Chapter 2&3 take place two years after the introduction ends.


"Again," the Emperor demanded, bending down into a fighting stance, his blue eyes sharp and icy with focus, staring her down as if she were nothing but an enemy. She, too, leaned into her fighting stance, and glared back with everything she had. The way you approach an enemy is always more important than what you plan on doing to them, her father would say. Don't let them see any weakness. And then strike for the kill.

So she did. She always did what her father told her.

In one swift motion, she pulled two jets of water from the clay jars lining the room and, with complicated twist of her arms, sent them shooting towards her father. One was supposed to pull his legs out from underneath; the other aimed for the center of his head. However, the Emperor easily bent them around his body and sent them hurtling back towards Katara at the opposite end of the room, who turned her body to the side, narrowly avoid the streams. She manipulated them into ice daggers in her hands and charged her father, surfing on ice walls as she approached so that she might skirt around him to his back and catch him off guard. But he knew this was coming and with a simple motion melted the wall so that she went tumbling forward and hit the wall. The daggers trickled to the floor and she pushed herself to her feet, stumbling a bit with vertigo.

"Do it now," he hissed, his dark face contorted with disgust. She hid a wince at a jolt of pain in her ribcage when she moved her arms up and out in front of her. She knew what he wanted her to do. It would be so easy to just reach out and inside him, to feel the throbbing energy and take control of it, as she had done so many times before. But it was different practicing on rats and wild dogs. She didn't like it, but they were just animals, and she never tried hard enough to cause them any real pain, just momentary panic. But with real people…it was an entirely different sensation. She had only done it a few times, and never to her father, but to her other instructors and only long enough to stop whatever attack they were attempting. But her father wanted her to incapacitate him. Were she any other person in the Nation, probably the world, she would be executed on the spot for even trying to do such a thing.

And the way he was glaring at her and panting, the air in front of his face condensing into icy droplets of breath, waiting for her to make a move, just made her freeze up. She couldn't do it. She wouldn't.

He seemed to see this resolve in her, and his face contorted with rage. "You're weak!" he shouted, and with a flurry of arms and hands, Katara was thrown down and forward into a kneeling position, her body moving of its own accord. Her bones and muscles screamed in protest, but she was powerless. She had been bloodbended before: Her instructors had done it so that she might understand what she was inflicting on others, probably to give her a taste of the power she would feel. But it had the opposite effect on her: She became terrified of the very ability that was supposed to make her feel unstoppable.

She bit back a cry of pain as her face smacked into the hard icy floor. She felt the impact split up through her skull and down her spine. Her knees had been crushed to the ground and she could feel the raking, bloody scratches that had bloomed there. From the corner of her eye she saw her father step closer, his bare feet leaving shallow indents in the ice behind him. And then he bent down so that she could see the side of his face, the rage gone, replaced with a biting disapproval.

"This is what will happen to you should you fail in battle. Not only will you fail your country and be forced to bow down to one who is not worthy, but your enemy will probably kill you." He slapped the cold ground and Katara felt the muscles of her back contract, pushing her ribs in on her legs which were trapped underneath her body, and the rib that was most likely broken sent a shockwave of pain through her stomach. "Feel what it's like to be powerless? Helpless? Let this be a lesson. Learn from it, daughter. Heir to the Water Empire throne should not know what it feels like to be powerless." As he stood he released his hold on her, and she fell to her side in a crumpled heap of bones and limbs. Her blood seemed to crawl in her veins as if too tired to keep flowing. She watched as he left the practice room and the two advisors who had been watching them spar followed his retreating figure. One of them threw a robe over his exposed torso and the other closed the door behind them without a glance at the fallen Water Empire Princess.