Story Ash Dynasty [Avatar: The Last Airbender Oneshot for Angstmonger Anonymous Challenge #5)

Title: Ash Dynasty

Author: devilinthedetails

Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender

Characters: Azulon; Sozin; Azula; Zuko; Ozai; Iroh; Lu Ten.

Genre: Angst; Drama; Family.

Summary: The tale of the Ash Dynasty that is the Fire Nation Royal Family as told in fifty sentences.

Author’s Note: Written for the 50 Sentences Angst Challenge #5 hosted by the fantastic @ViariSkywalker. I chose the Fire and Brimstone set of prompts since what could be more appropriate for the Fire Nation Royal Family than Fire and Brimstone?

I am currently afflicted with Covid, so if this is terrible that is why.

Ash Dynasty

Ashes

Azulon tasted bitter ashes as his beloved wife’s body burned on the funeral pyre.

Broken

As he traveled the world, seeing how shattered and suffering every corner of it was, it became harder and harder for Zuko to deny–and to accept–that his ancestors, his family, had broken it in some fundamental way.

Pathetic

His father’s voice kept Zuko awake at all hours of the night, purring and hissing in his ear how pathetic he was compared to his prodigy sister Azula.


Lost

Azula was stunned into seething, simmering silence the first time she lost a duel to a firebender three years her senior at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls.

Numb

Zuko earned his father’s disapproval and scorn so much he marveled that he hadn’t become numb to it–that it still had the power to cut him to the core like a paring knife.

Stare

No amount of training at the Royal Fire Academy for Boys had prepared Lu Ten for his best friend’s glassy blank stare as Koji lay dead beneath the hazy, chipped blue bowl of the heavens.

Liar

Azula lied through her smirking lips every time she pretended that it didn’t matter that her own mother thought she was a monster.

Devour

A black hole of shame and grief swallowed Iroh whenever he remembered how he had allowed his father and grandfather’s war to devour his son.

Surrender

Sometimes Azulon felt shards of guilt tear through him as he besieged yet another once-proud-and-defiant Earth Kingdom city, forcing it into ignominious surrender, but he concealed that guilt in the most shadowy recesses of his heart for he knew the misplaced sentiment marked him as a traitor unworthy to inherit his father’s throne.

Solitude

Uncle Iroh said that solitude, tea, and sleep would bring healing after Zuko’s father burned his face and exiled him.

Shadow

With his mother gone, Zuko had nobody to comfort him when the shadows of night stalked his dreams, terrifying him.

Drowning

Sometimes standing at the railed bow of his ship, Zuko gazed down into the fathomless, churning depths of the ocean and wondered how it would feel to drown.

Imposter

In her weaker moments, Azula felt like an imposter, acting confident to mask her buried insecurities.

Monster

The monster hunting Zuko in his dreams always bore an uncanny resemblance to his father or his sister.

Martyr

Whenever Zuko learned their names, he mourned and honored the martyrs who had died resisting Fire Nation tyranny in the Hundred Year War.

Atrophy

Like any disused muscle, Ozai’s heart weakened from a lack of exercise.

Burn

The smell of his own flesh burning as his father scarred him was seared into Zuko’s memory like a white-hot flame.

Take

Azula couldn’t take any more abandonment and betrayal so she snapped like a brittle twig in a typhoon.

Search

All too often, Zuko feared that his search for the Avatar was a hopeless, doomed quest.

Squander

Azula never went a day without training until her brow and back were soaked with sweat, because she knew her father would hiss at her that she was a lazy girl squandering her talents otherwise.

Disappear

As a child, Zuko wondered whether his father would miss him at all if he simply disappeared into a cloud one day.

Yearning

Zuko yearned for his father’s approval and affection with an aching hunger he knew would never be satisfied.

Distant

Azulon became a distant, severe father because his own had never shown him the warmth needed to be otherwise.

Relic

Azulon hoped his father would finally be proud of him as he watched the relics of ancient Earth Kingdom cities he had conquered piled onto boats to be transported back to the Fire Nation in triumph.

