| "Destroying the spirit had cost him a piece of his own, somehow. He was bleeding inside, losing something more vital than blood, vitality leaching away in a manner no healer could fix. He was cold." |
| — Kuruk's vision shows Kyoshi the pain caused by the killing of dark spirits. |
"Lost Friends" is the twenty-fourth chapter of The Shadow of Kyoshi.
Overview
Having touched Kuruk in the Spirit World, Kyoshi begins to witness visions of Kuruk's life. The visions reveal details about Kuruk's troubled time as the Avatar, when dark spirits threatened the safety of the human world through rifts. Kuruk fights the dark spirits, but loses a piece of himself with every victory. As his life turns from Avatar to hunter, his relationships with his friends begin to break down. Kuruk shows Kyoshi that Father Glowworm was the source of the rifts, and by doing so, shares with Kyoshi the knowledge she seeks to stop Yun.
Synopsis
Kuruk opens his eyes to find himself in the Spirit World, by himself in a hissing gray swampland. All Kuruk can hear is a hysterical scream and the beating of a drum. Kuruk swims through the swampland to find the source of the wailing, a spider-like spirit, the size of a house, gripping the ground and beating its head against it.
Before Kuruk can speak to the spirit, it grabs him around the neck and brings him into the air. The spirit thrusts the Avatar into itself, the feeling similar to the touch of a corpse. The creature continues to bash itself into the ground, along with Avatar Kuruk, now blacking out from the intense pain.
Before Kuruk fully loses consciousness, he catches a glimpse of what the dark spirit is attacking on the ground; a silvery reflection of a hillside view of Yaoping Town. Kuruk returns to the physical world with a gasp with Kelsang sitting across from him meditating. Kuruk ignores Hei-Ran and Jianzhu's surprised faces and takes the airbender's glider.
Kuruk travels quickly to the town of Yaoping, feeling there was no time to explain to his friends what he had seen, theorizing that there may be a crack between the Spirit World and the human world. Kuruk places the location of his vision of Yaoping at the entrance to the salt mines in a neighboring mountain and lands. Kuruk discovers a hole of darkness that is the rift between the two worlds and enters it, believing it better to go on the attack by physically entering the Spirit World, as Kelsang previously told him he could keep his bending this way. Kuruk finds the dark spirit and fights it. He is unsure how long the battle goes on for, only that he needs to use all four elements to bring the spirit down and save the town.
The next morning Kuruk is found by his friends in the streets of the town, foaming at the mouth. The Avatar is unable to speak for days; destroying the spirit had cost him a piece of himself and made him cold. Unable to tell his friends what happened, Kuruk makes up a story about a spirit that tricked him into losing his mind for a moment. His friends find a doctor, who tells Kuruk there is nothing wrong with him, despite the agonizing pain he feels. While resting, a maid brings Kuruk some distilled wine against the orders of the doctor. The wine soothes Kuruk's pain, warming his cold soul. Kuruk becomes addicted to the sensation of the wine and sleeps with the maid.
Upon his friends discovery of him and the maid, surrounded by bottles of wine across the floor, Kuruk's friends react differently. Kelsang and Jianzhu seemed unfazed by their friend's drunken hookup while Hei-Ran, without admitting it, loses a substantial amount of respect for him.
As Kuruk recovers, he and his friends continue their adventures, and his love and respect for them deepens. When Kuruk discovers another rift in a bad dream during a visit to the Fire Nation, he feels he must face the spirit alone to protect his companions. Kuruk finds the rift in cenote supplying sacred water to a corner of Ma'inka Island and defeats the swarm of snapping beaks traveling through the bridge between the worlds. Kuruk closes his eyes during the battle, unable to look upon the dying spirits.
Once again victorious, the cold emptiness inside him returns, and he is only able to drag himself out of the body of water. A Fire Nation man who introduces himself as Nyahitha discovers Kuruk, saying the elders of the Bhanti sent him to aid the Avatar after he received a premonition. Nyahitha performs a ritual on Kuruk, guiding heat through his body in the similar motion of a Northern healer. He confirms to Kuruk that destroying spirits is causing damage to his own spirit and that permanent damage has already occurred.
Nyahitha's diagnosis further convinces Kuruk not tell his companions about his battles in Spirit World. Kuruk begins abandoning his missions with his friends to research the dark spirits with Nyahitha, visiting the hidden library of the Bhanti. They deduce that the spirits are trying to force their way through newly created cracks in the boundary between worlds; however, they both remain unsure about the source of the cracks and why they were forming all of a sudden.
As the attacks of angry spirits continued, Kuruk becomes a better hunter. Unable to reason with the spirits, he continues to stalk his prey and continues to kill at the cost of parts of his own spirit. Preoccupied with the threats of the angry spirits, Kuruk fails to uphold his other duties as the Avatar through exhaustion and pain, and continues to drink to sooth it. As a result, Jianzhu begins to take over the political duties he cannot fulfill.
Kuruk continues to search for undocumented ways to subdue his pain and begins attending late-night parties in taverns and bending competitions with Nyahitha. Kuruk does not notice his friends going their separate ways, their lives scattered across the four nations, and Kuruk's guilt keeps him apart from his now lost companions. Kuruk remembers the time he showed up to Kelsang's, reading a poem he had intended to give to Hei-Ran that professes his forgiveness and love for her, riling in self-pity.
