Avatar: Mage of All Elements

POV The Atheist Who Believed in God.

When did I realize that there was no God? Probably when my mother died and I was left with my father. We were farmers, which in the land of fire is a very good thing, if not honorable. I've been doing it since I was a kid. A vegetable garden, pigs, cows, chickens. I've been used to all that since I was a child.

But the war didn't stop. Taxes went up and we had less and less. It got to the point where the government took all our property and left us with nothing. That's when everything went downhill. Trying to get back what was mine, running around to different officials, I didn't get anything. And what could I do?

No connections, no money. In desperation, I turned to crime, hoping to make some money. I needed to move some cargo, almost to the edge of the country. Determined, I harnessed the only donkey I had left and set off. It took me about three weeks, but I made it.

When I arrived at the house I was about to knock on, a dozen warriors came running out. They tied me up and threw me behind bars. Without listening to my excuses, I was tried and sent to the worst place in the Fire Nation. Boiling Rock. A place from which no prisoner has ever emerged alive. It was there that I realized, understood, and accepted that there was no God and no one could help me. Not even myself.

I spent fourteen years in that prison. Until a young boy appeared. He stood out too much, so a lot of people noticed him. The thing is, for the first few days, he looked like he'd been pulled out of his grave and made to move. But then it was like he'd been replaced. He was healthy, and what struck me most was that he was smiling.

In a place where there was no hope for anyone, he smiled. And then there was more. It turned out that he had water magic. And he could heal. In less than a week, all the prisoners had come to him for treatment. I was no exception, and even though I wasn't sick, I decided to see the magic of another people with my own eyes.

During the treatment, we chatted, and as it happened, word for word, I told him my story without hiding anything. And considering that I'd been sitting here for fourteen long years, the story was bloody with promise.

A few days later, I was shocked to learn that an escape was being prepared. And I was ready to go with them in exchange for a few errands. For the sake of freedom, I was willing to do anything, so I agreed without hesitation.

 A week later, one night, I was pulled out of my sleep and almost ran through some tunnels in the walls. I was still sleepy and didn't understand everything, but when I saw the water, the dream was lifted. I realized that just a little more and there it was, the promised freedom.

The hour it took to bring a dozen more prisoners here seemed like a year to me, but it passed, and with the help of earth magic we were ferried across the boiling lake. The next thing I knew, things started to get crazy. I was told that we were going to help the Avatar in the war with the Fire Nation, and now it turns out that the Avatar is before us. But no, it turns out that the guy had just mastered two elements, which was previously thought to be impossible.

Anyway, just a little bit of time, and here we are, loaded into the ship, off we go. And, so fast that you could feel the air in your face, fast enough to stop, because there was ice preventing it. Only, soon enough, the weather began to deteriorate and people began to worry. After an hour, though, it didn't bother anyone anymore. Finally, the weather turned bad and the storm began.

When I was a kid, sometimes merchants would visit us and tell us stories. Often when they were caught in a storm. Well, what they told me as a kid was not even close to what happened overboard. But that wasn't the limit. When we could no longer stand on our feet, we were all tied to the floor of the ship by the earth. It was like the ship was telling us that if it was going down, we were going down with it. It was scary as hell.

But then it happened. The waves, dozens of times bigger than our ship, came crashing down on us. At that moment, a lot of people turned gray. And if that wasn't enough, the guy who was piloting the ship glowed. What else could it be but the Avatar's condition? What followed was a terrible blow.

Only by some miracle did I not faint, I looked around and was at a loss for words. We were underwater. And from above, we could see frighteningly large waves. There were also many huge fish, barely visible in the darkness. When I realized that our ship was as thick as a tooth of that monster, I felt bad. At this point I turned gray.

Then all hell broke loose. First we swam and were stared at by all kinds of water monsters. Then we dived and flew, spinning, falling, spinning in all three directions. I felt bad. Very bad. But for some reason I couldn't pass out like the other lucky ones and had to watch the whole thing. So I prayed.

Only I wasn't praying for salvation, I was just praying for unconsciousness. And as if my prayers had been answered, there followed a monstrous splash on the water where I hit my head hard and lost consciousness with a smile on my face.