Pursue

Only Uncle Iroh understood how much it drained Zuko to relentlessly pursue the Avatar, his one chance at restoring his lost honor.

Abandon

Azula had believed that Ty Lee and Mai would never abandon her so it made her doubt everything about herself when they each chose someone else over her.

Selfish

On his deathbed, Sozin tried to convince himself that his fierce desire to colonize all the world hadn’t been motivated by selfish ambition but by a noble impulse to bring enlightenment and civilization to more primitive peoples and cultures.

Fate

Azulon couldn’t accept that it had been the sad fate of a woman as strong Ilah to perish in childbirth giving life to a son as altogether insipid and unworthy as Ozai.

Wait

Lu Ten always found it so hard to wait for his father to come home from the war in the Earth Kingdom on all too brief periods of leave.

Artifice

Ozai learned to take a sneering pride in the cunning artifice his father contemptuously dismissed as a tactic of the weak.

Refuse

Zuko would never comprehend why his father couldn’t forgive him when he knelt on the floor, refusing to fight his father and hoping for mercy.

Soul

Azulon was only a teenager when he became a master of ignoring the weeping in his soul as he implemented a brutal, scorched earth strategy on entire Earth Kingdom provinces because that was the price of victory.

Loathing

Ozai felt such loathing whenever he saw his wife doting on their failure of a son because his mother had not lived long enough to coddle him or protect him from a father’s ire.

Revenge

Ozai wanted revenge on his brother for the twin crime of being firstborn and first in their father’s favor.

Enemy

Lu Ten had never entirely understood why the Earth Kingdom was an enemy, but he marched off to war out of loyalty to his father and the Fire Nation.

Guilty

Guilt as an ever-present companion made poor recompense for a beloved son killed too young at Ba Sing Se, Iroh thought.

Mend

Zuko could only cling to the hope that a broken honor could be mended as he tracked the Avatar from town to town and port to port.

Bury

Sozin found it impossible to bury the memory of the lava he had let consume Roku as his own last breaths rattled through him.

Overrun

It was Azulon’s final regret that his armies hadn’t been able to overrun all the world in his reign, leaving unfinished his father’s glorious legacy of conquest.

Whisper

As the wind whistled and whispered against the portholes of his room, Zuko felt alone and adrift on the gray waves of the sea.

Trapped

It was ironic how after so many of Lu Ten’s childhood nightmares had been plagued by the fear of being trapped beneath the earth that he died beneath an earthbender’s hurled boulder at the battle of Ba Sing Se.

Fear

Nothing inspired Azula’s fear like the idea of being imperfect.

Infect

Iroh sometimes pictured the Fire Nation’s troops as a raging fever determined to infect the world.

Mourning

It was so easy for mourning Ilah to morph into wrath at the son who had stolen her from him, Azulon reflected.

Repent

Ozai would rather die in prison than repent of anything he had done for the glory of the Fire Nation.

Fracture

Azula punched the mirror of her vanity to smithereens, slicing her knuckles with a thousand shattering shards, the first time she saw an ugly zit fracturing the perfect smoothness of her features.

Reap

Azulon recalled the Earth Kingdom proverb that one reaped what one sowed as he watched fields of golden wheat reduced to smoking cinders at his command.

Addicted

In the asylum, Azula came to hate the power and perfection she was addicted to pursuing almost as much as she despised her own weaknesses and imperfections.

Blame

Blaming himself would not restore his lost son to life, but still Iroh in the almost masochistic sentiment rather than battle his brother for the throne that should have been his.

Farewell

Every time Iroh burned incense to Lu Ten’s spirit, he imagined it as a second opportunity to say a last farewell before Ba Sing Se stole his precious son from him.