Kuruk channels his sorrow into more research with Nyahitha about the Spirit World and discovers the cracks are stemming from a single spirit. Kuruk focuses his efforts to find the source of the rifts, eventually discovering the spirit leaving the cracks is Father Glowworm. He learns that Father Glowworm has the power to create cracks as it pleases, often doing so to take the occasional human. As Kuruk discovers Father Glowworm's name, and it discovers his, a curse is solidified, bonding the two. As Kuruk and Father Glowworm fight, they nearly create a gaping hole between the two realms. After a powerful strike by Kuruk severely wounds Father Glowworm, it escapes from Kuruk into the darkness of the Spirit World, both of them knowing they will never fully heal from their encounter.
Kyoshi steps away from Kuruk's memories, Kuruk standing beside her as they silently witness the turmoil of his later life, grateful for his presence. Kyoshi looks at Kuruk and examines his face, a younger, unbroken version in the Spirit World than what it is by the time of his passing. Kyoshi asks why there were so many angry spirits during his era, to which he replies that that is a question for another time.
He tells Kyoshi that in order to help her, he had to share his memories with her, and that now that she has seen them, she will be able to find Yun in the physical world. Kyoshi asks about the rest of Kuruk's memories, to which he replies that there is little else to see after he loses his friends. Kyoshi remembers asking Kelsang where Kuruk was after their group split, recalling that traveling the world enjoying the luxuries of being the Avatar would have been Kelsang's answer. Kyoshi realizes that the true story is much sadder, that Kuruk had been alone. Kyoshi tells Kuruk she is glad to have finally met him. Kuruk responds that there is one more thing he must tell her but is fearful it will only cause her more pain.
The two Avatars travel to a dead swamp, the water drained by yet another crack into the human world. Kyoshi is enraged at the damaged swamp and emotionally asks if Yun was the cause of the damage. Kuruk response that Yun was the source of the crack, and that the Spirit World reacts to emotions. Kuruk continues, telling Kyoshi that spirits can possess a human's body, and give them new shapes and forms, but they cannot control people's thoughts, that Yun is in complete control of his actions. This disappoints Kyoshi, and Kuruk apologizes for the truth. Before the two can converse further, the sky begins to turn blue and rain begins to pour. Kyoshi tries to speak, but only water leaves her mouth.
Kyoshi is rolled to her side, water rushing out of her mouth. She feels the wooden deck of the Sulan's Smile against her. The crew of the ship surround her, worried. As Kyoshi lays on the ship, she is thankful for the gift Kuruk had given her through the visions of his life, now realizing that, like Kuruk and Father Glowworm, she and Yun share a connection. She suspects that is how Yun has been able to track her through the Fire Nation.
Kyoshi tells the crew that she told them not to come after her, noticing a few wet sailors who must have swum down to get her. The captain, Joonho, responds that she did, but it was a stupid order that they were never going to obey. Kyoshi lets her head thunk back onto the deck, and closes her eyes.
Production notes
Series continuity
- Nyahitha guides heat along the energy pathways in Kuruk's body to diagnose his condition following his battle with dark spirits, identical to the technique the shaman, also a member of the Bhanti, performs on Korra in "Beginnings, Part 1" following her fight with a dark spirit.[1]
- Kuruk laments his and Nyahitha's inability to find a less damaging method to subdue dark spirits, speculating that such a technique might not exist yet, a predicament Makittuq and Unalaq overcome with their invention and perfection of spiritbending, as seen in the Core Book of Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game and "Rebel Spirit", respectively.[2][3]
- Due to Kuruk's preoccupation fighting dark spirits, he allows Jianzhu to handle the minutiae of political meetings in his place, a role the Earth Sage rises to prominence in by the time of The Rise of Kyoshi.[4]
- Kuruk notes that his fight with Father Glowworm nearly tears a hole in the boundary separating the mortal realm and Spirit World, a consequence that occurs on at least two other occasions:
- As revealed in the Core Book of Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game and "Beginnings, Part 2", the fighting between Raava and Vaatu leads to the creation of the Northern and Southern spirit portals.[5][6]
- As seen in "The Last Stand", Korra inadvertently creates the Republic City spirit portal when she bends a powerful blast from Kuvira's spirit energy cannon.[7]
Character revelations
- Kuruk hides the truth of his spiritual injuries from the world to protect his friends and Yangchen's legacy.
Goofs
- On page 276 of the hardcover, Kindle, and audio editions of The Shadow of Kyoshi, Kuruk is misgendered with the pronoun "her" instead of "his".
- On page 283 of the hardcover, Kindle, and audio editions of The Shadow of Kyoshi, Father Glowworm is misgendered twice with the pronoun "his" instead of "its".
Trivia
- Contrary to his depiction in prior Avatar media as a carefree and unproductive Avatar,[8][9][4] this chapter sheds new light on Kuruk's character, using his secret fights with dark spirits and resultant suffering as a narrative conceit to explain his audacious antics and poor public perception.
- This chapter originally included cut material that would have shown how Kuruk and Ummi first meet and given more insight into why he resorted to hedonistic coping mechanisms for his grief.[10]
- Kyoshi admonishes Joonho for disobeying her demand not to come after her with the same statement she utters in Escape from the Spirit World to rebuke the Earth King for ordering his guards to attack her: "How dare you defy your Avatar".[8]