The bravado of the moment was short-lived. As the dust from Tempest's landing settled, the fire in Jake's eyes suddenly flickered and died, replaced by a haunting urgency. He ignored the gasps of the crowd and sprinted toward Mo'at, the Tsahìk, who stood at the base of the glowing tree.
"Mo'at! Please!" Jake's voice was ragged, stripped of its legendary authority. He gestured frantically toward the sky. "Grace is dying. She's been shot. You have to help her."
Mo'at looked at the Toruk Makto, her eyes searching his face for the truth. She saw the desperation of a man pleading for a mentor's life. She nodded slowly, her voice a low, melodic calm. "Bring her to the Mother. We will see if Eywa hears her song."
Arrival of the Samson:
Jake didn't waste a second. He reached for the radio unit strapped to his neck, his fingers fumbling with the switch. "Trudy! Do you copy? We're at the Tree of Souls. Bring her in! Now!"
"Copy that, Jake. Bringing her down hot," Trudy's voice crackled through the speaker, tight with tension.
From beyond the cliffside, the rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum of twin rotors echoed through the valley. A battered SA-2 Samson, sporting rogue paint and scarred by anti-aircraft fire, flared its engines as it dived into the amphitheater. The Na'vi scrambled back, shielding their eyes from the downwash as Trudy Chacon expertly hovered the metal bird just feet above the luminescent moss.
The side door slid open. Mark and Jake sprinted forward to meet the chopper's edge. Together, they reached inside and carefully lifted the limp, human form of Grace Augustine.
The Final Journey:
As they began the short, heavy walk toward the center of the ritual circle, Grace's eyes fluttered open. She was pale—deathly so. A jagged, dark stain bloomed across her midsection, the fabric of her flight suit melted where a high-velocity RDA round had punched through during the chaotic escape from Hell's Gate.
She looked up, her vision blurring, but she recognized the man on her left. She saw the 34 stars glowing softly on Mark's skin, a stark contrast to the dark forest.
"Mark..." she wheezed, her voice a dry rasp. She coughed, a speck of blood catching on her lip. "I'm glad... I'm so glad you're alive. I thought the sky had taken you too."
Mark gripped her shoulder, his expression a mask of pained iron. "I'm still here, Grace. We both are. Just keep breathing."
"I knew you were... something special," she whispered, a faint ghost of a smile touching her face before she drifted back into a pained semi-consciousness.
"She's been poisoned," Jake wheezed to Mo'at as they reached the moss, his hands shaking as they laid her down. "The rounds... they're coated in something. She's fading."
The Last Great Effort:
The Omatikaya surged forward, the presence of the Toruk Makto giving them the strength to move past their initial shock. Mo'at knelt beside Grace and looked up at the shimmering, violet canopy of the Tree of Souls, her expression grim.
"The Great Mother must decide," Mo'at declared. "We must attempt the soul-transfer. We will try to pass her spirit from the weak body of the Sky-Person to the strong body of her Avatar. But she is weak. Her spirit is like a guttering flame in a great wind."
Mark stood back as the Tsahìk began the preparations, his skin pulsing a low, helpless amber. He felt a cold knot tighten in his chest. As he looked at the dying woman and the desperate man beside her, his mind drifted into a dark, internal monologue.
I knew this was coming, he thought, his jaw tightening. I knew the script. I knew the scene. I have the technology of the Sanhìsip, a ship that can knit its own flesh back together, and 34 stars that make me a god in the eyes of these people... and yet, I am a spectator.
He looked at his hands, the bioluminescence flickering with his rising frustration. I thought I could rewrite it. I thought by saving the Sanhìsip, by bringing the Tanhì a Txampay here, I could tip the scales enough to save her too. But Eywa doesn't care about my foreknowledge. Some threads are woven too tightly into the fabric of this world to be pulled loose. The Great Mother demands her toll, and no matter how much I change the journey, the destination remains the same.
He realized with a pang of bitter clarity that his ship was a different branch of the Mother's design—a product of Sanhìsip evolution that spoke a different dialect of the same language. It could not bridge with the Tree of Souls; the sacred neural network of the Omatikaya's most holy site was a closed system, a direct line to Eywa that no technology—biological or otherwise—could tap into.
I am a master of the storm, Mark thought grimly, but I am still just a man standing in the rain.
Ritual and Passing:
The valley transformed into a theater of ancient ritual. Thousands of Na'vi gathered in concentric circles, their voices rising in a rhythmic, low-frequency chant that seemed to make the very air vibrate.
The glowing purple tendrils of the Tree reached down, weaving into Grace's human hair and the Kuru of her Avatar body. The bioluminescence of the valley pulsed in time with the chanting, a deep, organic heartbeat that resonated through the soles of Mark's feet.
Grace opened her eyes one last time, looking up at the shimmering canopy of the Tree. She didn't look at the machines or the ship; she looked into the heart of the forest.
"I'm with her, Jake," she whispered, her voice barely a breath. "It's all real. Everything we thought... it's all real."
The transfer was too late. Grace's human body had reached its limit before the spirit could fully anchor in the Avatar. The light in her eyes dimmed, and her head fell back into the moss. The Tree of Souls pulsed a deep, mournful violet, and for a moment, the entire forest seemed to exhale—a soft, rushing wind that carried the scent of crushed flowers.
The ritual stopped. The chanting faded into a heavy, suffocating silence. Trudy stood by the open door of her Samson, her head bowed, while Norm and Max watched from the ship's monitors in devastated silence.
Grace Augustine was gone. Jake knelt over her, his shoulders shaking with a silent, devastating grief. When he finally stood up, he looked at Mark, his eyes hardening into a cold, unbreakable resolve.
"They'll pay for this," Jake said, his voice a low promise that vibrated through the ground. "Every last one of them."
Mark nodded, his 34 stars hardening into a sharp, lethal crimson. The mourning was over; the gathering of the storm had begun.