CH 10 | Azula's Secret [Part 1]
SIX YEARS PRIOR
"Oh, for fuck's sake" Azula muttered while smacking the side of her Trimble. The GPS apparatus she'd bought specifically because it was meant to withstand the temperatures of the south pole had frozen. Glancing around her environment, she was momentarily at a loss for direction. There were no stand-out landmarks amidst the seemingly endless expanse of frigid ocean punctuated by bergs and looming ice shelfs.
After months of frantic research, she had departed Caldera City in order to take the blue lightning.
It was purely theoretical, of course. No one had ever been able to produce a sustained source of blue fire. Azula however, had come across a publication from a climatologist who accompanied some of the older water tribe raids about 50 years ago. He took recordings of the air currents as they occupied the bay areas of the south and noted a very peculiar vortex of warm and cold air that remained above a particular ice shelf.
The words he'd used were, "The vortex is the only stationary source of lightning ever discovered. Core samples from the shelf corroborate that sustained air currents regularly produce discharges in excess of 40,000 F and have grounded themselves on the uppermost ice levels for as many as 50 years (Fangmeyer 2015:351).
At only 14, Azula was already a firebending master, an educated diplomat, and a princess-debutante of the world's highest ruling caste. But one of the gifts she valued most concerned her photographic memory. It is what allowed her to recall a series on experimental bending she'd read years prior to the climate report, which described the methods of "lightning retention".
Firebenders using normal lightning (they type her father and uncle could summon) reflected a short-lived process where the bender separated the energies of yin and yang, redirecting the force of their reunion in the form of a lightning strike. The theory of lightning retention however, involved absorbing the separation of the energies into one's own sea of chi and maintaining its separation throughout the body' chakra paths indefinitely.
This of course, could only be accomplished with excessively charged and particularly hot lightning. Moreover, once one absorbed the lightning, maintaining its separation within the body would require constant awareness lest the energies reunite and turn the host into an unlucky, fleshy bomb. The reward that appealed to Azula however, was that (theoretically) the successful lightning owner would be able to summon a flame so hot and powerful that it glowed blue in its intensity. Then, she'd be safe from Father.
Azula chucked the Trimble angrily, watching it sink into the inky black depths of the sea. She closed her eyes and breathed deep, touching her Inner Fire. She probed its edges and urged it to lean towards the static air currents churning through the channels above her head.
As her uncle Iroh had once taught her that the separation of the elements is an illusion—examples could be found everywhere where bending disciplines overlapped. The manipulation of earth required a certain amount of cooperation with water in order to bend and shape it to ones will. An earthbender who understood fire could bend lava.
Manipulating water between its liquid, solid, and gaseous states required the innate ability to heat and cool like a Firebender. A waterbender could use earth to make mud.
Air was perhaps the most wild and pure of the four, but even that was still intrinsically linked with humidity and thereby, water—this is why both air and water benders could manipulate clouds.
As for fire, Azula now understood that it was the air currents that produced the raw source of a lightning's "yin" and "yang" energy. Where the hot and cold air collided, its opposing personalities crashed with untamed friction. Dominating air was the true key to possessing the lightning.
Like Iroh had once said: a true bending master knows to study and learn the strengths of the other elements. She'd taken this to heart, but with a misinterpretation that would someday prove to be her undoing: A true bending master knows to study and learn the weaknesses of the other elements so that they may be made to serve Fire.
She let her body lead the way to the point where the currents met high in the air. It was not difficult. The static friction generated in the buffering air was palpable once she had climbed the high ice shelf. She sighed with satisfaction before sinking down to center herself in meditation. First, clear the mind.
She recalled her earliest experiences with meditation before practicing with her father. She couldn't have been older than five, Zuko 7, and seated in the dimly lit meditation room within the center of their palace wing.
Clear your mind and make it absent. If you have thoughts that come, you are to crush them. Force them out until you've achieved a disciplined presence. Was the way her father had instructed.
Then he gazed, impassively, waiting for which child would fidget first. Azula scrunched her nose to stave off a sneeze and was rewarded with a sharp, open-handed blow to the side of her face. Her lip trembled at the shock, but she already knew better than to shed tears in front of Father. She felt Zuko tense by her side, but even he wouldn't dare to break pose.
Hear my voice when I say to you Azula. Ozai fixed her to his emotionless eyes,
No child of mine will fail and live to carry my name. When I tell you to clear your mind, you will not fail. "Yes, father" she responded with militaristic shame. That she only received his open hand was a mercy she didn't deserve.
Azula had learned quickly that the true key to progress was to always ensure she was a little bit stronger, faster, and smarter than her brother. Father rewarded the winner of training and punished the failure. And so, she decided she would never fail again.
Azula shuddered angrily. "Clear. Your. Mind." She said angrily out loud, and then sank back down into position. This time she felt herself present. She focused on her breathing, acknowledged the metronome of her calm heartbeat. Then she expanded her consciousness to the air and probed to sense the space where the currents collided. There it is.
When she opened her eyes, she was surprised to see that a deeper darkness had taken the skies. While the South Pole was currently in the season of night, there were segments when the sun appeared as though it just might crest the horizon, only to sink back into its winter abyss. Now was the time of the Deepest Dark. Above the rumbling clouds and the deliciously churning currents were a sight of pure wonder.
Azula stood, momentarily entranced at the indescribable light show peeking through pockets of the clouds now beginning to churn. Banded auroras of every color she had ever seen, (and some she had never seen) were so prominent against the black sky that they seemed to burn there as they danced. Little streams of fire in every color, she thought to herself with amazement. She wasn't sure exactly why, but it gave her hope.
She took a deep breath, willing the fear from her trembling limbs. Assuming the pose, she worked to draw all her bending power straight down into her center, streaming brilliantly out through the top of her head. The child buried deep, deep within her psyche wished that her extending chi looked like a rainbow-banded aurora penetrating the churning energies above her.
She felt it—the space where she was to separate the yin and yang and reached into it with decisive force. She had bent lightning on a handful of occasions before, but never had she felt such power. It was heavy, like a water-logged sponge, and she knew the weight would be the current that would enter her and fill her with the blue fire.
She felt it approaching and for the smallest of moments thought of that day on the meditation mat—the strike of her Father's hand, the deep shame she felt when his eyes fixed upon her. What if I do it wrong? What if I fail?
She leaped out of the way and the brilliantly blue lightning exploded into the space she had been standing milliseconds before and she heard its electric power shudder through the entire shelf. Even after dissipating, she felt the shelf continuing to tremble and before she could think, she was plunging into the icy sea below.
She considered letting herself sink. In this moment, the thought of returning to Caldera without the blue fire was a fate worse than death. All she had to do was draw in a breath…and then she saw it. Her eyes startled as brilliant blue light erupted from above the water. I did it! She realized. The blinding blue light was non-corporeal under the waves, but she swam up to meet it, her heart pounding. When she surfaced, gasping and bedraggled, she found that the light was breaking through an enormous ice-bound capsule that had been freed alongside the remains of the ice shelf. She climbed onto the floating berg in front of the capsule, hands and knees knocking, her breath trembling in confusion.
And then a little boy tumbled down into the snow.