-Origins—
Korra lied in the center of the platform. Sprawled. Exhausted. She barely avoided a crisis. She almost lost herself to memories that did not belong to her. She almost adopted a new past, a new identity. And the scariest thing was she truly believed she had assumed a different life.
Whoa
Korra repeated names to herself. Her mother. She almost forgot who her mother was. Now that she had drained herself, she couldn't believe she almost forgot that. She would not know how to continue if she had.
Come here, Korra. Come on my little baby.
Korra closed her eyes and saw Senna. She was a toddler again. Her mother was teaching her to walk, saying baby words all nicely to encourage her. Korra saw herself not even stumbling. She simply stood up and walked across the room to her mother. No trouble. Her mother was probably stunned that Korra learned to walk almost immediately.
That's my girl! My beautiful Korra!
Korra smiled. She felt the warm embrace of her mother. In the dead of winter when the temperature was well below zero, she wondered how her mother's hugs still remained such a strong source of heat.
A mother's love burns even in the darkest and coldest times, Korra. And it will always be here for you, no matter what.
Korra missed that warmth. She was reminded of it when she hugged Asami. It was not a motherly love, but it was warm.
Tomkin appeared.
"The training must continue, Korra. I am sorry that I have to give you another lecture, but just as Aang needed to learn the origin of the conflict that he faced, so too must you learn the origin of yours. The difference was that Aang's conflict originated with Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin a century before Aang's time. The conflict you face originated with the creation of the world.
Korra sat in front of Tomkin. This would be her last moments with Tomkin before she returned. What he told her in these moments would be the key to preventing the end of this world.
"There are two worlds: the physical world and the Spirit World. The Spirit World contains the remnants of the dead who leave the physical world, and the original Spirits who are responsible for the creation of the physical world and for benders."
Tomkin drew in the dirt to help her visualize the concept of the two worlds. He drew two concentric circles. He pointed to the outer circle.
"Let this outer, bigger circle represent the physical world. This inner circle would be the Spirit World. In a way, energy flows into the planet to the Spirit World, so it 'rests at the center' per say. One cannot actually get to it unless taken by a Spirit because it is more of a different dimension, but channels and limbos exist in very rare situations like the one we are currently in. In a moment I will digress, but as I said before, the Spirits have encased this inner circle, the Spirit World, into a vessel, known as CHAOS, that has escaped from this inner circle, leaving behind the Wastelands where we are, and will traverse into the real world and essentially smother it. To repeat, the Spirit World has become completely contained within this vessel. The vessel is an enormous and powerful beast called CHOAS, and it is able to cross the boundary into the physical world, bringing the Spirits with them. It will enable the process of the earth's destruction. During this process, the Spirit World will sort of leak into the physical one out of this monster. The beast releases an army of planet destructors that collect Clasma back from people and the Spirit World leaks in and overtakes the physical world. Once the physical world is completely gone and the Spirit World is all that is left, a new physical world will form around CHAOS, and the planet destructors become fossils in the ground. If you wanted to get to the Spirit World now, you would have to go within the beast, CHAOS. I know this because this whole process has been done twice before. There have been two races of dominant species before the humans even existed. And this is where I will digress."
Korra prepared herself. Her swords. Her hood. She was using weapons that had been developed by a different race of people. On a planet that may have existed before this one.
"Two races. Each on different planets that existed before Earth. Different rules. Different ways of life. But they had one thing in common in that the Spirits were responsible for their creation. You have seen the ghosts of the people that inhabited these worlds, and you've seen the worlds themselves. The young man with the hood similar to yours. His name is Shoogar, at least, that is our translation of his name. He hailed from the very first world the Spirits created. His race specialized in creating weapons. They were a slightly different species. Very athletic. Their muscles allowed them to run faster, jump higher, and they could mold raw materials into the weapons with their bare hands. Their planet consisted of several floating platforms with towns and homes on each one, all levitating over the Spirit World.
"Raiken. He hailed from the next race. The second one. The man with the black overcoat that you've seen. A race of people who were extremely sensitive to the flow of cosmic energy in the air. Giving them psychic abilities. The Spirits dictated that certain individuals of this race could hone these psychic abilities, enter the minds of others. Make any person believe that they were somebody else. It was extended to telekinesis as well. They rose great cities with ease because of their powers over objects and people. An advanced civilization, much more advanced than our world might ever be. Their telekinetic powers over objects is somewhat similar to our bending."
