China has been China for a long time—the previous Incarnates must have known the temple was there. Wish the remaining details would be so easy though.” Then he added, “Fat chance of that.”
Jean thought for a second. “Then what did you see? We need details.”
“Yeah, sure,” Steve breathed. “Right.” The vision had been short and very, very intense. Yet it had felt like a dream. He closed his eyes and tried to see it again.
“It was noon,” he began. “The temple was quite small, but the wall was huge. It towered over everything.”
“The temple wall?” Jean asked quietly.
“No, not the temple,” Steve answered, eyes still closed. “It was exactly close, but it still towered. Like a city wall, but much, much bigger. There were four smaller buildings in front of the temple, and the whole arrangement was enclosed by trees. They were… different, but alike. Set in a square, I think. No other buildings were close. Then I was inside—”
“You walked in?”
“No. I wasn’t exactly there. I wasn’t anywhere. It’s hard to explain.”
Jean threw a glance at Chris. “Back up a bit,” She told Steve. “Can you describe the temple?”
Steve frowned in concentration. “It was small,” he said. “Like a bungalow but slightly higher, though there was a small area with more floors towards the back, like a short tower. There was a concrete courtyard, I think, and a wooden veranda around the entire temple. But the walls were solid. Real stone, no windows. The roof was green. A pagoda.”
“A what?” Chris interrupted. Jean shushed him quietly and he raised an eyebrow at her, but Steve went on.
“It was old. Centuries old, maybe millennia. And the door… heavy, solid. Made of some metal. Silver or gray. Covered in writing and symbols. Runes, I think, with a big one over the door. Thick, but not as thick as the door inside. That only opens to me during the summer solstice.”
“The door inside?” Jean asked. Chris raised another eyebrow at her. She ignored him.
“To the inner sanctuary,” Steve responded. “The higher floors.” His eyes opened. “That’s where I need to go.”
“What’s inside the inner sanctuary?” Jean asked. “Did you enter?”
“Yes, but I didn’t really see.” He looked up, eyes suddenly misty and faraway. “I felt them though… ancient but strong… majestic, invulnerable. Waiting for me. For the totem.” He shook his head. “But I don’t know what they are.”
There was a beat of silence as the three glanced at themselves.
Then Chris said. “Well… As long as it’s not statues.”
Jean scowled and rolled her eyes at him, but Steve laughed in surprise. Chris really had seen The Last Airbender—one of the first places the Avatar had gone to was a temple, but he had only found statues in the inner sanctuary.
“Alright then,” Chris said, rubbing his hands together and smirking at his wit. “How do we track this temple? Can you draw the symbols you saw?”
Steve nodded.
“Then we’ll start there.” He pushed back his chair, went to an ordinary looking file cabinet in the corner and placed a blank paper and pencil in front of Steve. “Draw up as many as you can, but draw the big one—the one above the door— first. We’ll look through Thaddeus Wellington’s journal and see if we find something about it there while Jean will search the internet. Any little bit of info might be helpful.” He reached under the table and did something, and to Steve’s surprise, a part of the tabletop in front of Jean suddenly slid away, revealing a screen.
“Woah,” he muttered.
Chris smirked. “Get drawing, Avatar.”
Steve shook his head in amazement as he picked up the pencil, almost expecting it to do something extraordinary. He bent forward and started drawing. Chris watched him for a second, then went to the small fridge and drew out three bottles of water.
“There’s something else,” Jean said. Steve glanced at her briefly but he kept drawing. She wasn’t looking at him anyway. “The wall in the vision,” she continued. “I think that might be the great wall. The Great Wall of China. The temple must be somewhere near it.”
Surprise flicked across Chris’ face, followed swiftly by realization and appreciation. “Oh!” He exclaimed, eyes glittering. “You’re right! Nice one, Jean.”
