The Lovers' Maze
Punching through a mountain wasn’t really a big deal for Toph. Usually, she just went over mountains since that was easier, but carving her way through rock was not exactly unheard of.
Now, doing it one handed, that posed a welcome challenge. It was true that the core of earthbending was in the way the feet interacted with the ground, but to move rocks with any sort of precision and speed, the chi had to flow through the arms. With just one arm, her usual blazing speed of shoveling rock out of the way was reduced to a significantly less impressive act of carving rock away one sheet at a time.
She could sense Twilight’s jaw hanging dropping further and further as time went on, though, so Toph wasn’t complaining. She had no idea about Tippi, but from what little Toph had gotten from the fairy over the course of her journey, she was pretty sure Tippi didn’t have a face to read. That fluttering bug made her uneasy. If she talked more often that’d be one thing, but she was so silent that Toph often forgot she existed.
Luckily, Toph was about to get a break. The tunnel was just ahead. Just a few more shoveling motions, and… bingo.
With a final punch, she broke through the wall into the Cave of Two Lovers with a cloud of dust. She took a “look” by stamping her feet. As the tremors went out, she sensed a massive tangle of tunnels, forks, twisting corkscrews, and multi-level tunnel nonsense. It was delightful.
To Twilight and Tippi, it was just a long cave they couldn’t see the end of. Twilight lit a fire spell in response to the darkness, radiating enough heat for Toph to notice.
“Well…” Twilight said, frowning. “Tippi, is it in here?”
“I believe so,” Tippi said, fluttering forward. “But… I’m afraid I will not be of much assistance pinpointing its exact location.”
“This place is a maze, too,” Toph added.
“How did your friends get through it?” Twilight asked.
“They were split up. One befriended a badger-mole—which I can do, but that depends on us finding one—and the others realized that, in the dark, the crystals will glow and lead you from one end of the tunnels to the other.”
“Great!” Toph felt the heat of the fire vanish. “Oh, I can already see it! The crystals go both directions, which means we’re on the path!”
“On the path to an exit,” Toph corrected. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say your dumb Heart thingy isn’t hidden at one of the exits.”
“Right…” Twilight brought the fireball back, presumably since the glow of the cave wasn’t enough for her. “So, then we begin to map the maze.”
“That’d work if the badger-moles weren’t constantly re-arranging the tunnel setup.”
“Then I can help,” Tippi said. “I can begin running a pathfinding algorithm based on triangulation data a—”
Toph punched through a wall, arriving in another section of the maze.
“Or… we could just follow you…” Tippi all but whispered. “Since you can feel the entire layout of the maze…”
“That’s right!” Toph declared, putting her hand on her hip and standing as tall as she could manage—which was still slightly shorter than Twilight. “Toph here is gonna let you breeze through the entire journey! We’ll be at that nasty Count’s doorstep in less than a month!”
“Right… keep digging that way…”
Geez, would it kill her to be happy once in a while? Toph thought while she thrust her hand forward, cutting through more and more dirt. She sensed a few creatures—probably wolf-bats—running away from her. They knew not to mess with earthbenders while underground. She didn’t sense any badger-moles, but it was possible they were sleeping, and when they were dormant it was basically impossible to tell them from actual rock at a distance.
Cutting further and further into the rock, she checked every few minutes to make sure Twilight was still there. The alicorn’s jaw was no longer hanging open. Given how relaxed she seemed, she was probably getting a little bored.
Toph empathized with the alicorn. She was getting bored herself—and tired. She’d shoveled a lot of rock today, and she was running low on energy. However, she sensed a larger area up ahead. Hopefully, that was the goal.
“This might be it!” Toph shouted, punching through the final wall. They entered a large, round room with rubble piles around the edges. Unlike the rest of the tunnels, which had been bare, this one held some unlit torches, two sarcophagi, and a relief sculpture of two humans kissing with an inscription under it. Resting under the feet of the lovers was a sleeping badger-mole, easily larger than a small house. Toph’s earth-quaking excavations had done nothing to disturb it. After all, its kind did the sort of thing Toph had just done all day, every day. Tremors were inconsequential to it.
“Uh… Toph?” Twilight whispered. “What do we do?”
“Don’t worry about the badger-mole,” Toph called. “I know his kind. Just don’t poke him.”
“Right,” Twilight said, cautiously. Toph sensed her take to the air, presumably to light the torches since the heat in the room increased markedly.
“So, is this it?” Toph asked.
“If it’s not, it’s really close,” Tippi said. “Do you sense a heart-shaped crystal anywhere, Toph?”
“Nope.”