"Both of these worlds came to an end in the same way. After a long existence, the Spirit World concluded that each was a failed race, failed to live up to certain expectations, and ended them with CHAOS. Around the beast of a vessel, a new world formed. A new design. A new race was created. They, too, had their own abilities granted to them from the Spirit World. After a long time, both populations began to advance, and they forgot the Spirits that created them, they fell out of the order intended for them, strayed from the line, and so they were discontinued, and the Spirits created a new race. Two more times they repeated this. Over millions of years. Who even knows how many races before these had been ended. The Spirits create and deem as failures. Each time they endowed members of these races with god-like abilities, but as I said, it came to an abrupt end at the mercy of their creators.
"Like the Avatar we know of today, there were individuals in each race that existed at the very end of their race's existence. Both Shoogar and Raiken are ambassadors from this race. Ghosts that continue to try and communicate with us because their energy is still in use. During their time, they were contacted by a very powerful Spirit, one who had mandate over the other Spirits and led the process of ending a world using CHAOS."
"Daya," Korra said.
"Yes, Daya. The mother. The core of the Spirit World's connection to the physical one. The most vital piece in this puzzle. She worked through Shoogar and Raiken. They involuntarily led CHAOS into the physical world so that it could release their army, the SPORE- planet destructors."
"Solomon said SPORE."
"Solomon found the SPORE. With Graft, in the Si Wong Desert. Their remains rest there. In Graft and Solomon's expedition, they dug up what they thought was an ancient race, like the ones I spoke of. But any race that existed before was completely wiped out by CHAOS and the SPORE, and in the new world, the remains of the SPORE are buried in a very specific place, that place being the Si Wong Desert, the memorial. They found the species that destroyed all planets previous to this one. These creatures contain crystals that can draw Clasma from people and store it. That is the crystal his experiments have been using. The SPORE operation merges the Spirit World and the physical world.
"I need to tell you about the human race and the Avatar. When this world was created, the Spirits endowed some of us with their god-like abilities. First they endowed the humans with the ability to manipulate cosmic energy directly, but the Spirits concluded this would not be useful. The humans would not be able to survive using this ability. So instead they associated certain chi patterns with a connection to a Spirit that had control over the elements: fire, water, earth, and air. The essentials to surviving, apparently. It was the same bending as we know it now.
"But as one can expect, there was a transient period when the race started. A transient period in which the human race lived off instinct, adapting to their powers, adapting to others, and time was needed as we inevitably tended away from the violence and toward peace. Wars began to erupt as people did not know how to use their bending, but the world inched toward that more peaceful state. It would be some time before they learned reason, as the randomness of our existence eventually led us to discover the concept of love and respect, but this is expected, at least, by humans. This is how any race starts. There is order, but the randomness disrupts that order and leads us to something completely new, completely different, and completely better. The Spirits deemed us a failure very early in their existence, and pushed to end the human race. But the ultimate judge, Daya, refused to listen to the Spirits' pleas to end the human race so soon. She wanted to preserve it. She refused to simply end it like she had with the others.
"Daya believed in the human race, she wasn't giving up on them as quickly, but she admitted that they needed to be guided, to be assisted. Whatever it was, whatever the reason she wanted us to have or know of this bending, of this cosmic energy; however she wanted us to be helped; for whatever goal she wanted us to accomplish…she needed to help us do it herself. Daya created a system then, a system which described how Spirits and humans would be connected. You remember I told you certain patterns in people connect them to entities, Spirits, that allow them to bend certain elements. To experience a connection with the cosmic energy. Daya changed the way the energy flowed from the Spirits to the humans, she made it so that it would have to flow through her. All of it.
"She did this so that she had control over all the cosmic energy flowing from the Spirit World, and with this power, she could create a copy of herself, an incarnated form of herself in the physical world that would hone the power of the energy that flowed through her. It would take all of the concentration that Daya had, all of the energy in her supreme being to create such a person, an incarnation of herself. The person she created would be the bridge, would have control over all cosmic energy, and be able to guide the human race to her vision of prosperity. Does all this sound like something you know about, Korra?"
