Twenty-one years after the second Great Sorrow, the Sky People descend upon Pandora. And this time, with a family seven strong, Jake Sully has far more to lose.
This story begins very shortly following the end of Avatar 1. Inspired by the work of just-another-idk. Go check out their series, “The Eldest!”
Polished Fangs Masterlist
The story of the Mangkwan clan spread fast across all of Pandora. By the end of the day, news of the eruption that decimated their entire rainforest, killing more than half of the clan and burying their culture under feet of magma and ash and soot, had reached the ears of every clan on the same hemisphere. Two eclipses later and the rest of the moon knew.
The eruption hadn’t come out of nowhere. Even the nearby clans, the ones who had no territory in the rainforest, knew it was going to happen. The signs had been there—not that Neytiri really ever was told what those “signs” were. The Mangkwan were right by the volcano. Their Tsahik and tiretu should have been well aware of the nature of it. They should have prepared, because if neighboring clans that had no stake in the matter were fully aware of what was going to happen, how had the Mangkwan themselves not known?
There was no way they could not have known.
They’d known it was coming.
They had just chosen not to run.
Hubris was something the Na’vi attributed to the Sky People. Their arrogance and pride was what brought them to Pandora, what led them to believe they were owed the resources the moon had not offered them.
But they intentionally ignored the hubris that led to the Mangkwan clan’s… evolution.
The Tsahik did not survive it. When the volcano burst, when the rainforest and the Mangkwan Hometree was reduced to mere ash and soot, the Tsahik and the tiretu burned. The warriors and the hunters burned. The dancers and the singers and the weavers and painters and the children—oh, Eywa, so many children and babies—burned. Even those without the physical scarring left by the scorching magma couldn’t claim they were untouched by it all.
Some members of the clan fled the eruption. Most of the survivors did, at least. Uturu was granted without hesitation to all the refugees. The other clans all knew the story before they even arrived. Their arms were wide open. The assimilation was made easy.
Those who remained fared worse.
Hubris led to the Mangkwan’s change. It was the reason they stayed before the eruption. It was the reason Varang rose to control after it.
The red paint had always been a part of the Mangkwan culture. In the days before the eruption, it had been a mark of both pride and shame. Hunters and warriors bore the color to represent the blood they spilled to feed and protect their people. It showed their strength and the lives they had taken all the same. The pride was from doing the right thing. The shame came from the sins committed to do it.
Varang was not a huntress when the volcano took her way of life—she would not have been Olo’eykte. She was not going to be Tsahik, either—she was the second child of the Tsahik and her older sister was the Tsakarem. Perhaps that would have changed. Perhaps, when she’d been older, she would have been able to hold a spear with her father or mix tonics with her mother and sister.
The future she could have had was painful to consider.
The timeline of events that led to Varang becoming the sole leader of the Mangkwan clan was unclear. The survivors who remained in the ashes of their Hometree were not storytellers. Those who left did not see when their faith failed. But the whispers of neighboring clans spread fast, and they were rather creative in their theories; that Varang had been the first to spread the seeds of doubt in Eywa, that she was the one who proposed that the Great Mother abandoned the Mangkwan, that she was the one to kill her sister and her father. The rumors were despicable. The rumors were plausible.
Whatever future Varang could have had, whatever power she could have held within her clan, it paled in comparison to what she did have now. She was Olo’eykte. She was Tsahik. She was irrefutable and all-powerful. And perhaps she had always possessed a penchant for violence. Perhaps she had always had sharper fangs than most. But the balance of the Mangkwan clan was demolished, and Varang spearheaded it.
Her infatuation with the volcanic power that killed their rainforest was a later development. That much was well understood. The devolvement of their faith was not a fast process. But Varang definitely sped it up when she got her hands on the Old Culture.
Most of the clans buried the Old Culture. It was violent. It was bloody. It was what caused so much strife between the clans before they realized a massive change in their ways was required to live without the chaos and pain.
But the warrior clans—the ones who boasted the best hunters and killers—they never really destroyed the information.
The Mangkwan clan was one such clan.
The traditions were muddled when Varang came across them. Details had been lost to time, leaving blank spaces she filled with her own ideals and fixation with flames and the burnt herbs she came across in her foraging trips. She had not been trained; she didn’t take the right paths and instead discovered things her mother and the Tsahiks who had come before her knew not to trifle with. The power those plants had was too great. The tricks they played on the mind were dangerous. And when the fire touched them and the smoke infiltrated the already polluted air, the effects were lessened but wider spread and far more useful in the indoctrination of an entire clan.