 

@earlybird-obi-wan Thank you so much for reading and commenting! I'm so glad that you felt this was filled with angst, despair, and great sentences showing the battles faced by various members of the Fire Nation Royal Family

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Thank you so much for reading and reviewing! I'm so happy to hear that you felt this offered superb insight and poignancy

 

The challenge was angst, and you brought angst to the table and delivered it in spades, needless to say! Wow!

It's true. You couldn't go wrong with inspiration like this.

And, with that said, these sentences stood out to me in particular . . .

What a place to start. I appreciated the ash symbolism for a firebender. And, of course, it was so strange to see Azulon be vaguely . . . well, human here. But every monster has their heart, and Ilah was his. And now, the circle starts again.

I love how there are different connotations to lost here - Azula is lost within her spirit and in her perception of self for any supposed imperfection - even losing to a combatant three years her senior and, as of yet, beyond her skill level to defeat.

Both the sentiment of this sentence - the senselessness of war - and the imagery of chipped blue bowl of the heavens really struck.

Again, the use of liar as a double meaning jumped out at me! Because her imagining that her mother thought her a monster is a lie she tells herself too, isn't it? All of your Azula sentences were poignantly spot on for their insights.

Now this is something I found very interesting - it's not a thought I'd ever expect Azulon to have, but, if he did, this is completely how he would force it down and harden his heart to any supposed weakness as empathy and fellow feeling.

&

&

Oh, Zuko. The sentiment of these sentences hurt for his own sake, but I appreciate how present these opposing elements are in Zuko's sentences, in particular - as he's the one who ultimately breaks free from his family and their toxic, destructive patterns.

THIS

&

The symmetry of these two sentences absolutely gutted me.


Thank you for sharing this A+ response to the challenge with us - and while you had covid brain, no less! That is a feat in and of itself!

 

@Mira_Jade Thank you so much for reading and leaving such an in-depth review The challenge was definitely angst, and this may have been one of the most angsty pieces I have ever written because I wanted to include an element of significant angst in each of the fifty sentences inspired by the prompt, which resulted in angst in every sentence. So the angst was dialed up to the max here!

Yes, the inspiration of Fire and Brimstone for the Fire Nation Royal Family just seemed like to perfect an opportunity for inspired angst to pass up

I'm so glad that you appreciated the ash symbolism for a firebender like Azulon, and, yes, it is disconcerting having Azulon experience the very human emotion of grief. It truly shows that although he was a monster, Ilah was his heart, and he will become even more of a hardened monster without Ilah in his life. Particularly perpetuating the cycle of abuse onto Ozai.

You are so astute to detect the different connotations of the word "lost" I was drawing upon in that sentence. Azula is indeed lost within her spirit and within her perception of self (which results in her deep fear of any imperfection in herself) as you so wisely say, and also at the same time she is dealing with the literal loss of a duel to a combatant three years her senior and at this point beyond her skill level to defeat.

That Lu Ten sentence was one of the most haunting ones for me to write, and it means so much to hear that you felt both the sentiment of the senselessness of war and the imagery of the "chipped blue bowl of the heavens" resonated with you so deeply.

I think there are many layers of deception and self-deception with Azula, and the word "liar" seemed a perfect opportunity to explore that, and I'm so flattered that you found all my Azula sentences to be poignantly spot on for their insights since she is a character I always want to do justice when I write her!

I've always headcanoned Azulon as very young (in his early to mid teens) when he goes to war for the first time and has to handle the horror of it despite being raised with his father's propaganda and he ends up learning to harden his heart against any guilt or empathy he does feel because he has been taught that is a dangerous weakness. Which in the end results in him being an even harder character than Sozin in some ways because Azulon is continually hardening his heart at a young age and engaging in bloody conquest after bloody conquest during his formative years.

My heart did indeed break for Zuko writing those sentences, but I have so much love and respect for him being able to break the cycle of toxic abuse that is such a part of his family's painful legacy.

Ozai is interesting because he doesn't use his heart so much that it weakens and atrophies but he strangely comes to think of that weakness and atrophy as a strength. It really shows how twisted his attitudes and beliefs became and why he was such a terrible father to his own children.

