Naga Meme!
I love nagas. I love nagas a lot. (Actually, I like all kinds of human-animal hybrids, as my mermaid, octomaid, selkie, drider, and scorpionman obsessions attest. HOWEVER. Today we are concentratining on nagas.)
This is an Avatar'verse AU where the Firefolk are nagas. For people who need references to what nagas are, I direct you here and here. ( Read more... )
This is an Avatar'verse AU where the Firefolk are nagas. For people who need references to what nagas are, I direct you here and here. ( Read more... )
Polished by the slide of naga scales, Hakoda realized.
Great hangings lined the corridor, each depicting a naga in regal clothes and bearing flame. The sun framed their heads, and their coils held volcanoes in submission. As they approached the end of the endless long line, Hakoda caught sight of one with a great comet arching over his head.
Firelord Sozin. They were all Firelords. Even, apparently, the ones who were women.
He stopped before the final one, stared at the stylized portrait of Firelord Ozai. Black flame, great red-gold tail, long dragon-tongue beard. He wondered if the naga lords could possibly live up to their portraits.
Warm hands pressed against his back, one of his guards wanting him to keep moving. He ambled forward, his pace deliberately slow, but the guards were in no hurry to approach the great double-doors ahead.
Hakoda tried to focus on the decoration, the understated wealth of the Firelord. Anything but the men he had left behind in the Fire Nation prison, or his children fleeing with the Avatar. It didn't work.
He hoped Bato could take care of the Water Tribesmen left. Tyro would take care of the Earth Kingdom soldiers, and likely everyone else, but Bato was the next best thing to a chief in the Southern Tribe. Likely after the Firelord devoured Hakoda, he would be elected chief.
Hakoda had never seen a naga consume a human prisoner, nor had any of the prisoners they'd freed reported such a thing happening in captivity. He'd dismissed it as stories, but...
Why did the Firelord want him?
The two naga guards pushed open the double-doors, and heat struck Hakoda like a blow. At the far end of a long dark hall, flames burned in a line before a throne.
Not a throne, Hakoda realized, as the guards escorted him down the long hall. The Firelord's coils.
The fire turned them red-gold. Heavy, thick red-gold, suited to breaking the back of a dillolope. The man who rose from the coils was strikingly handsome, with a golden flame decorating his hair and dark dragon-tongue beard touching his tunic.
The Firelord tilted his head slightly as the guards presented Hakoda. They retreated as soon as the naga-lord acknowledged them, and Hakoda felt his heart sink as the doors clicked shut.
For a long moment, he stood there alone before the fires and Firelord. Then the flames lowered, and the naga descended from his dais. "Water Tribe."
"Fire Nation," Hakoda replied, and the Firelord's mouth quirked.
The very tip of that red tail flicked, striking Hakoda's calf. The Water Tribesman jolted; it hadn't hurt, but the naga touching him at all was-
"Was there a reason for that?" He asked levelly as the naga's tail curled in a loose circle around him.
"Does there have to be?"
Hakoda took a step back, not liking the look in those gold eyes. The edge of his boot almost trod on the naga's tail. It wouldn't hurt the Firelord if he did. Hell, with the muscle the naga had, he probably wouldn't even feel it. But the implied meaning in stepping on that red tail-
The Firelord would kill him. Nastily.
"I don't know," Hakoda said at last. "I don't have a tail."
The naga's coils shifted, tightened the circle, as the Firelord swayed forward.
Taking the death promised in stepping on that tail was starting to look tempting. "I take it that my men are not participating in something similar?"
He hoped they weren't, at least.
The Firelord paused. "No," he said, sounding slightly puzzled. "Why would they be?"
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"You are privileged," the Firelord said lowly. "Very few foreigners are allowed into my presence."
Hakoda felt his smile harden. "Very few foreigners would be... well-behaved guests."
"They might be dinner," the Firelord said idly, the tip of his tail flicking.
The motion caught Hakoda's eye, and he instinctively darted a glance toward it. "I'm well aware," he said, dragging his gaze back to the fell gold eyes of the naga-lord. "I'm a simple hunter. I know what happens to 'guests' who don't behave."
"I thought you might," the Firelord said, shifting closer.
His hands balled into fists to keep from shaking. "Makes me wiser than most, I imagine. Helps that I don't have... sharp teeth."
The Firelord paused again, studying him with open curiosity. With a jolt, Hakoda remembered that some nagas did have venomous fangs.
His skin felt like it was going to be peeled off. He remembered how the ostrich-horses some of the Earth soldiers rode would show whites all around their eyes, terror stretching their eyes too wide.
"Tyro bends, Huu bends, I don't," he said.
The Firelord smiled lazily. "I know. Such a fierce warrior despite the lack."
The fear didn't quite drain way at the naga's smile. It faded down to wariness, lurking in his blood to speed him if he needed to dodge or run. He could not help a glance at the massive tail curled in a circle around him. "I prefer wise over fierce."
The naga's tail tightened its circle, scales almost brushing against Hakoda. "Sometimes it is a lack of wisdom and a strength of will that allows one to triumph."
Bitterness flooded Hakoda. Both wisdom and will failed today. He gave one sharp nod.
The naga's smile sharpened. "Sometimes there is no defeating a foe."
Ice slammed down inside Hakoda. "Why this meeting? Intimidation? To break my spirit?"
The naga tilted his head slightly, and Hakoda could almost imagine a forked tongue flicking out to taste the air. But of all the snakish things about nagas, they never did that. "Breaking your spirit so soon would bring me little pleasure."
"I see."
Scales rasped as the Firelord's tail slid against itself. Those gold eyes studied Hakoda, something seeming to click behind the veil of madness.
Hakoda braced himself, hoping it would be quick.
"What a handsome man you are," the Firelord murmured.
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I love the details and the atmosphere as Ozai lurks and approaches Hakoda. I love the tail description and what a wonderful prison it makes.
And I love the simple dread of Ozai noting just how handsome Hakoda is. The last thing Hakoda expects and probably doesn’t want.
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