The Fire Nation Prince

Chapter 30: The Mad King

Dawn peeled over Nan-Hai like a slow blade, casting long, golden shadows over the worn and cracked fields to the west of the ruined harbor. The morning mist curled low across the flattened hills, obscuring the footprints of marching boots, the clatter of armored men, and the quiet tension of men tasked with war.

Zuko stood silently on the crest of one such hill, his arms folded behind him, flanked by General Rulo and Sergeant Rin. His golden eyes studied the scattered farmlands below, abandoned rice paddies, scorched trees, broken irrigation canals. Ideal terrain for concealment, yet treacherous in its potential for ambush.

“We’ve kept the outer patrols light on purpose,” Rulo muttered beside him, his eyes narrow and hard. “Fong’s scouts will see our men and think we’re pushing east. We leave the western flank soft and bait them in.”

Zuko didn’t respond. He simply watched the horizon. There, far off, columns of smoke rose like wounded flags into the air, signals lit by hidden Fire Nation scouts embedded deep in the countryside. Confirmation.

“They’ve taken it,” Rin said from his other side. “The bait convoy is under attack.”

Zuko exhaled through his nose, the warm breath fogging for a moment in the chill. “Then it begins.”

The so-called “bait convoy” was a simple merchant train, three carts, half a dozen ‘soldiers’ dressed as civilian guards, and a few ragged ox-goats pulling crates filled with straw and junk scrap dressed as weapons and supplies. It was already ablaze now, the carts overturned and broken, as Fong’s splinter unit poured into the ravine under the belief they had routed an exposed supply route.

From the cliffside above, Fire Nation archers and elite firebenders lay waiting behind stone and sandbag bunkers. Among them, Sergeant Lujan stood at the edge, one hand raised, watching through a spyglass. The war paint on his face was smeared with sweat, but his breath was steady.

“Fifty. No… sixty-four,” he whispered. “Earthbenders. Most of them standard infantry. Five heavy types with armor. Two advanced scouts, Chi blockers, maybe. They’re fanning out to secure the hills.”

A messenger hawk was released immediately. It flew low toward the main command post hidden in the pine woods to the north, where Donji and his strike force were preparing to encircle the ravine from the other side.

Zuko, now on the move with a small flanking team, read the parchment as it arrived.

“Sixty-four confirmed,” he said. “Orders?”

Donji glanced at the sun’s position. “Give them two more minutes to dig in. Then we collapse the ravine.”

The moment was tense. Precise.

All at once, it happened.

A horn echoed across the cliffs, three sharp blasts. Fire erupted from the treetops as flame and steel descended. Arrows rained from above. Boulder traps disguised as rockfalls slammed shut the exits on both ends of the narrow pass. From the tree line and the eastern ridge, Zuko’s hidden forces emerged.

“Advance!” Donji barked.

The Fire Nation infantry surged in with precision, pincer movements with benders at the center, spearmen forming the outer wall, and demolitions teams rushing to disrupt earthbender footing with controlled explosions of blasting jelly. Thick clouds of dust and debris rose from below, darkening the battlefield.

Zuko himself descended the far western slope, moving through the smoke like a shadow of death. His ribs still ached from the last battle, but his will pressed forward. Flames bloomed around his fists as he leapt into a formation of three earthbenders, unleashing a sweeping arc of fire that forced them into retreat before he slammed his foot into the ground, sending an eruption up from the soil behind them to box them in.

“Push west!” Donji shouted from below. “Don’t let them regroup!”

One of the Chi blockers lunged toward Zuko with twin daggers, dashing through the flames unphased. Zuko turned just in time to catch a blade along his bracer. Sparks flew. He ducked under a swipe and slammed his palm into the man’s gut, releasing a concentrated blast of flame that hurled the attacker backward like a ragdoll.

Above, Lujan gave the signal.

Explosions erupted from the upper ridges. Controlled demolition charges buried into the weakened cliffside blasted the rocks loose, triggering a thunderous landslide. Earthbenders screamed as boulders crushed their lines, the terrain itself shifting and collapsing around them.

The ravine was death now, walls of fire and rock, smoke choking out sight, screams lost in the rolling fury of battle.

A mile away, back at the command camp, Rin watched through another scope as fire flashed like a storm cloud on the horizon. Beside him, a scout whispered, “Sir, General Fong’s remaining forces aren’t moving.”