The Lu Ten and Iroh sentences absolutely gutted me as well because they do love each other so much (in contrast to some of the more abusive father-child relationships that are part of the Fire Nation Royal Family during this era) and that love between them makes Lu Ten's fate all the more tragic

Thank you again for the kind words, and covid turned out to be the perfect recipe for angst (not that I recommend contracting covid for any reason because it is awful and not fun)

@Chyntuck Thank you so much for reading and commenting as always I am so glad that the angst of this challenge landed for you and that you felt the prompts were perfect for exploring how messed up the Fire Nation Royal Family of this era was, and, yes, in many ways, it is at its core a story of how fathers can destroy their children. Sozin destroys Azulon by raising him with militaristic propaganda and sending him to war at such a young age. Azulon destroys Ozai by closing his heart to Ozai, and Ozai himself will go on the perpetuate that same legacy of abuse with his own children, Azula and Zuko. Iroh was also drawn into his father's war until the tragic loss of his own son, Lu Ten, who wanted only to follow in the footsteps of his beloved father. Lu Ten's fate feels especially heart-breaking because neither he nor Iroh would have been at Ba Sing Se if it weren't for Azulon's determination to perpetuate Sozin's war. The Ash Dynasty title felt very true indeed, but perhaps long-term Zuko finds a way to rise from the ashes like a phoenix, and it is my head canon that he ends up having a beautiful, nourishing relationship with his daughter whom he loves very much and would do anything to protect

 

@ViariSkywalker Thank you so much for reading and for the lovely review

Looking back, I honestly have no idea how I managed to write this (or anything) with covid, since I was so feverish and coughing up a lung plus had horrible chest pain. Thank you for the kind words about my recovery, and I too am so grateful to have recovered as well!

I really loved the 50 sentence challenge, and it gave me such great inspiration (as have many other prompts from the Angstmonger Annoymous thread I'm so thankful that you host!) for this story that I never would have come up with otherwise.

Like you, I definitely have a morbid fascination with Zuko's utterly dysfunctional family, and this set of prompts turned out to be the perfect opportunity to explore the dynamics and depth of that dysfunction in a way that was super compelling for me, and that I'm so thrilled to hear resonated with you.

You highlighted many of my favorite sentences, which makes my day

The fire and brimstone prompts really ended up putting the ash imagery in my head, and that helped me come up with the idea of the "ash dynasty" title in the first place, and once it crossed my mind, I knew it was a perfect fit for how it described the Fire Nation Royal Family. There truly is so much to explore with the Fire Nation Family that I'm so happy to hear that you felt I was able to delve into those complicated characters and nuances so well here.

Sozin's backstory with Roku always intrigued me, and it was fascinating for me to be able to take a look at that history and Sozin's cruel ambitions and the lies he spins for himself about having noble motivations behind his conquests.

Azulon was also a character who really interested me because he is ruthless in his desire for glory and expanding his father's empire, but at the same time, he mourns the loss of his wife and has actually paternal feelings for Iroh, but also doesn't have the emotional maturity to be able to grieve his wife without becoming abusive and hateful to Ozai.

Then that cycle of abuse does indeed spin on as you so aptly note with Ozai being an abusive, manipulative father, and setting his own children against each other.

Iroh and Lu Ten's relationship is definitely the beacon of light in this story, as you say, but even that is touched by the grief and loss of Lu Ten, who is killed by the violence of the family's war of conquest against the Earth Kingdom.

Like you, I absolutely cry my eyes out every time that Iroh sings to Lu Ten on his birthday

Zuko and Iroh's genuine love and respect will always be one of my favorite things about the Avatar: The Last Airbender series, and that moment in Book 3 where they reunite will always have my heart forever because it was so pure and perfect

And I'm so thrilled that you loved the Zuko rising from the ashes like a phoenix interpretation of the fire and brimstone prompts as well!

Thank you again for these wonderful prompts and the super sweet review that put a massive smile on my face