“I’m sure it’s here somewhere…”
“Keep scanning,” Twilight encouraged, landing back down besides them. “With more information we’ll be sure to find it.”
Toph shrugged—her work was done here. She sat down next to the badger mole. It grunted. “Ah, you’re not really asleep, are you, big guy?”
The mammal nuzzled her—was it one of the ones she’d met when she was young? It was possible, they moved around a lot. It might recognize her by smell. It really was too bad that her nose wasn’t that great.
“You know, sometimes, I wish I could just stay down here,” Toph said, leaning into the beast’s fur while Twilight and Tippi scrambled around in their search. “No light, no people who need light, and no people who rely on light to think. I bet if I tried to explain metalbending to you, you’d understand.”
The badger-mole yawned.
“...Then again, probably not. You are just an animal.”
The badger-mole either didn’t understand or wasn’t insulted by this.
“ ‘Love shines brightest in the dark,’ “ Twilight read from the relief’s inscription.
“That’s the clue for how to find the exit,” Toph said, waving a hand.
“Right, right…” Twilight glanced at the badger-mole warily. “Are they all tame, like this?”
“Deeeeeefinitely not! You just have me with you, and I know the ways of the badger-mole. Where would you be without me?”
“Where indeed?”
Toph sat bolt upright—that hadn’t been Tippi or Twilight’s voice. Checking her vibrational senses, she found nothing. “Twilight...?”
“It’s… a jester,” she reported. “Just… floating there.”
“So very nice to meet you, my lavender equine!” the voice said, coming from just above Toph. She focused on her hearing, honing in on his location. “And your feisty rock-chucking companion.” That came from the other side of the room. He moved fast.
“Who are you?” Toph asked.
“I am Count Bleck’s master of dimensions… The pleaser of crowds! Like a drunk design consultant crashing a business retreat party, I invade your troop! I am… Dimentio!” His voice had come from at least four different locations during that miniature monologue. Toph had no idea how he was moving.
“Another one?” Toph snorted, hiding her unease as best she could. “We got the last guy easy.”
“I know! I was watching!” Suddenly he was right next to her ear. “I do love a good chunking…”
Toph swirled her fist around and hit nothing but air. He continued speaking somewhere near the ceiling. “But I have to admit, O’Chunks wasn’t a very good obstacle for you to face.” He was next to Twilight now. “It would be so very dull if your journey ended so easily, without any…” He was in front of the badger-mole. “Conflict.”
“W-what are you doing?” Twilight stammered.
“I’m about to give your journey the epic magic it needs!” Toph felt a sharp heat in the room. Immediately, the badger-mole stood up and snarled at where Dimentio probably was. Toph heard a finger snap, and the badger-mole was lifted off the ground and thrown into the cavern wall.
“What did you do to him!?” Toph demanded.
“Rather simple, really! I made him think you two were the most delicious morsels in existence! Now you can spend some quality snack time with this old mole… Ciao!”
And then he was gone. Toph thought that maybe, just maybe, she felt a slight rumble in reality like she had when O’Chunks had appeared. but if she had, it was so slight she couldn’t trust herself to identify it reliably.
Though, at the moment, she wasn’t overly concerned about that. She had bigger problems.
Namely, a very hungry badger-mole.
It vanished into the ground. Toph could no longer track it—she only knew there was a lot of rumbling happening beneath them.
“These things are master earthbenders!” Toph shouted. “Be prepared for it t—”
A mouth came out of the earth directly below Toph’s feet. She scarcely had enough time to bend the earth beneath her and launch into the ceiling, forming a stalactite for a handhold. The badger-mole jumped after her, this time swinging with a massive claw. Toph kicked the ceiling, producing a slab of rock to swat the claw away, but the motion broke her handhold.
Falling, she lost contact with the world around her and tried to rely on memory. She reached to the ground, asking for a pillar of earth to meet her. Nothing came. The badger-mole must be right under me.
Twilight swooped in, snatching her out of the air. Toph sensed some fireballs form nearby and fly away. Given the sounds of the badger-mole’s grunting, it was having at least some effect.
Toph reached out her hand, pulling at whatever earth in the wall she could, flinging rocks at the badger-mole. She had no idea if it was working. “I need to be on the ground!” She called.
Twilight responded immediately, looping around to toss Toph right between the sarcophagi. She landed flat on her feet, and the full scene was open to her. The badger-mole was currently above ground, running after Twilight while swiping rocks up off the floor. Judging by the lack of screams, the alicorn was dodging them in midair just fine. Tippi was, as usual, out of Toph’s perception. Not that the fluttering bug would be any use in a fight whatsoever.
