The harsh sunlight on the north pole wakes me from my slumber, waking later than usual doesn't hinder me much, as I have spare food in spades. What hinders me is my thoughts, they linger about the end of my training last night, the results, and what it took to get there.
I very clearly felt something changing, and I spent a great deal of time examining and experimenting with the new chi pathways but didn't manage to find anything abnormal besides the unusual amount of chi that could pass through. After spending longer than usual eating breakfast, I eventually force my body up to do some training.
Since my attempt at bloodbending, I've been feeling a bit of mental fatigue, perhaps due to the tremendous amount of chi I forced through the new pathways in my head, so I decided to focus purely on physical training for a while. If I do that, then maybe I can also actually get someplace, because despite moving for a lot of hours each day, I'll be the first to admit I've been getting distracted many times throughout, hunting or just investigating anything I found interesting. For now, I create some weights from ice and begin moving south.
---
It has been a couple of days since I began seriously moving, and the only bending training I've done has been moving my giant freezer, at this point, I barely need to move my arms to make it follow along. I've also been crashing it against icebergs and any other structure I've found to make noise, and have someone find me first. So far it seems I've only succeeded in scaring the local wildlife, but progress is progress or so I thought until I reached a giant river connecting to what looks to be the ocean. On the other side, the only thing I can make out is a chain of big snow-covered mountains.
I begin setting up camp while contemplating the decision I'll have to make tomorrow. I have two main options available to me, one is to turn in another direction to look for settlements, and the other is to try and cross the river and mountains. My adventurous spirit gives me the confidence to explore the unknown head-on, but my rational side is screaming about how stupid that is.
I try to distract the mental battle ongoing inside my head by investigating the river, and soon notice some substantial differences between this one and the one beside me when I first woke up. The amount of fish is way smaller, while also having plenty of different kinds of fish and other wildlife. Now that I think about it, the first river was strange in plenty of ways, especially in the amount of available food, yet the weird absents of other wildlife.
Using my different sensing abilities, I discover an icy cave below the water, which houses a flook of abnormal seals with a turtle shells. I end up observing them for almost an hour before I realize that I am essentially looking through a wall of solid ice. Having been using them non-stop for weeks seem to have had the effect of greatly enhancing what I can sense, beforehand I could merely feel that something was somewhere with my blood sense, now, however, I can feel a general outline of the creatures. Maybe this enhancement has something to do with the new pathways in my head. I think more of as a question than a conclusion.
Satisfied with my distraction, I begin planning to hunt one, I haven't yet tried turtle soup... Seal soup? Then again I've not exactly got a lot to mix it with, so I will most likely still be stuck with bland food. I begin to slowly tunnel down into the ground while keeping my senses focused on the turtle seals, it's impossible to borrow into the cold and hard earth without making noise, luckily the seals, while curious don't seem to like moving much, and go back to relaxing after checking their immediate parameter. In times like this, I wish I could jump into the water and swim in, which I could, but I don't want to get wet, even if I can dry the clothes afterward. It only took one time trying to jump into the ice-cold water, while waterbending, to realize the sheer amount of control necessary to swim without getting drenched. After some training, I managed to do it while staying absolutely still, but I'm still nowhere close to doing it while moving. It makes sense why someone like Katara who is also supposed to be a very talented waterbender, struggled to catch a fish without a proper teacher. Not that I intend to get any actual master either, maybe I'll spy on some lessons, but I doubt someone who isn't the avatar can just get a master-bending teacher with no strings attached.
Finally, my tunnel reaches the area just before the small cavern with the turtle seal within, I take a moment to check myself, mostly my chi reserves, before smashing the wall open, and quickly wrap ice around one of the turtle seals. I've learned that when hunting non-predators, it's best to just focus on a single one as the rest will just run away, and it isn't like I can eat more than one anyway. For how lazy they appeared, they were surprisingly quick when running off, I definitely would have missed were it not a surprise attack, something I will have to work on I suppose. I quietly end the turtle seal, before using ice to carry it up above ground and begin to prepare for dinner.
While eating my surprisingly not-that-bad soup, my mind drifts to my choice again. I honestly really want to check out the mountains, I've already grown somewhat used to the harsh conditions, and I'm not even that sore anymore when I wake up, so finding settlements aren't that important currently. I also know, however, that while my chi reserves seem to be massive, I'm neither a master bender nor the biggest baddie around, at least not yet, so I should currently be acting carefully. And so I come to a decision, postpone it! Or more accurately train until I feel like I'm ready to face the mountains, after all, I've found a new food source, which isn't as great as my first one, but plenty to sustain me. Satisfied with the decision I begin preparing to head to bed, the cavern used by the turtle seals will become my new temporary home while I train.
---
The next couple of weeks quickly become a blur as I wake up and eat a big breakfast, followed by either mild or harsh physical training depending on the day and my mood. Afterward, I began focusing on the finer aspects of controlling my waterbending, the first thing I took notice of is that my water-sensing abilities began rapidly improving.
When it was time for a new full moon, I trained my bloodbending. At first, I didn't find any success, until I became frustrated and began to focus inwards. For an entire night, I tunnel-visioned on sensing the blood in my own body, how fast it flowed, and how it interacted with my organs and other body parts, and when the sun began to rise I noticed something. My chi pathways were very similar to my veins, too similar, so even as the day started and I felt power leave me, I continued to observe my veins and chi pathways. Then I recalled one of the villains from the avatar sequels, Amon or something, who used bloodbending to block chi pathways and imitate energy bending.
After my discovery, my head began hurting from using bloodbending during the daytime, and I had to stop and go to sleep but not before I made a mental note to further investigate this discovery in the future.
In terms of my water-bending training, I began sculpting since you needed a surprising amount of control to make anything that looked even remotely lifelike. Thousands of snowmen and animals of the ice decorated the plains before I realized that the animals began avoiding this place, and I had to travel for over an hour to see any activity. Afterward, I destroyed almost all of them besides an ice sculpture of a polar bear dog I was peculiarly proud of, I took it to the underground cavern to admire it but didn't realize just how much work it would be to get that thing underground. I ended up just bending it through the river to the cavern, and accepting that I would be wet for a bit. All things considered, things were looking bright.