Zuko suddenly snaps awake when he hears screaming in the middle of the night. He tries to get to his feet but the pain in his head hasn't gone down all that much, despite Katara's healing. Trying to see through the darkness, he can't find the others that were sleeping around where he was. The fire had been snuffed out and the only visible light is the dull twinkling stars eons away in the heavens. Painfully he gets up holding his hand to the side of his head, "Fuck." He curses, before extending his right hand and opening a large flame in his hand to create light. Slowly he begins walking around the camp, the surroundings are inside of an old fallen tree but the floor is mud almost stone like. Around him he can see drag marks through the mud, marks where someone had dragged their fingers along the ground. There's a deep trench along one of the drag markings. He crouches down and inspects the two lines dragged almost perfectly straight into the darkness. "Someone grabbed my swords when they were taken." He says before looking at the width of the drag marks. "Probably Uncle got grabbed here... by what though?" he narrates to himself before moving his eyes to look towards the other set of drag marks.

The moment his eyes move to the side, more pain radiates through his skull causing him to groan. "Damnit." He growls as he clutches the side of his head harder. His vision blurs slightly before he falls down to a knee. The fire in his hand gets snuffed out as he falls to a knee. "I'm in no condition to do this." He says before laying flat on his back in the dirt and mud. Feeling his water pouch on his side, he reaches down and grabs the small bag. "I hope I don't regret this." He says to himself before opening the pouch and pulling a small amount of water out of it. A few ounces at most, less than a tenth of the liquid that is in the bag. The water coats the palm of his hand and laps just around the side of his fingers. He puts his hand to the side of his head where Katara had been healing him. Her healing had done a significant job to relieve the pain from the initial impact, and had stopped the bleeding but the migraine and dull throbbing in the side of his head still persisted. He presses his hand to the tender skin around the wound before the water glows a bright white, in the distance he sees the reflection of eyes all around him. The water is absorbed into his skin, and the effects are immediate, the pain is gone almost the moment the light fades from the water.

After reattaching the pouch of water to his belt, he gets back up and throws a flame onto the dying fire. With life returned to it he can see the drag marks more clearly, and without the throbbing in his head, he can think. He examines the drag markings and notices something odd about the markings. Long cylindrical tube looking marks are around where the sleeping bags were. As he crouches down he notices something about these tracks along the dirt. "Looks like it's been pushed towards them not... away." He says as he turns his attention to the sandal his uncle had left behind. As he looks around the camp, he sees a few vines that had been cut, they leaked water into the dirt. "Vines don't move on their own..." He says to himself before seeing Aang's staff where he was dragged then finding Katara's necklace shortly after. He looks up around the tree line sensing the morning sun lift above the horizon. Deciding to go after his uncle first in case they have to fight anything big, he picks up the sandal and treks off into the swamp in the direction where his uncle was taken.

Katara...

As the muggy heat of the day began rising up through the swamps, she had been awake for hours by now. It was just before dawn before they were ambushed by something coming out of the darkness and abducted them. She only managed to get a glimpse of Zuko and he was being left alone by whatever was trying to take them. Looking up at the canopy above her she sees the sun peaking through the leaves. All around her, cypress knees, trees, mangrove trees, roots, vines, bushes and grass clog up her vision further. She at least had the idea of marking the trees with her water bending so she wouldn't get turned around on herself or at least... she thought she wouldn't. "Aang! Aang!" She calls out before pausing, looking around the trees and vines waiting for a response. "Zuko! Iroh!" She calls out again, waiting for a response but nothing comes of it.

As she continues to walk through the wilderness, searching through the trees trying to find anyone in the endless swamps. Passing by tree after tree, trudging her feet through the mud and marshy soil. Sweat beads up and pours from her head as the heat of the day begins to get to her, the muggy atmosphere sucking the moisture and hydration from her body. She pulls her water skin from her back before drinking a good amount of the liquid. "Iroh said it wouldn't be a good idea to drink the swamp water... could make me sick." She says to herself looking at the murky water she's trudging through. "I hope Zuko is ok..." she sighs, as she continues to walk through the waters. Lifting her hands apart she bends the water in the vines away from the gap between two trees. As she passes between the trees she sees someone in the distance, Katara squints her eyes trying to make out who this person is. The long brown hair down the center of her back, the blue clothing and pelts around her back, Katara instantly recognises the person she's seeing. "Mom? Mom!" She calls out before sprinting around the mangrove trees and through the water. As she nears her mother she extends a hand and tries to grab her shoulder expecting to feel the warmth and loving embrace of her mother again... but that isn't what she felt. When she grabs what she thinks is her mother, the vision fades and she's left grabbing a large cypress knee sticking high above the water. She stares at the cypress knee for a few moments as the realization hits her and she breaks down. Her knees giving out from underneath her and tears welling up in her eyes as she breaks down crying in the waters.

