Avatar the Last Airbender: The Eightfold Path: Chapter 1: The Realm of Madness

This was not the Spirit World.

Or at least no part of the Spirit World that Aang had ever been to. Although that did not count for much, considering he was still a novice when it came to acting as the bridge between the mortal realm and the realm that the spirits claimed as their own.

But still...

He knew enough to know that there was something fundamentally... wrong...about this place.

Although the Spirit World had an ambience of strangeness, of wonder and mystery, it felt natural to him. Which was strange in its own right... He was human after all. The Spirit World should have been a complete antithesis to him.

Yet the realm of the spirits felt... right. It felt, for the lack of a better term: normal. To him, it felt as though he had merely strolled into the home of an old friend, instead of actually crossing the boundaries between worlds.

But this place...

This place, this new realm that Aang had somehow stumbled into, disquieted him.

It set him on edge.

There was an atmosphere of pain and unending anguish. A feeling of malevolence, a feeling of ancient and violent hatreds.

Power too. Old power. Primordial. Aang could feel it. Raw. Wild. Uncontrollable. It hung in the air of this place, giving it a greasy, electrified texture that crackled with eldritch energy.

Aang was curious. He had been attempting to cross into the Spirit World, when, through some unknown means he had arrived here. He wondered if the same laws that governed the Spirit World governed this unknown realm as well

Aang threw out a fist, half expecting to see a blast of fire erupt from his clenched fist. Nothing happened.

He couldn't bend the air either. A quick twirl and thrust with his staff told him that much.

He waved his arm through the air, keeping it fluid and in motion. He tried to pull moisture from the air like Katara had taught him. Nothing formed at his finger tips.

He took a stance and thrust up with his palm. Nothing moved.

Like Spirit World the bending arts held no sway in this realm. But that was where the similarities ended.

For where the Spirit World had been... stable, for lack of a better term, this place was a constantly shifting myriad of colours and formless, shapeless, which continuously twisted and turned in the raw, clashing colours that seemed to be the only thing that formed this new world. It was beyond definition, beyond any description that his mind could offer. His eyes hurt just to look at the sheer impossibility that spread itself out before him.

"Well." Aang said to himself, as gripped his staff tighter in his hand. "Best get moving. Maybe I could find someone, or something that could help me get out of here."

With that Aang took a step and began to walk. At least that is what he thought he was doing. There was nothing to indicate that he was moving at all, but he kept walking regardless. Above him, below him, all around him, the colours and shapes, the bleeding reality of this new world shifted in its ever changing way.

He felt a cold shiver, as a new thought, a new doubt crossed into his mind. What if I can't get out? What if I'm trapped here forever?

Panic raced through him, and before he could suppress it, before he could calm himself something moved. In the swirling depths of this... this... this chaos, something shifted.

A definite form; in a sea of shapeless swirling colours.

Aang couldn't describe it. It was as though his mind and his eyes refused to comprehend the image of what he was seeing.

Yet he couldn't look away.

His breath caught in his chest

His blood froze in his veins.

His eye lids refused to close.

His hands refused to budge from where they clamped at his sides. Refusing to shield him from the... sheer wrongness that existed before him.

Tears of pain formed and streamed from the corners of Aang's eyes. Blood, bright and crimson dripped from his nose, his heart, pounded in his chest and his mouth opened in soundless scream.

He couldn't move. Couldn't breath. Couldn't think.

All he could do was focus on the horror that was forming before him.

Malicious, evil laughter, sent chills down his spine and froze the very marrow in his bones. He couldn't look away, he stared into the very abyss as an eight clawed appendage reached towards him, while several gapping maws, filled nothing but long needle teeth opened wide to swallow him whole.

Suddenly, it was over. Aang's body was released from whatever it had been that had rendered him immobile. He doubled over, panting in pain and fear.

"What in all the heavens was that?" Aang asked himself, as he panted, and tried to calm his racing mind.

He needed to be calm. He needed to be serine. Phlegmatic.