Steve had frozen. That she was right was absolutely beyond question. He was quite surprised he hadn’t recognized it with all the time he’d spent watching Nat Geo World. The Great Wall always fascinated him, along with other monumental structures built in ancient times such as the pyramids. He had always marveled at the fact that they were built without the availability of modern technology and what is now known about stress, strain, weight bearing and balance. But if the Wall had been raised up during the era of bending, it had more likely than not, been built by earthbenders. In fact, in the Avatar series, such a wall existed, built up around the seat of the Earth King—the earthbending city of—
“Ba Sing Se!” He cried excitedly.
Jean shot him a disparaging look but Chris had gotten it. He gasped. “You don’t think...? Could it be?”
But Steve was suddenly certain beyond doubt. “Think about it,” he said. “The Great Walls are so huge people actually claim they can be seen from space. What other place has walls like this? With an extremely high population and a monarchic system? It has to be!”
Jean looked lost and slightly annoyed. “Hey! What are you two talking about?”
“It’s a Last Airbender thing,” Chris explained. “Ba Sing Se was a city of earthbenders. The seat of the Earth King”
“And this helps us how?”
Chris and Steve glanced sheepishly at each other. “Well, it doesn’t,” Steve said finally.
Jean scowled. “Then perhaps we should get back to discussing what actually will? I’ll begin searching out cities close to the wall. And it might be just a bit more helpful if you finish the drawing.”
“Yes Ma’am,” Chris said with a grin.
Steve pushed their discovery to the back of his mind and got back to the drawing. In a few minutes he was done. He held it to Chris. There were about 6 symbols on the paper.
Chris peered at them. “Which was the big one?” He asked.
Steve pointed at the symbol he’d drawn at the top of the page.
“Is that... the Sun? It looks so strange.”
It was a circle, with randomly curvy points all around its circumference. Inside two lines spiraled around each other, curved back and repeated the spiral back to the beginning. Where the lines curved back on themselves, two circles nested in the curve.
“It looks so strange,” Chris said again.
Jean turned away from her screen to take a look. She peered critically at it for a second then looked up at Steve. “Is this it? Or were some parts darker than the others?”
Steve started and stared at her. “Actually, yes. But I thought it might just be wear on the temple’s wall. They weren’t so different. How did you know that?”
“Shade them in,” she told him, and turned back to her screen.
Steve just kept staring at her. Chris nudged him, holding back a laugh. “Come on, man.”
He did. “I’m done,” he said. Now the lines looked like two waves swirling around each other, growing from a point on the bottom of the circle to their wide crests where the nested circles were. Each circle was the color of the opposite wave.
Jean looked over. “I thought so,” she said. “It’s Yin and Yang.”
“What? That’s not yin and yang. I know yin and yang.”
“Yeah,” Chris added. “I do too. This is quite different, Jean.”
She threw Steve a scathing look then turned to Chris to explain. “There are numerous versions of yin and yang. This is one of them. At least the inside is. I’m guessing it’s nested inside a sun. Of course, it probably has some symbolic meaning.”
Chris grinned, obviously impressed. “Nice,” he said. “Good thing Director Strongman made you come along. Think you can get something about it off the web?”
“I’ll have to try,” she replied.
“What about the others?” Steve asked.
Chris glanced down at the drawings again. “Yeah, about those. They seem kind of familiar.”
“To you too? I thought so too but I felt it was because I was the one who saw them. Or that it probably has something to do with the Avatar spirit—”
“Of course!” Chris exclaimed. “That’s it! Avatar! They look like the symbols for the four nations!”
Steve gasped. “Yes! Not exact, but definitely similar.”
“They must represent the four elements.” Chris noted.
Jean rolled her eyes but remained quiet, working at her screen. Steve, however, was slightly unsettled. When Chris had first told him about bending and the truth behind the legends, the billionaire’s son had jokingly added that they weren’t playing at The Last Airbender or any of the other series in the Avatar franchise. Now, he wondered. He really wondered
Still, though they had discovered so much in such a short time, they hadn’t found what they really needed—the location of the temple.
Chris was thinking the same thing. “Come on, man,” he said. “Time for the journal.”
Watch Here for Chapter 4: Powers of Deduction
The Lost Legend series is fan fiction based off Nickelodeon's Avatar franchise.
Find more of my original works as Peter M. Ogwara on Amazon!
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