By the fire pit, where food had been cooking not long ago, tightly packed seaweed was smoldering without damaging the great tree’s trunk.
The Waterbender Hue manipulated the liquid inside the plants, pulling leaves from the swamp by their roots, compressing them, and tossing them into the flames.
I silently watched his mastery while the guru spoke about chakras.
“Those who never think about opening their chakras block themselves from a vibrant, beautiful world,” he said.
“I would gladly teach the entire world right here on this tree.
Maybe then there would be fewer wars and deaths.
Want some?” He offered me a cooked bug resembling a large fly.
I accepted without hesitation and bit into the succulent flesh, washing it down with banana-onion soup.
Hue ate too, despite his philosophy of unity.
He simply explained it as natural necessity: eating to survive.
“Most people couldn’t survive on a diet of bugs.
More soup?” He ladled some extra into my bowl, and I watched him happily slurp my broth.
Sitting nearby, Afka visibly demonstrated her gagging reflexes, covering her eyes with her paws.
A spirit, yet so picky.
“Ordinary people’s chakras are usually heavily clogged,” Hue continued.
“energy flows through them slowly and doesn’t allow the full current to pass.
So-called talent stems from a person’s character and how many chakras they’ve opened.
I remember those days clearly.
With closed channels, I learned slowly.
I couldn’t protect anyone.
water bending wouldn’t obey at all.” He demonstratively lifted several water plants.
“Think of someone who isn’t subject to fear.
Do you know anyone like that?
And if so, tell me, are they strong?”
My brows furrowed.
I hardly knew any benders besides the ones who lived with me.
Tassad seemed to show very little fear, and compared to other benders, he was decent.
Not that he trained much, but he was genuinely capable.
And then there was Azula, if I recalled the canon correctly.
Now there was someone untouched by fear, guilt, or shame.
Incredibly talented.
She probably had at least three chakras open.
“I’m starting to understand.”
“Advanced abilities are much easier to attain when your body is clean,” Hue said.
“But the real problem is clearing the blockages, right?
Close your eyes.
Sit up straight.
Remember what you’re afraid of?”
His kind voice allowed me to isolate myself from the threatening environment.
Without worrying about a strike from behind, it didn’t take long to find the answers inside myself.
Obviously, failure and its consequences were my greatest fear.
How many times had gas leaks happened?
Knives falling near my feet?
Strange creatures attacking with the intent to tear me apart, kill me, rob me, or eat me?
“And what did you do to fight the fear?”
My brows moved on their own, arching from serious thought.
Obviously, I tried to survive.
First by limiting contact with my environment.
Then by fighting back.
Not always.
I ran from the moths first that wasn’t fear, that was common sense.
“You’re starting to separate survival from fear,” Hue observed.
“Running away isn’t always cowardice.
The outcome of your character depends on your actions.
You went after your friend despite the fear.
“But there are still many things I wouldn’t do because of fear.”
“Fear makes you survive.
Can’t you set aside your animal nature and rely solely on your reason?”
“But…
I’m limited outside the desert.
I have little material to work with.
The risk of death increases exponentially.”
“Hm…
but you found loose material even here.
You did everything to survive.”
At that moment, something started telling me I’d reached an understanding.
Was I as limited as I’d thought?
The fear of being far from the desert had been holding me back.
The earth was everywhere.
Even if it was poor quality, like liquid peat, it could always be adapted.
Drain the earth to make it dry.
Crush stones if I was in the mountains.
Sand was everywhere.
There was always a way to survive.
And if it really came down to it, simple rock would do.
All doors were open to me.
The key was not to lock them myself.
Thump.
My heart grew calm.
I felt something, as if a stone had fallen from my very being.
Opening my eyes at last, I looked at the world without the old terror.
I was here and needed to survive.
There was no other choice.
“The Earth Chakra is open,” Hue said casually.
“I’d make a pretty good teacher.”
Thump.
“Af!” At that moment, Afka placed parchment and a pen in front of me.
Greedy fox.
She wanted to know all my thoughts, even the methods for opening chakras.
