![]() The Brann and Vannis tribes had barely been able to repel them before they were completely annihilated. They came one night without warning and without a sound, killing and destroying without compassion or sense. They are said to be not quite human, living so far north where humans can barely survive. It’s been nearly two centuries since they’ve been seen, but the stories are still terrifying. Both tribes had been nearly destroyed when the Frykt Tribe came.Įven just thinking about the Frykt sends chills through Katara. It’s a necessary evil to keep their feuding tribes from raiding and invading each other the way they did for two hundred years before. She understands the tradition and history of the Ofre. She doesn’t know if she’s ready to return to that cursed battleground. Sokka may have survived his injuries, but he wouldn’t have survived a fall into the Dele. By the end of the day, when the horns sounded and marked the end of the Ofre, Katara knew it was hopeless. Katara stared in horror after him, but then warriors from the Brann Tribe converged and she was forced to fight for her life. Their fingers had brushed and then Sokka fell, nothing except a bloody trail across the ice to show that he’d ever been there. Katara remembers falling on her stomach and reaching out for him. He slid across the ice, towards the edge of the abyss. ![]() She remembers fighting near the deep gorge that splits the territories of the Brann Tribe and her tribe, the Vannis. She remembers men and women slipping around as they tried to fight, killed as easily by the elements as by blade. ![]() It was a hard and long winter and the snow was packed down overtop a layer of ice. She still has nightmares about the last Ofre. They’ll arrive shortly after sunrise, where the Brann Tribe will be waiting for them. The march to the Dele, where the traditional battle - the Ofre - is held every five years takes three hours. They’ll go to bed early tonight and wake up before the sun rises. Between rubbing her leather armor and boots with oil and polishing her blade, she watches the shadows dance around the fire. It’s a quiet evening dominated by the crackling of the fire. Sitting across from her, her father does the same with his axe. Instead, she sits on the cushions laid out on the floor and begins sharpening her sword. Katara knows she should say something, but her own bitterness and grief is making it impossible. ![]() If she and her father die, the poor girl will be all alone again. She won’t be old enough to fight until the next battle, but Katara knows she’s worried about losing them, too. The young girl whose parents died in the same battle Sokka died in tends to their fire, her eyes filled to the brim with tears. Katara follows her father back to their home, a one-room building with a curtain hanging on one side for her privacy. Although her skills may have been formidable, no thirteen year old is prepared for the horrors of battle. Katara was such a good fighter, the best her tribe had ever seen, that everyone was willing to overlook tradition. ![]() There’s a reason the age for going to war was fifteen. She was too young to be on that battlefield. Her anger isn’t directed at the Brann Tribe, whose soldiers took the lives of her mother and Sokka her anger is directed inwards, at herself, for failing to protect him. Katara nods, though conflicting emotions swirl through her. “You’ll have your chance to avenge him,” her father says, squeezing her shoulder. She was his shield partner and she let him down. Katara still remembers the brutality of that day, grief and guilt rising up within her. She moves her fingers over to the second stone, tracing her brother’s name. Katara still feels the echoes of her loss. She died when Katara was young, almost too young to remember her. Her hand reaches out, touches the inscribed runes spelling out her mother’s name. Around them, Katara is vaguely aware of other families paying respects to their dead. They’re at the edge of the village, just in front of the treeline, where all the carved stone memorials from their tribe stand. Katara feels her father’s hand fall heavily on her shoulder as she kneels in the cold, hard dirt. ![]()
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