The badger-mole was completely fixated on Twilight, leaving Toph alone for a moment. Pressing her toes deep into the earth, she waited, free hand close to her chest. The badger-mole stumbled around as it pursued Twilight, eventually jumping into the ceiling and swimming through the earth, re-emerging from a wall just to Toph’s side.
Gotcha.
The badger-mole would have gotten Twilight by the tail had Toph not thrown a boulder right into the beast’s head at that moment. It was unharmed—but more importantly, it was dazed. This allowed Toph to go at it with a flurry of attacks. Each stomp rammed a pillar of rock into the creature, while her fist ensured there was always part of the wall falling in on the badger-mole.
Regaining its senses, the badger-mole roared and swept aside all of Toph’s attacks effortlessly.
“You want more!? I’ve got more!” Even without the broken arm, I’d be hard-pressed to beat a badger-mole at its own craft… She pulled a boulder out of the ground, holding it in the air in preparation to fling it at the beast.
Instead, the beast flung the boulder at her.
She didn’t even have time to think “oh no” before she was plastered against the back of the cavern wall, the air squeezed out of her. Flopping to the floor, she was sure nothing else was broken, but she sure didn’t feel like she could move.
The worst part was she could still sense the badger-mole moving toward her, mouth hanging open. It’s going to bite my head off. What a way to go. Decapitated by the things that made me who I am...
And then everything was hot. Very, very hot. Twilight must have lit it on fire. But… wait, is that wind? Toph was sure now, that was wind. Very powerful wind. But it wasn’t blowing the fire out—if anything, it was getting hotter.
Twilight landed on the ground, and Toph was able to sense what she was doing. Somehow, she was using the wind to fuel the fire she was throwing from her horn, surrounding the badger-mole in a twisted nexus of a flaming tornado. How come Aang never mixed his elements like that? I bet he could do some really awesome things if he put his mind to it.
The badger-mole dove beneath the ground again. Toph expected Twilight to take back to the air, but she didn’t. She stayed perfectly still.
“What… are you doing?”
“Trapping a badger-mole,” Twilight said, smirking.
The badger-mole erupted from the ground.
It got a mouthful of pure fire for its troubles, fire that Twilight had been charging ever since it dove into the earth. It let out a pained shriek, gagging in an attempt to get the fire out of its mouth. While it did this, Twilight pointed her horn at the earth beneath it. She made no attempts to control her magic, she just surged as much of it into the ground as she could. It cracked in several places, turned to powder in others, and the rest went flying randomly. To complete her trick, she flapped her wings to get a gust of wind that made the badger-mole feel as though it was falling into nothing.
With a panicked shriek, the mole bent the earth upward to meet it. It clawed at the risen ground like it was a lifeline, diving into it with frantic scrambling. The rumbling of its subterranean motion grew less intense as the seconds ticked on.
“It’s… running away,” Toph realized.
“No snack, no matter how tasty, is worth panic and getting your tongue burned,” Twilight said, trotting over to her. Carefully, she held out a wing for Toph to grab onto. Toph took it and was able to swing herself onto Twilight’s back, exhausted.
“Thanks…” Toph said.
“What’re friends for?”
“I mean, for not hurting it that badly. The badger moles… they mean a lot to me.”
Twilight nodded solemnly. “We still need to find that heart. Tippi?”
“It’s still in or near this room,” Tippi confirmed. “Hidden, somehow.”
“There’s no stealth-bending in this world, is there?” Twilight asked.
“Nope,” Toph confirmed. “You’ve got four elements and then that weird mumbo—jumbo spirit stuff that… I don’t think can make things invisible. And even if it was I’d be able to feel it.” She frowned as she rubbed her sore shoulder. “...Probably.”
“But, that guy, Dimentio, he could use magic.”
Toph frowned. “Yeah, what gives? I thought you had to follow our rules!”
“I thought we did…” Tippi admitted. “It may be that the power of the Chaos Heart can be given to others to defy reality.”
“Could the Pure Heart have this power too?” Twilight asked.
Tippi thought about it for a moment. “Actually… it most definitely could. They are connected to the forces of reality and can be used to breach barriers, it’s feasible that one could draw on otherworldly magic.”
“So, how would we find it?”
“Pure Hearts are manifestations of reality and love… they are drawn to such things, as far as I understand.”
Toph raised an eyebrow. “Well, none of us have fancy other-world-magic, and I’m not kissing a horse today.”
Twilight shivered in disgust at the thought. “Agreed.”
