Avatar: Mage of All Elements

As it turned out, sneaking into the Fire Nation Islands was a lot easier than I thought. The thing is, I had made several plans at first, trying to work out the details.

I had several options, such as stealing a Fire Nation ship, recruiting a crew and sneaking in quietly, or fighting my way in. This plan had a lot of risk and small details that could go wrong at the worst possible moment.

It would also be possible to go at your own pace, using only magic. It's hard, but it's possible. The main thing is to know the direction.

Or go as a refugee. This is the longest way, but also the safest.

But when I was confronted with reality, all my ideas collapsed like a house of cards. The thing is that after consulting with the warriors, the idea was presented, and why not hire a team of some merchant whose route passes through the Land of Fire.

In general, this option and accepted as a working one. And about all the others, which I simply did not have time to tell, I modestly kept silent. And since I had them all in writing, I gave them to the girls, perhaps they will be more useful.

Finding a merchant to take me was not a problem. The most important thing was how to get into the country. There were many ideas, but I chose the working class. This class lies between the elite and the poor. In this position I would attract the least attention because it was the most common.

I hired myself out to the merchant as a sailor and fed him a sob story I had hastily made up. And now I'm on my way to the Land of Fire. For free.

We sailed for a month and a half, and many things happened to us. Once we got into a heavy storm, and since I was inexperienced in such things, I was swept away. I had to return quickly and without being noticed. Then one night, the moon disappeared and water magic was completely blocked. It scared me, but soon everything was back to normal.

I also saw a lot of different fish that I did not even know existed until I met them. We were even attacked by a sea monster, and even though there were guards on board, to be honest, they couldn't do anything, so I had to help again in secret, this time using blood magic.

It took a lot of my strength, so after that I lay helpless for twenty-four hours, healing myself. The crew thought I was afraid, but I didn't try to dissuade them, it was easier for me.

We were even attacked by pirates, but we fought them off safely and suffered almost no casualties. And most of the time, I was using water magic to help the ship move faster. All in all, this voyage was a little less eventful than the rest of my life, and if the Avatar has the same thing going on, I sympathize.

***

I think I was a bit hasty when I said that gathering information wasn't easy and that it might take a while. That turned out to be fundamentally wrong. At least for me. It was enough to know at least the approximate direction, and by visiting a few beer houses in the evening, you could find out exactly in which village the factory is located. And when you get to the village where the factory is, there is so much information that you don't know where to start.

After buying several dozen large sheets of paper and ordinary notebooks, I began to go to different villages where there were large factories and write down useful information. I didn't go around the whole country, but I covered most of it. If I hadn't encrypted myself, I would have had all the information on all the factories in a fairly short period of time. But in this business, secrecy and security are paramount.

After thinking about it for a while, I decided that there was no need to wait until the last minute to undermine production. But to do it simultaneously, efficiently and quickly, I need people. And where could I find people here who would agree to do that? I wasn't even sure if the prisoners currently in jail would agree. If you don't, there's a greater chance of getting caught and failing your mission. All in all, a dilemma.

After wandering around for a few more weeks, I heard about a special prison that held the color of the Fire Nation underworld. There might be people there who would want to help me.

I didn't want to lose that chance, so I interrogated the men who had talked about it and got them a little drunk. But most importantly, I found out where the prison was. On the island of Boiling Rock. The thing is that the prison is located in the center of an extinct volcano and is surrounded by boiling water. Hence the island's name.

But it's one thing to learn about the place and quite another to get there. First, the prisoners are taken to a transfer point where they wait for their flight. This flight only runs once a week. It carries prisoners and supplies. The guards are terrible, both on the ship and with the prisoners.

It was hard for me to be near their camp all the time so I wouldn't miss a flight, and when all the prisoners were taken to the island, I almost cried. The guards kept watch, and even with water magic I had a hard time not getting caught. The only thing that saved me was diving under the bottom of the ship, making a tube of air and moving fast enough at the same time. It was terrible.

It was only when I reached the island and swam away from the ship that I was able to breathe. Nearly twenty-four hours of traveling without proper rest or food was hard on me.