Aang...

With how often he'd lend his glider staff to Zuko, it was starting to feel like it belonged to the avatar than it did to him. But, Aang didn't mind that too much. Zuko reminded him of his sister and the two had spent every single moment together since they were born at the western air temple. Sure he was brash, easily annoyed and oftentimes rude but whenever he would airbend he did it almost the same exact way that she did. Despite the avatar now being his student, and that his student is older than he is, he still feels like he's training with his sister again. However, one of the other secrets that he kept was that without his staff he felt even more alone. When they were ambushed in the night it was his own fault that he left it behind as he couldn't grab it in time as they were dragged away by the sentient vines. With that being said, he had a surprise instore for Zuko for when they meet up with the mechanist again. He had asked the inventor to create a new glider staff, one made of metal and one that would be given to Zuko.

These thoughts and memories flood through his mind as he jumps from tree to tree using his acrobatics to avoid having to slog through the mud. This way he covers much more ground in his search for Katara. "Whatever attacked us last night wasn't attacking Zuko, hopefully it didn't try to eat him." He thinks to himself recalling the events of the previous night. As he jumps through the trees, he sees movement out of the corner of his eye. Quickly he snaps his head in the direction where he saw it, catching the orange and yellow cloak of another airbender dancing through the trees. "Hey! Wait! You're an airbender right?!" He shouts, before jumping off the branch he's on, grabbing a vine and swinging through the trees after this person. The vine swings around the tree and he manages to catch another glimpse of this person. Shoulder length brown hair and the robes of an airbender student. As she turns around, Aang recognises the smile on this girl's face. "Fa?!" Aang shouts before chasing after his sister, "Wait! Don't go! Please!" He pleads but the girl giggles hearing him say her name. "C'mon Aang, come play with me." She says before running behind another tree. Aang jumps down into the water, stumbling slightly before sprinting after Fa Yen as she twirls and then steps behind another tree. Aang forces himself to get up and sprints after her but as he rounds the same tree she's gone... forever.

Zuko...

Through a slew of curses, grumbles and frustration, Zuko slogs his way through the deep mud in the direction he thought his uncle was dragged in. All his training in the firenation military has not amounted to very much, as he doesn't know any tracking tactics. Even if he did, it's not like it would help all that much in this case considering the almost knee deep mud he's had to track through is leaving deep foot prints but they're quickly filling up with water and soon mud as the walls that are created by his footsteps fall in. "Damnit, this mud is impossible!" He growls before taking another step forward. As he does so, he watches as water fills in the hole made by his boots. "Water..." He says to himself before dragging his arms upwards in a flowing motion dragging up all the surrounding water from the mud around him. With the mud as dry as bone now, he easily frees his legs from the crumbling dirt before raising a high legged kick and slamming his foot against the ground the dirt in front of him is compacted into smooth rock allowing him to walk easily along the path he's created for himself.

For what feels like hours he wanders through the swamps, not finding any foot tracks, but he is following a trail of sliced vines and plants. As he jumps over a large root of a tree sticking out of the ground he spots something shiny in the distance. Quickly he twirls his hands up and around himself creating an air scooter and rides the rotating column of air towards it. As he gets closer, he notices that the thing that was reflecting light back at him was one of his dual swords. It's sticking up half buried in the mud, but the weapon's twin nor its scabbard are anywhere to be found.He picks the weapon out of the mud, before bending the mud off of the blade and inspecting the edge. "Uncle was using it, it must've gotten knocked from his hand or... he left it here for me to find. I must be on the right track then." He says to himself as he thumbs over the edge of the blade, feeling where it has been dulled from the use. "Uncle!" He shouts, waiting for a few moments for a response but all he gets is the croaks of a few badger-frogs off in the distance.