"The Avatar?"
"Precisely. Daya created Oni, the first Avatar. The word 'Avatar' actually means the incarnation of a body to act for someone else, in most cases, for a god, as it was then for Daya in creating Oni.
"Daya became a statue because of this. A statue that forever used all of her energy to hold together the bonds that made up Oni. To create this human, she used composite parts of past races—of Shoogar, of Raiken. That is why you can see them. You are composed of them."
"Oni had all of Daya's powers. Oni knew how to communicate with Daya, and she listened to her, and she was successful in guiding the human race from their violent ways to a more harmonious civilization. She taught them of the Spirit World. Of our great creators and the need for our eternal devotion to them. A balance was established. Oni made a promise to Daya: Oni would follow the orders of Daya and carry out her wishes for all time. Daya was pleased, but in her haste to remedy the human race, she did not account for something. She failed to realize that her incarnate form would be human, and all humans suffer from one absolute condition—they die. After a long life, Oni died. But Daya could not stop projecting her energy onto the physical world. She was using all of her energy to do it, so she had none left to make any decision, to communicate, she could only watch."
"So, all of Daya's energy remained in the physical world, disembodied, but it is energy, so it had to go somewhere. And it did. It found itself in a soul similar to Oni's, and a new human was born who possessed all the powers of Oni. Born into a normal family as a baby. Daya was surprised, scared, but as I said, she could do nothing about it.
"Time wore on, and the Four Nations developed as benders separated. The Avatar cycle gradually became a custom among the population. Daya was not sure this was going in the direction she wanted. She was confused. The new Avatars that were born, she no longer was able to communicate with them, to teach them what to do. She had no more energy to speak, the Avatars did not know how to initiate communication because each one lived amongst humans, and the humans knew only that the Avtar was a special medium. The humans always knew of the Spirit World, and they knew the Avatar was some kind of prophet, but Daya was forgotten, as was the full range of abilities possessed by the Avatar. People began to believe that the four elements were all that the Avatar could master, that the Avatar was so powerful because the Avatar possessed all four abilities, but in reality the Avatar controlled all cosmic energy. The Avatar was so much more powerful, but no one could bend energy, or knew much about it, so by consequence, neither did the human Avatar.
"Daya grew unhappy. Angry. The Avatar continued to settle affairs of man. The Avatar had forgotten Daya, had forgotten the Spirit World. Had forgotten her spectrum of abilities. Daya's anger turned to hatred for our race, she saw violent wars return, she saw unkindness, she saw people leave behind respect for their creators, leave behind their reverence for the cosmic energy around them. The race was advancing faster and farther than the races before it. The race was becoming independent, and Daya wanted to end them like she had before. She believed the Avatar would be the guide for the humans, but the Avatar had joined them in what Daya would see as the abandonment of the forces that fed them—the Spirits. But she could do nothing about it, she could not accept the fact that this race had learned to feed itself, and that we had developed something unpredictable, something which bound us together stronger than the bond which attached us to the Spirits – love for one another- and so the human race continued to evolve until one day.
"One day, a man listened. A man heard the faint cry of Daya. Because of his superior bloodbending abilities, he had more keen senses. He had tapped into the content within the cosmic flow, and what he heard was the voice of Daya, expressing her sorrow, pleading for the end. Preaching the failures of the Avatar, and this man took this as a calling. A calling for him to end what he so hated. He was not lying when he said he had heard the Spirits, Korra. He made it his mission to take your bending, and Noatak succeeded in doing so. Well, at least some fraction of it.
"When the deed was done, some of the cosmic energy that was inherent to you returned to the Spirit World, returned to Daya. You lost a piece of your composition that day, Korra, and Daya regained control over herself again. She can speak, and she came to you to fulfill a dark destiny that Shoogar and Raiken had unknowingly fulfilled as well. But you refused. You refused and you believed you could stop it. Stop her. And due to your adversity, Daya found another who would do her bidding. She found Solomon, a man who died in hatred for the humans. The energy that was returned to her was endowed to him—manipulation over the elements and cosmic energy. He is what Oni was, and he is extremely dangerous. Daya acts through him, and he will bring CHAOS into the physical world and destroy it."