Aang stood up straight. He was the Avatar. A fully realised Avatar. He had nothing to fear. Quieting his still raising heart, he adopted an expression of calm indifference much like he had when Aang had faced the spirit known as Koh.

With determination flooding his veins, drowning out the fear or terror, or whatever it had been that had caused him to seize up. He picked up his staff from where he had dropped it and stated moving forward.

Aang walked, and walked and walked. He did not know how long he had been walking for, nor did he know if he was making progress. There was nothing to indicate that he was getting anywhere at all. The surroundings continued to explode, and implode; reform and break apart again in no describable pattern.

He pushed on never the less. There was no other choice but to continue. He had no idea of how he had come to this place and he had no thoughts on how to escape it. But something was telling him to keep moving. Whether it a memory from one of his past lives or the imagined voices of his friends telling him to keep pushing onward, he did not know. Nor did he care, it was good advice.

It would help him get out of this...

He didn't know what to call it.

"Never mind that." He told himself, "Naming this place won't help you out. Just keep moving forward Aang, just keep moving forward."

That was when the whispers started. At first Aang strained to hear them, but they were always too faint to make out. He could just barely make out a word, maybe two at the most, before they faded away into the chaos of the realm.

He could feel his temper fraying; he could feel his choleric rising with each dry hiss of the ceaseless whispers, always just out of earshot.

Aang calmed himself. Breathing exercises, mediation. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

The whispers did not cease.

Instead they increased number. Dry hissing whispers, never stopping and always the words were indiscernible. He did his best to ignore them, focusing on closing his mind to the outside world and seeking inner peace. Just as the monks had taught him, all those years ago.

It was only partly successful.

He growled under his breath, as the colours all around him continued their never ceasing transformations. "Just shut up."

And for the briefest of instances, Aang could swear that he saw a pair of eyes, just in front of him.

Even though it had been just for a fleeting moment that Aang had stared into those thing's eyes, he felt his chest tighten with fear.

Aang knew animal eyes. He was good with animals; it was something that he prided himself on.

These were like no eyes that he had ever seen. The pupils were thin, black slits in the middle of a pair of yellow, hellish glowing eyes that were alight with malicious hunger and inhuman cruelty.

And just like that, they vanished into the swirling chaos.

He had to calm himself. He had to be phlegmatic. Placid. This place seemed to react to his emotion; to his state of mind. He had to remain calm and keep moving forward.

Aang continued to walk, he kept a leisurely pace that he could maintain for a good long while, but not indefinitely, he would eventually tire, get hungry, or thirsty. He would be forced to stop sometime.

He kept his bearing calm, albeit it was difficult. The whispers had returned, but unlike before where he could not make out any of the words that they hissed, he now could hear them plain as day.

Mark the Eight.

Over and over and over again the whispered the exact same three words, in their dry hissing whisper.

Mark the Eight.

He could feel his anger bubbling just below the surface, dammed behind a wall of calm. But just barely.

Mark the Eight

It took everything that Aang had not to lash out. To strike at whatever it was that hissing out that infernal whispering. He wanted them to be silent, so that he could concentrate on getting out of this trap.

Mark the Eight.

Finally Aang had enough, and his anger burst through his dam like rampaging platypus-bear.

Mark the Eight

"SHUT UP!" He struck out with his staff hoping to catch one the whisper's with his attack.

In that moment, when his rage had broken through, when Aang's calm facade had been burned away in single angry outburst. Reality, or what counted as reality in this place, blinked and shifted.

I always wanted to write a fic where Aang gets trapped in the Warp... So I did. How will he fair against the avatar's of the four Chaos Gods? Against the likes of Blood God Khorne and the Ever Scheming Tzeentch? Against Rotting Nurgle and Slaanesh the God of Pleasure and Pain?

Who do you think will be the Gods' Chosen Champions for these confrontations? Find out more in the next chapter!

And as always enjoy and drop a review! Seriously, a review is crack for a writer.