As he tries to listen for anyone's voice, he picks up something on his left side. Up until the north pole he had been blind and deaf on his left side, but after he learned how to heal with waterbending and used the water from the spirit oasis his senses have returned to him at their fullest. Off in the distance, he hears the laughter of children as well as an older woman. Trying a maneuver that Aang had shown him a couple times, Zuko extends his arms outwards from his chest then spins his body and pulls his arms inwards before jumping. This causes a small cyclone of air to form under his waist now suspending him into the air. "Holy shit it worked!" He shouts, before leaning forwards, willing the tornado he's standing on to move that direction. While it's only a couple meters tall, it's enough to get above the mud and water and into the air just beneath the snaking vines and arching branches. As he easily maneuvers through the forests, sucking up small sticks and leaves as he moves through the air, he hears the voices again. This time he recognises two of them, the gentle laugh of his mother, his little sister's cheeky and almost maniacal laughter from when she was a kid, but the third one he doesn't recognise.

As he gets to a clearing he sees what looks like the fire gardens in the palace square of the firenation capital. A tall sakura tree overlooking a small pond in the center where turtle-ducks played and swam. Kneeling under the tree he sees the long silky black hair of his mother, with the gold pendant in her hair. Around the pond he sees Azula no older than ten or eleven playing with a girl in a cream colored dress with pale green silk wrapping around her waist. Beside them is a boar with wings that begins to fly as he gets near to them. "M-mother! M...Mommy?" Zuko says as his voice breaks seeing her again, tears begin leaking from his right eye as he lands from the tornado and sprints over to her. As he gets closer, he falls to his knees trying to wrap her up in a hug, shutting his eyes and burning his head into her shoulder... but all he feels his arms tighten around is moss. The alien feeling, the squishy cold plants and water leaking into his clothing immediately causes him to recoil in horror at what he was seeing. Around him he doesn't see the fire gardens of his home, instead it's a ruined ancient building made of stone so old that it's covered in moss. In the center of the ruins is a small pond with nothing in it, not even algae. "No... no no No No." He says before increasing in volume and anger. "NOOOOOOooooo!!!" He shouts, his face twisted in fury, anger and frustration. He balls his fists so tightly that his palms bleed as he slams both his hands down hard on the ancient stones. This action shatters what's left of the ancient building around him, causes fire to spew all around him high into the trees and the ruins to be completely destroyed.

However, something stops his anger. He hears the small voice of the third girl laughing again. As he looks up from the destroyed ruins something catches his eye. It isn't the strange girl laughing but something that's beneath the water. A large crack had formed underneath the pool of water, from beneath the crack in the stone he can see a deep red glow and the water boiling from whatever is creating the heat. Around the ruins, cracks running through the swamp also glow with this red light, and the heat intensifies around him. His attention is drawn away from the glowing fissures he created with earth bending to the laughing girl. She now stands high in a tree giggling before running behind the main trunk. "Hey! Wait up!" He shouts before chasing after her.

He jumps up to the tree branch where she was running on, before chasing after her again only to find nothing behind the tree. He looks around for a moment trying to see where she went before hearing her laugh again. This time she's on the ground, running along the mud as if she's walking on water. Zuko turns and jumps towards her trying to keep up, he creates another air scooters to easily glide along the mud. He chases after her as she jumps over a log into the water before vanishing again. As Zuko floats over the mud, he hits the same log with the air scooter and goes flying over the tree and through the leaves before crashing face first into Katara. She screams as he crashes into her causing the two to go tumbling down the side of the tree only to end up falling on top of Aang and landing at Iroh's feet. "That didn't look like it felt very good." Iroh says as the three look up at him slightly annoyed by the poorly timed joke. He offers a hand up for them to get back to their feet.

"What the hell happened last night?" Zuko asks as he gets up before offering a hand to Katara as Iroh helps Aang to his feet. "I woke up after the screaming, the fire was out and everyone was gone."

"We were attacked by something, the vines came alive and grabbed us as we were sleeping... I was supposed to be on watch but I kinda fell asleep." Aang admits as Zuko takes off his staff from his back before handing it back to him.

"I'm not sure it was the vines coming alive. Remember yesterday when Katara figured out that she can bend the water in the vines? I think they were being controlled." Iroh admits as the four begin to try to get their bearings again.

"Question is, who the hell was trying to attack us, and why?" Zuko asks as they make their way into a large clearing and towards the river.

"Are you doing alright Zuko? I saw the vines were not attacking you for some reason." Katara says before noticing that the wound on the side of his head is gone. "Did you heal yourself?"

"I used a bit of the spirit water to do it, just a small amount of the water I still have half a liter worth left." He admits before raising his hand and shushing the others. "Do you hear that?"