“Because he knows,” Rin replied. “He’s testing us.”

The battle raged for another twenty minutes before the fires began to dwindle. Survivors from Fong’s unit were routed. Captives bound. A few wounded were allowed to escape on purpose, as Zuko had ordered. Let them carry word of what happened here. Let Fong know what it meant to underestimate the Crown Prince.

Standing atop the broken earth, his robes scorched and his brow streaked with ash and sweat, Zuko stared down at the ruins of the ambush. His fire still burned in his hands. Around him, Fire Nation banners were raised.

Donji arrived, bruised but smiling. “A good day, my prince.”

Zuko didn’t smile. “It’s not over.”

---

The smoke from the last firebomb was still curling into the sky when Rin finished reporting the final numbers.

”Thirty-two earthbender prisoners, fifteen dead on their side. Three of ours lost. Eight more wounded, but they’ll live,” he recited, voice sharp and clipped from exhaustion. “We’ve also secured two catapults, damaged but repairable.”

Commander Donji, face smeared with ash and sweat, nodded as he wiped his brow. ”All things considered, a decisive blow.”

Around them, the encampment buzzed with nervous energy. Medics scrambled between the wounded, soldiers dragged broken equipment off to the side, and engineers argued over makeshift repairs on the remaining siege weapons. For once, morale was high, men were laughing, exchanging jokes over canteens of water, boasting about prisoners taken or the way they’d seen their brothers fight.

But Zuko couldn’t feel any of it.

He sat on a crate turned makeshift bench, elbows on his knees, hands clenched tight. There was something in his chest, tightness, unease. Like the world was leaning a fraction to one side and no one else could feel it but him.

His ribs still ached from the fight with General Fong, but this wasn’t physical. This was something else.

It was then that he saw it.

There, just beyond the camp, in the shimmer of heat-haze where the scorched fields met the tree line, he was standing. Again.

The airbender from the abyss.

No warning. No words. Just that same unreadable expression, half cloaked in shadows and whorls of wind. His clothes danced on currents no one else felt. His staff spun in one hand slowly, almost lazily, and then…

Gone.

Zuko stood suddenly. The blood in his body had gone cold. He knew, deep down, the same way animals knew when storms were coming, that something was about to break.

An explosion cracked across the edge of the camp, followed by a tremor that rocked the ground under his feet. Shouts went up. Screams. The metallic clang of gongs and bells blaring alarms.

Zuko raced toward the edge of camp.

A second explosion lit the sky, a pillar of orange fire spearing toward the heavens. Then another. And another. Debris rained down. Barracks were burning.

“What the hell is happening?!” Zuko barked, smoke rushing into his lungs.

Rin appeared at his side, coughing. “It’s not General Fong! Our scouts, none saw this coming…”

“Then who?!” Zuko demanded, his eyes scanning through the haze, the crumbling lines of defense, the chaos of soldiers scrambling to their stations. “Is this another Earth Kingdom unit?!”

“Not just any unit,” came General Rulo’s voice, grim and hardened as steel. He had appeared beside them like a shadow, expression etched with disbelief. “You need to see this.”

Zuko followed the older general, ducking beneath a burst of shrapnel from a fresh explosion. The trio made their way to the forward ridge of the camp. Smoke and dust clawed at their lungs, but Zuko pressed on until they reached the crest.

And then he saw it.

Beyond the camp’s outer walls, just past the craters torn into the earth by blasting jelly, stood an army. Thousands strong. They weren’t a ragged mix of conscripts and rebels like the last wave. These were soldiers. Trained. Equipped. Marching in formation.

The green standards of Omashu snapped in the wind.

And at their center, towering above them all, riding atop a massive slab of rock floating through the air with impossible grace, stood a man who radiated power. A man old in years but unbowed by time.

King Bumi.

His beard blew wild in the wind. His eyes gleamed like molten rock. One hand rested on his knee, the other twitched with the faint motion of bending. He wasn’t speaking. He didn’t have to. His presence alone shook the courage of men.

Zuko stared, stunned into silence.

“It can’t be…” Rin whispered.

“Oh, it is,” General Rulo said, voice heavy. “The King himself has joined the battle.”