“It wouldn’t be real love anyway…” Tippi noted. “The statue…” The statue of the two lovers was broken and jarred from the battle, but somehow both of their faces were still intact. “They brought it here with their love.”
“ ‘Love shines brightest in the dark!’ “ Twilight exclaimed.
“That’s just the hint,” Toph grunted.
“What if it’s a twofold hint? What if…” Twilight beat her wings, putting out all of the fires with a rush of wind. The room turned cold, with a strange warmth behind Toph. She whirled around...
And then Toph saw the Pure Heart.
Saw.
There, sitting in a void of blackness, just in front of her eyes… she saw it. It… she had never seen anything before in her life, she couldn’t even describe it. She could identify its shape easily enough, a cartoonishly stylized portrayal that looked nothing like an actual heart, but nonetheless captured her imagination instantly. The light—so that’s why they cared so much about light!—was warm, welcoming, and made her think of the beach for some reason. She had no idea why.
“T-t-twilight,” Toph stammered. “What… color is that?”
“It’s… orange?”
“So that’s… that’s what orange looks like.” Toph let out a choking laugh, trying and failing to keep her tears in. “It’s… it’s so beautiful. I…” She reached a hand out.
“Wait, n—” Tippi began.
The Pure Heart resonated with Toph. It flew into her hands, filling her with life and a feeling of calm welcome. She clutched it to her chest as if it were her child, a warm smile crawling up her face.
“This thing really can save the world…” she said, breathlessly.
“H-how…?” Tippi managed.
“Hmm?” Twilight questioned.
“The… Pure Hearts can only be touched by those… who…”
“Those like us?” Twilight asked, touching the Heart with her own hoof.
“But Toph isn’t… one of us.”
“I am now, Pippy,” Toph declared, chuckling.
“Hold on, there’s some writing here.” Twilight leaned down to the ground just below the Pure Heart. “This inscription wasn’t here before… ‘when my love died, I wanted to destroy them all for their petty wars that killed so many. But I knew that was not what he wanted, that was not what our love was for. So instead of destruction, I brought healing. For his sake, I forgave them and brought our two villages together. For his sake, I ended the wars. And once the city was one and I laid my love to rest, the Heart revealed itself to me. I have never seen anything so precious. Whoever finds it in whatever era it is needed, remember, it carries with it the love between two people and two rival cities—a love that turned hate into friendship, even after death. Take it, and cherish it.’ “
When Twilight stopped reading, the only sound was a soft shimmering coming from the Pure Heart itself.
“That city was Omashu,” Toph said. “It’s still standing today.”
“How long has it existed?” Twilight asked.
Toph shrugged. “Thousands of years?”
“Good…” Twilight nodded her head slowly. “Good.”
“Welp, time to head back.” Toph grasped the Heart in her hands, feeling its energy well up within her again. Lifting it above her head, she shouted, “We got a Pure Heart!”
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You have acquired A Pure Heart!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69AyYUJUBTg
Man, Team Avatar's Secret Tunnel expedition would have been a lot faster if they'd had Toph, huh? Something something using obstacle concepts before characters that trivialize them show up, clever writers.
Who needs a map? (ding)
And here he is! Everyone's favorite weird simile using jester, here to liven things up! This chapter was progressing a little too easily...
Thanks Dimentio! Where would we be without you convenient magic to give us an exciting boss fight to cap this chapter off? ...Probably closer to saving all worlds without having to waste time. But this is more fun, so I don't mind.
...You know, this is a really good question, and now I'm sad that we haven't seen Avatars use sweet synergy attacks with multiple elements. Something to put on the docket if we ever get a third show... (Can we please get a third Avatar show, Nickelodeon? I need more of this universe...)
You are making a big assumption if you think that Dimentio follows rules at all, Toph. Like an arrogant little sister flagrantly ignoring a "Do not enter" sign because she cannot read, Dimentio breaks any laws of physics, reality and good taste that he likes, whenever he so pleases.
I adore this whole concept. The Pure Heats being so fundamental to reality, so pure, that they can be seen without being seen... I don't really know how to describe why I like it so much, just like Toph can't describe orange. But I love it regardless.
The second Pure Heart, carrying "a love that turned hate into friendship", has been found by our hero! Or... Heroes? Does Toph truly hold the destiny of a legendary hero? Questions remain as the journey in the world of the Elemental Nations draws to a close, but for now, all that can be said is...
END OF CHAPTER!
The way you described Toph's reaction to seeing something for the first time, and her reaction to the color orange was fantastic. A great chapter, through and through!
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Did Twilight just invent plasmabending?
Oh no!
Dimentio!