By contrast, humanity's energybending demanded grueling practice. It lacked the sheer destructive force and simplicity of elemental bending and focused entirely on strengthening the bender themselves.
Granted, the resulting fighter was terrifying in their own right.
Fast, resilient, capable of striking directly at an enemy's life energy and neutralizing a bender. A true master of energybending could even "seal" an elemental bender's powers simply by suppressing the enemy's inner power — or even STEAL their element by reshaping their own life energy to match it.
The catch was that a copied element still had to be mastered. The learning process was no different from receiving the gift normally. In essence, it was the same restructuring of one's energy, except initiated and guided by the granting entity rather than the mage themselves. And mastering energybending to even an average level required decades.
In a world where humanity struggled constantly against a hostile environment, dedicating that much time simply wasn't practical.
Back when elemental bending could only be obtained by someone who already possessed at least the basics of energybending, there had been no alternative. But once the first natural-born elemental benders appeared, fewer and fewer people were willing to learn or teach the old ways until they vanished entirely.
Now it was impossible to find a true master of energybending. At best, some clan or martial school might preserve one or two techniques drawn from the most primitive fundamentals of the art.
From humanity's original bending, the spirit moved on to the Avatar.
The first Avatar.
And what I learned genuinely shocked me.
Tong spoke of the master of the four elements with a measure of respect, but there was no reverence in his tone whatsoever. Which was hardly surprising. More than anything else, this Wan — who, incidentally, was apparently a fellow countryman of mine — resembled some petty street thug who'd stumbled into overwhelming power and immediately started imposing his own order on the world with a kind word and a fireball.
One more ti-i-iny detail: the owl referred to the era before the Avatar's appearance as the "Golden Age," while everything afterward was called the "Age of the Avatar."
Rather telling, wasn't it?
But back to Wan himself and how he ended up becoming… that.
Wan had originally been nothing more than a petty thief. Not a particularly successful one either, considering how often he got caught and beaten for it. Naturally, that arrangement failed to satisfy the young and arrogant criminal, so he signed up with a group of spirit hunters. In those days, every hunter underwent an initiation with a Lion Turtle to receive the power of fire.
The future Avatar passed the initiation and gained control over the element, but he had absolutely no intention of risking his neck in the Spirit Wilds fighting to carve out a patch of land for his people and earning the right to wield bending. Instead, the charming young fellow gathered a gang of accomplices and attacked the palace of the city's rulers.
The outcome was entirely predictable.
The attack was repelled, the failed revolutionary was captured, put on trial, and sentenced to death. Naturally.
But this was where the rulers of the city made a mistake.
The execution consisted of throwing him into the Spirit Wilds after first stripping him of his bending. Except… had I already mentioned that the Lion Turtles were inexplicably kind toward humans? Wan managed to convince the "living aircraft carrier" not to take his bending away, meaning he entered the forest with considerably more than his bare ass to defend him against hungry spirits, unlike what the government had intended… Honestly, they should've just hanged him and been done with it.
After that, the firebender Wan started by knocking around a few malicious spirits, then gradually worked his way into the good graces of the friendly ones by protecting them from hunters. Yes, those very same people who were risking their lives to claim new land for humanity.
In short, he spent his time roasting his fellow humans — probably out of resentment for being exiled, though history tactfully avoids saying so outright.
Little by little, the charismatic thief managed to become "one of the good ones" to a remarkably large number of spirits. Hell, even a dragon took him on as a student and showed him what Fire could truly do.
Having completed his training — and now roasting his fellow humans even more effectively — the future Avatar decided to wander the world showing off his heroic greatness. Which eventually led him straight to Raava and Vaatu, the spirits of Order and Chaos, who had been fighting each other for nearly twenty thousand years.
And our brilliant hero couldn't think of anything better than trying to "break up" the two spirits fighting each other while simultaneously showing off how strong he was.
And he succeeded.
Vaatu, being a sneaky little dark bastard (he reminded me of someone), promptly played the role of the poor innocent victim who had supposedly been bullied by that horrible evil spirit for the past ten thousand years. Wan, because apparently he just had to stick his nose into everything, helped Vaatu break free and escape.
Raava, the Spirit of Harmony and Order, was understandably stunned by this turn of events and asked whether our fearless idiot had any idea what he'd just done or who exactly he had just unleashed upon the world.
The fearless idiot did not.
So Raava enlightened him.
Immediately horrified and repentant, Wan offered to help capture and punish the fugitive, but for some inexplicable reason — ye-e-e-ah, "inexplicable" — Raava told the "benefactor" to get lost. Honestly, how she didn't kill him on the spot is beyond me.
Fools truly are lucky.
(End of Chapter)
P@treon: /SadRaven
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