At least, that was what Jake said as Mo’at finished the story.
“So she’s drugging her people,” he had breathed, head buried in his hands, “into submission. And… what? How does this have anything to do with our kid?”
Mo’at sat, cross legged, in front of him and Neytiri, who was silent as could be. In Mo’at’s lap lay Tarsem, his eyes closed and his brow relaxed with deep sleep. Mo’at’s fingers trailed over his forehead and temples, pressing gently into the fascia to soothe him. It had taken the poor boy three hours to finally rest after the forty-two minutes Mo’at spent stopping his kuru from bleeding. The story of the Mangkwan clan only came out once they were certain Tarsem had fallen into slumber.
“The paint,” the Tsahik finally said. “Tarsem was in a world of ash. And his skin bore the Mangkwan paint.”
Neytiri swallowed thickly and closed her eyes.
Jake exhaled heavily. “So what does that mean?” He barked out a single burst of humorless, harsh laughter. “Is Eywa saying we’re going to be the next Ash People?” He gestured vaguely around them. “We don’t have a volcano.”
“Ma Jake.” It was the first time Neytiri had spoken since the Tree. Her voice was soft, harsh, carrying a warning—do not be insensitive.
Jake didn’t care. “No, no, explain it to me!” He stood. “My daughter has been gone for more than a year. She can’t be alive. She was a kid when she fell, she was mutilated, she—” His voice broke and he closed his eyes, breathing deeply. “And now this. And what about the palulukan? Okay, what about that? I doubt the Mangkwan have those after their forest burned. So what’s that supposed to mean?”
Mo’at had no answer. The silence told Jake and Neytiri that much. It wasn’t pleasant.
Jake swore. It was a human expletive, one neither Mo’at nor Neytiri knew the meaning of. Grace hadn’t been in the business of teaching the Na’vi children profanity.
“I-I don’t get it,” Jake spat. He looked down at Tarsem, then back at Neytiri. “You just… you pressured this kid—”
“—into connecting to the Tree for what?” he finished furiously. “Neytiri, he is a kid!”
“He saw the same world Y/N did,” Neytiri insisted. Her voice was quiet, small. “I did not force him to do anything, Ma Jake.”
Mo’at’s jaw clenched. “Coercion is still cruel.”
Neytiri looked away. “He did not see Y/N. She is not with Eywa.”
“Jesus,” Jake hissed, shaking his head. “Neytiri, baby, do you hear yourself right now?”
“His kuru was bleeding for almost an hour!” Jake snapped. “He’s thirteen! He’s a kid, he’s mourning his best friend!”
Neytiri shook her head. “Y/N lives. She lives,” she said louder before her mate could argue. “She lives, I tell you!” She stood too, now. “Why?! Why will no one understand this?! Why will none of you understand that Eywa has shown it to me?! To us both?!” She gestured to Tarsem, who remained asleep. Her eyes stung but she refused to let any tears fall. “My baby is alive and none of you believe me!”
Silence followed her cry. Neither Jake nor Mo’at seemed to have anything to say—nothing that would lessen the tension that hung thick in the air.
“I’m gonna go check on the kids,” Jake finally whispered.
Neytiri closed her eyes. She had never felt such defeat before. Not when her sister fell. Not when her father fell. Not when Tsu’tey fell. Not with this level of intensity. Her sister and father had shared her blood and Tsu’tey had held a special place in her heart but this was her daughter, a perfect child she had labored for over the course of an entire year and then some. It held a different weight, a much greater weight.
She lowered herself to the ground as Jake left.
For a moment, the silence resumed.
“There was a palulukan pair behaving strangely when Y/N fell.”
Neytiri didn’t open her eyes when she heard her mother speak. She did not respond.
“The male,” Mo’at continued regardless, “was shaking the leaves off of the trees. Making a path before his mate could tread upon it. Ko’ay tells me they have claimed the caves beneath the rookery.”
“Why do you tell me this?” Neytiri croaked.
“Tarsem saw a palulukan,” Mo’at said simply. “Perhaps… perhaps it is a sign.”
“I do not know.” Mo’at peered down at Tarsem. “I do not claim to know all of Eywa’s plans. I can only interpret them the way I always have. But this is very new, ma’ite. Eywa never spoke to us this strangely before. I worry.”
Neytiri scoffed. “You worry.”
