The city was burning a thousand different colors.

The colorful flames licked nefariously at buildings and walls, chasing down and enveloping whatever they could. After a while the scene of the city under fire gradually began to fuzz over at the edges. Before the return of the gritty gray haze one solitary streak of violet-blue lightning ripped across the sky. She smelled the electric sizzle before she felt the crack of the whip on her back-as hot as a branding iron but a thousand times more terrible. She felt herself begin the slow plummet down to earth.

A boy with a scar watched in horror as she fell. His scar flushed a pale scarlet in the green glow of the surrounding crystals. As the ground rushed in slow motion up toward her she could hear maniacal, choked, laughter. The laughter soon became a throaty, broken-hearted sobbing. She then saw a full moon, hung heavily like a suspended orb, through a high prison window. The last thing she saw was a weak blue flame quivering unsteadily in the complete darkness.

Korra awoke covered in a thin sheen of cold sweat. She was trembling slightly, but not nearly as badly as she would have expected. It was barely dawn as the sky was only beginning to turn pink. Korra sat up, pushing aside her warm sleeping furs and held her head in her hands. Since she had returned home to the Southern Water Tribe she had been having such nightmarish visions with dismal regularity. Apparently a familiar environment and the comforts of home did nothing to ward off these unwilling sojourns into these netherworlds. It had gotten to the point where Korra was no longer sure if these were just nightmares. The quality of these…journeys…or whatever they were was a little too sharp and a little too historic to be just the stuff of dreams.

Or at least Tenzin had thought so when Korra finally brought the issue up. He had taken the matter very seriously and meditated the entire next day on it. Tenzin believed that these visions came during sleep because Korra was most susceptible to overtures from other realms when unguarded. Korra thought that it had made sense.

The connection she had made with Avatar Aang a few months back had been a very fortuitous one. It felt otherworldly, but real, and most of all it had felt divine. It might have had something to do with the fact that she had had her bending restored to her, but that was another matter entirely. These more recent trips into the spirit world had taken on a darker tone and stood in stark contrast against Aang's first visit.

Korra finally decided that there was no point whatsoever in going back to sleep. She stretched and picked herself up to begin the day. She had nothing to fear under the sun. Nightfall, however, would bring something else.