Zuko felt it again, that tightness in his chest. Only now it wasn’t warning. It was a prophecy come true.

Bumi had come. And the true war for Nan-Hai had just begun.

From the ridge where they stood, Zuko, Rin, and General Rulo watched in stunned silence.

The enemy formation held tight like a living wall of jade. Thousands upon thousands of earthbenders stood shoulder to shoulder, their green-and-bronze armor shimmering under the broken morning light. The burning skies above cast shadows over their helmets, but the glint in their eyes, even from a distance, felt as clear as if they stood face to face.

For a long breath, no one moved.

Then…

“WAAAAAHAAAHAAHAHAHA!!”

The cackle cut through the air like a sword. Maniacal. Wild. Familiar.

King Bumi.

With no ceremony, no trumpet, no order from his generals, he leapt down from his floating slab of stone, landing on the scorched battlefield with a boom that cracked the ground beneath his bare feet. Dust curled around him in reverence, like even the earth bowed at his arrival.

Rulo flinched. “What is that madman doing?”

Zuko didn’t answer. He couldn’t. All he could do was stare.

King Bumi reached up and flung off his royal cloak. It twirled through the air and landed behind him with a lazy plop. Beneath, his old body betrayed every stereotype of age, taut, powerful muscles, arms shaped like sculpted stone. His hunch straightened. Vertebrae snapped back into place with audible cracks. It was as if gravity itself had no dominion over him anymore.

And then… he began.

His arms rose, then bent inward at the elbow. His hands moved in a square motion, one corner at a time. The movement seemed slow… but deliberate. Like drawing a box into the world with his bare will.

The earth beneath him rumbled. Then it groaned.

Rin gasped. “What’s he…”

A square of stone erupted from the earth. Massive. No, colossal. A perfect cube, ten meters on each side, lifted from the very bones of the land. It rose like a god’s monument, casting a long and terrifying shadow over the battlefield, blotting the sun with its presence.

Bumi stomped, and the ground shook again.

With his left hand raised, fingers curled slightly, he held the impossible structure in the air like it weighed nothing.

With his right, he moved with rapid flicks, spirals and jerks like he was winding a crank.

The cube shuddered, cracked at its corners.

Then…

CHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCH…

Like a gatling gun, shards of the cube’s surface exploded outward, precision-cut into boulder-sized bullets. They launched toward the Fire Nation camp in a terrifying rain of stone.

”TAKE COVER!” someone screamed from the lines.

But there was no time.

Zuko didn’t think.

He ran forward, planting his feet in the dirt. His ribs screamed in protest, but he didn’t stop. He drew his breath deep, the pain anchoring his will, and thrust both hands upward.

FWOOOOSH!

A wall of fire surged from the ground, tall, bright, and roaring like a dragon’s breath. The flames curved into a wide barrier, a molten shield between his men and the storm of stone.

The first wave of projectiles hit the fire wall and disintegrated, turning to molten splinters in midair.

But the cube wasn’t done.

Bumi grinned wide, eyes wild with joy.

With a single stomp and a push of both arms, he hurled the remaining half of the cube.

It didn’t break apart.

It flew.

A ten-meter cube of earth launched straight at the center of the Fire Nation encampment like a meteor shot from the gods.

Zuko widened his stance. He drew more fire. His arms shook with the effort. The flames screamed, rising higher to meet the oncoming mass.

The edges of the cube caught fire. Stone cracked. Molten chunks fell like hail.

But it wasn’t enough.

BOOOOOOOOM!!!

The cube crashed into the heart of the camp.

The impact obliterated everything. Barracks, siege engines, watch towers turned to splinters, smoke, and flame. A crater swallowed the center of the field. Shockwaves rippled out in all directions, knocking men off their feet.

Zuko was thrown backward. He hit the ground hard, sliding through the dirt before he could even catch his breath.

All around him, his soldiers cried out in confusion and terror.

Rulo stumbled to his feet, blood running from his scalp. Rin helped another soldier up as medics screamed for stretchers. Fire licked at the edges of tents and scattered weapons.

Zuko groaned as he pushed himself up onto his elbows.

From across the field, through smoke and destruction, Bumi stood like a monument.

Smiling.

“Let’s begin,” the old King roared.

[A/N: Can’t wait to see what happens next? Get exclusive early access on .com/saiyanprincenovels.]