"What?"

"The forest went silent." He says, causing Aang and Katara to give him a questioning look. "When the forest is silent, a predator is nearby." He says, causing Katara and Aang to immediately get closer to him.

"Just stick together and keep an eye on our surroundings. It's likely that whatever predator might be out there isn't tracking us." Iroh says, trying to calm Aang and Katara down.

Almost the moment that Aang and Katara relax, from behind them the water explodes outwards as a giant monster made of vines and moss erupts from the water. On the front of the creature is a wooden mask that gives it a vague humanoid expression. Aang, Iroh, Katara and Zuko all look on in terror at this giant creature that has just emerged from the depths of the swamp. "Crap baskets." Aang says as the giant creature raises one of its viny arms before slamming it down on them. As the arm collides with the root the four are standing on, each of them jump away from the attack, Aang and Iroh getting separated from Zuko and Katara in the process. Iroh had to blast fire through his hands in order to get out of the way in time to avoid the attack.

As they recover from the first attack, the vines surrounding the monster begin moving outwards trying to grab at them. From behind the beast, Zuko twirls himself on the ground before jumping upwards surrounding his lower body with a tornado. Lifting himself high into the air he begins launching fireballs into the swamp monster. From beneath him, Katara slashes at the beast with the water around her. In front of it, Aang spins his staff around trying to tangle up all of the vines and Iroh jumps backwards, charging up a bolt of lightning on his fingertips. Weaving his arms down across his body then upwards he points his fingers together before directing it towards the beast. The bolt of lightning streaking through the air and slamming into the wooden mask in the center of the monster. A massive thunder crack echoes through the swamps, reverberating off of the trees.

The crack of thunder startles Sokka as he sits in the front of one of the skiffs that Due and Tho had leant them a skiff that Yue is controlling with her bending. As they skate through the waters around the swamps, Sokka snaps to look towards where the thunder had come from, seeing flashes of orange light between the trees. "There! Hey! They're over here!" Sokka says pointing to the flashes of orange light in the distance, he calls out to the other tribesmen causing them to change direction. Their skiff bounces over a tree log but stays intact as they race through the muddy water to where the fight is taking place. Suddenly another bolt of lightning screams through the sky causing Yue to increase her speed, spinning her arms faster so that the skiff launches itself over a stump and into the air. "Hue! Stop! They ain't here to hurt the swamp!" Tho shouts as he and Due bring their skiff to a stop.

"You mean there's a guy in that thing?" Sokka asks as he draws his father in law's whalebone sword ready to jump into the fight.

"Oh..." A new voice calls out from within the vines, causing the massive beast to begin to shrink in size as the vines fall away. In the center of the vines stands a man with shaggy hair and a loin cloth over his hips. "Sorry. I thought you were trying to hurt the swamp is all." The man, Hue, apologizes.

"We were just trying to get out of here, there was a tornado yesterday in the swamp, we got knocked out of the air." Zuko explains as Hue walks out of the vines. "This stupid swamp has wasted enough of our time, even making me think I'm going crazy seeing these stupid visions."

"You saw a vision too?" Aang questions, causing Katara and Iroh to look at him. "I saw my sister... she wanted me to come play with her before she vanished."

"I saw my mother, but it was just a tree stump."

"I'm pretty sure you're just dehydrated and you've breathed in too much swamp gas." Sokka says.

"Or are you just tired?" Yue asks.

"The swamp is alive, it's a spiritual place. It shows us people we loved, people we lost, but everything here is connected to each other just like the world." Hue says which prompts Zuko's attention.

"Two of the people everyone I saw aren't dead, hell I don't even know the third person. I saw my mother, my sister and some girl with a flying pig." Zuko says.

"Perhaps it is someone you're destined to meet, but let's get you all back to the village get you some water and food and you can leave after you're rested up." Hue says as he rests a hand on Zuko's shoulder. "I knew you were wounded, and chose not to try to pull you away since you were the only one who didn't attack the swamp."

"Where's my other sword?" Zuko asks, causing Hue to root through the vines for a moment before producing it.

"I forgive you for attacking us, you were just protecting your home." Aang says as he bows to the other man causing Hue to do the same.

"Well if food is being offered, then let's go, I'm hungry." Sokka declares, causing his wife to sigh and the others to laugh.

"Me too." Iroh adds in causing them to laugh even harder.