I might very well become the first author to pass on this knowledge without distortion or vague imagery.
As I slowly formed my thoughts, preparing the first pages of my magnum opus, Hue chuckled.
“You increased your own talent, but I don’t know how to help with the second chakra.
I’ve never blamed myself for anything, so it opened on its own.”
I shot him a skeptical look, somewhat harshly assessing this show-off.
He claimed skipping chakras was forbidden.
You had to follow strict order.
Guilt governed the Water Chakra.
Opening it would release even more potential.
It didn’t matter if you were a Firebender or Waterbender.
Finding harmony within yourself was possible for anyone.
Actually using the elements themselves was only for the Avatar.
Or for freely parodying them, like me.
The next chakra would likely improve the results of my water-style copying.
Several days passed with Guru Hue, writing my thoughts and walking through the dense thickets.
I tested how my thinking had changed when cold reason, not fear, drove my decisions.
It started to seem that this was why Anubis had sent me here.
I could overcome bad luck not just with the system, but by completely mastering my own destiny.
Eventually, I had to continue my journey.
Still, the advanced waterbender managed to teach me one crucial skill.
“I control seaweed to cover myself with heavy armor.
Usually I look like a monster, which scares away strangers.” Hue, seeing me off, submerged himself in the water.
When he emerged, he was wrapped in layers of plants.
This incredible bender controlled every drop of moisture inside them, turning them into truly fearsome weapons.
“Terrifying,” I said calmly.
Power in mass and density.
Earthbenders understood that better than anyone.
I could replicate the same trick with enough practice.
In that form, he escorted me to the swamp’s edge, scaring off anything that might attack.
He was something of a local apex predator, commanding respect from spirits.
My bad luck was suppressed by sheer authority.
“All you need now is proper guidance from a bender of your own element to use your newfound potential,” Hue said.
He placed a vine on my shoulder as I stood at the swamp’s edge, near a massive stone opening that led out of the canyon.
“And if you open the second chakra, you can come back to me.
I can guide you on the rest.”
“I’ll probably be far away by then.
But I understand the general principle.” I shook his extended, plant-covered limb.
I watched as Afka licked the monster’s seaweed head she’d been riding on, then jumped down by my feet.
Waving, I moved through the rocky canyon.
A scooter formed beneath my feet, carrying me into the distance.
I stopped in the middle of a rocky area.
Wherever I looked, massive, obstructive mountains rose.
Grass was becoming sparse again, appearing in small islands of life.
Rivers appeared occasionally, but they were hard to reach due to huge elevation changes.
We were only on the road to Omashu, and it was already clear why the canon city was so hard to capture.
“Choose:”
1: Train in Earthbender style (Power techniques receive the strongest boost).
2: Train in Air Nomad style (Speed techniques receive the strongest boost).
3: Train in Waterbender style (Balanced techniques receive the strongest boost).
4: Learn to transform matter (You’ll learn to adapt the battlefield to your needs).
Deciding to take a short break, I stopped on a mountain plateau and firmly established my position.
I had no problem with materials for battles.
Stone was everywhere.
But to practice the same trick Hue used, it would be easier to start with sand.
For that, I needed to learn to completely change matter to suit my desires.
This trick was much harder than simple sand compression.
Stone was connected much more densely.
Earthbenders exerted their greatest effort when tearing chunks out of it.
So first I made the earth tremble.
My feet created weak vibrations.
Using magic, I managed to loosen the rock.
Then I plunged my hands in and reversed the compression process I’d trained since childhood.
Fine particles began rising from the ground.
The rock started to subside.
Eventually, I got about a third of a gourd’s worth of sand.
It wasn’t much, but I did it on the first try, perhaps thanks to my enhanced talent.
And of course, Anubis made me suffer.
No sooner had I created a few sand craters than he forced me to learn to compress sand back into stone.
Ten thousand repetitions of the same actions.
At this rate, I’d learn to turn coal into diamonds.
“Af…” Meanwhile, Afka squinted into the distance.
She’d spotted black smoke rising into the sky.