Mo’at was very quiet for a moment. “The Mangkwan colors are disconcerting. We have not dealt with the clan in many years. We only took two of them in under uturu and they fell during the Great War. Their children know nothing of it, even.” She looked at her daughter. “Kalka’s mother. And Kisha’s mother.”
Neytiri’s head shot up. “They are of Mangkwan blood?”
“They do not act as though they do not know it.”
Mo’at sighed deeply. Her fingers grazed Tarsem’s kuru. Even after the bleeding had come to end, it had taken a good bit of effort to clean the dried blood from the braid protecting Tarsem’s neural queue. Black hair hid dried blood well.
“We have not dealt with the Mangkwan in many years,” she repeated gravely. “Eywa’s warnings are not clear. But they are warnings all the same.” She met her daughter’s gaze. “Ma’ite. We will deal with the Mangkwan in the years to come.”
Neytiri did not address that. She had figured as much easily. Tarsem being painted like the Mangkwan could only really mean they would endure the Ash clan’s violence at some point in the future, ideally when the boy was a grown adult. Her mind went back to one thing—the only thing that remained entirely unclear in Tarsem’s vision. “The palulukan.”
“I do not know what it could mean—”
“During the battle,” Neytiri cut her off, “the demon, Miles Quaritch, was attacking Jake’s body. His Sky Person body.”
Mo’at was quiet. Neytiri continued.
“I did not know how to get to him in time,” she breathed. “I did not have Sa’ata. Seze was gone.” She looked down at Tarsem. “I needed a steed. A bond. And one came to me.”
Mo’at nodded slowly. “A palulukan. Yes. You were the first—”
“Sa’nok,” Neytiri interrupted again, eyes widening. “I… I told Y/N of it. I never told her the full tale but she knew I was Palulukan Makto during the final battle. She knew it. And she clung to that story, Sa’nok.” She swallowed. “What if the palulukan is a sign?”
Neytiri wasn’t sure how to put it into words. “She wanted to be the best warrior in Omaticaya history.”
Mo’at understood. But she remained silent, waiting for Neytiri to say it herself.
Neytiri took a shaky breath.
“What if the palulukan is a sign,” she whispered, “that my daughter is already on that path?”
For a time, neither woman spoke. There were no real words to say, after all. Mo’at had made it clear she was not convinced that Y/N had survived. Either the poor girl had died in the fall or she had not survived being alone in the wilderness without her parents; that was what Mo’at believed. But Neytiri’s persistence was becoming detrimental in a way that ignoring it or brushing it off would only lead to more harm. Tarsem was already traumatized and injured. His spiritual connection with Eywa was slowly being severed and he was not alone.
But the palulukan? In all honesty, Mo’at had no other explanation for its presence. It was out of place in the ashen forest—they needed the moisture of the rainforests to survive. A palulukan would not survive in Mangkwan territory and yet Tarsem had seen one.
The uniltaron, the dream hunt, allowed members of the Omaticaya clan to envision their future path. The most common paths were that of the ikran or the pali or even the syaksyuk. Neytiri had been Palulukan Makto for a time, and yet she had been presented with the path of the nantang. It meant she would grow to be family-oriented. Fiercely protective. Undyingly loyal. Capable of great violence when the ones she loved were put in harm’s way.
Mo’at had not had a member of the Omaticaya clan claim they had seen a palulukan in their uniltaron before. It simply did not happen. But Mo’at knew what it meant:
The palulukan were volatile. Their prides were not as tightly interwoven as nantang packs—loyalty was only guaranteed within family units and even then there was potential for great violence. They were among the only fauna on Pandora who played with their food. They were precise, excellent hunters, but they had a capacity for intelligent cruelty. They were beautiful and dangerous and no Na’vi with a functioning brain would dare go against them, even armed.
If the palulukan in Tarsem’s vision was meant to represent Y/N, Mo’at was deeply worried.
“The path of the palulukan is a weary one,” she whispered. “I see your mind, ma’ite.” She shut her eyes. “But I pray you are wrong. Not for your sake. For your daughter’s.”
Neytiri swallowed the lump in her throat. “If my child walks the path of the palulukan, I will stand with her.”
Mo’at opened her eyes and peered at her daughter.
“You want to,” she agreed. “But will Eywa?”
For a second, Neytiri considered the question.
“Sa’nok,” she finally decided. “I do not care what Eywa wants. Not when it comes to my children.”
Before Mo’at could say anything more, Neytiri stood and marched towards the Sully family marui, the conversation weighing her shoulders down.
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