Chapter 4: Spiritbending

Republic City

Usually Korra was up before dawn. She would get some early training in and be ready to attack the day.

However, yesterday she expended a bit too much energy then usual with going into the avatar state in her fury. So today she woke up a little later than usual and the sun was already up.

She got ready as usual and headed out for some morning training. To her surprise someone else was already outside training. They were using the spinning gates that took her way to long to master.

Korra’s curiosity got the better of her as she approached. She couldn’t tell who was inside, but seeing as they weren’t yelling out in pain she imagined that they weren’t having any issues.

After 5 minutes in which she was sure the gates should have stopped spinning, someone popped out the end. To her surprise it was someone familiar.

“Oh, it’s you.”

“Well, bet you didn’t expect me did you.”

“After last night I’m learning to expect anything.”

“Good, hopefully Tenzin's up so we can get this over with.”

She glared at him after that statement which he just shrugged off. He moved to go inside as Korra forgot her training and began to follow

After her conversation with the mysterious man from yesterday Korra took a deep breath. Her anger just barely contained as he seemed to aggravate her to no end.

She did have to wonder how he did the exercise though. He is a self proclaimed earthbender and it takes airbending teachings to be able to move within the gate. How is it that an earthbender is able to be like a leaf as the exercise called for. Earthbender teachings called for being as immovable as the earth itself, not the flourishes and fleetingness of the wind.

No matter. Korra was sure she would find out in due time. She was going to pry him of all his secrets the second they got to Tenzin.

Korra found Tenzin sitting waiting for them inside in his study. He sat at his desk where two seats rested on the other side. The mysterious guest had taken one of the seats across from him. Korra took the other while crossing her arms and began waiting in silence.

Tenzin took a deep breath after a minute finally began. “Korra, this is Damian. He was a resident of Air Temple Island 5 years ago. He left just before you arrived on his journey to reach the spirit world. We had taught him how to reach it, but he said he wanted a way to be there in his material form. This was of course before you opened the spirit portals and joined the two worlds. He set off and only just arrived back last night. We were hoping to hear of his exploits and catalog them. According to what he has told me, what he has been able to do will go down in the annals of history.”

Korra now looked at the mysterious man, who she now knew as Damian, with a newfound respect. It didn’t make up for what he did to her though, so she was holding out on liking him as a person just yet.

“So, Mr. Damian, if that what your name even really is” Korra shot mockingly. “You say you are an earthbender, but how did you use the gates earlier? It takes an airbender to even get them spinning.”

“Ah young Korra, all in due time. However, I think first I'm sure Tenzin would love to hear some of my recounts of the spirit world.” At this Tenzin sighed but nodded his head in concession.

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Getting to the spirit world physically was no joke. By the time I had left Tenzin and Jinora I had attained the necessary spirituality to maintain a form in the spirit world. Luckily this was not a bending locked technique as even gurus who couldn't bend were able to gain entrance into the spirit world. This is a misconception based around historically how connected airbenders are to the spirit world. Once I found that out I had full assurance I would be able to enter with my spirit. My body was what was the problem.

Obviously now it is common knowledge that you can enter the spirit world physically by going through a spirit portal. When I was going through this process that unfortunately wasn't an option, so I had to find a different way.

This method took me about a year of independent research and has probably been one of the most difficult techniques I have created to date. I had to essentially create a new sub-bending style from scratch to be able to do this. This style I call lifebending and it has opened up a ton of doors for me to explore. These doors I am still exploring many years later.

Anyway, to make this technique I had to make a couple of breakthroughs and observations. How was the spirit supposed to come back to the body after entering the spirit world? I theorized that there is a sort of tether that connects the spirit to the body. Once your spirit follows that tether then you are able to make it back to the material world and reside once again in your physical form.

By this logic is it possible that the tether could be a two way road? To find that out I first had to understand what spiritual energy is. I needed to do this because I had to manipulate my spirit to treat itself as the host of the body. Once that condition was met I could just pull my body along the tether to return to the spirit the same way that the spirit was able to return the body. I would hopefully do this same process to return to the material world once I had accomplished my goal of finding Wan Shi Tong’s Library.

When I went about discovering this new bending, what I found out about spirit energy was quite shocking. Spirit energy was just a refined version of life energy. Life energy is what the body produces regularly because of processes like eating and gaining energy through sleeping. I discovered this after observing nature. I knew that I had to manipulate my body in some way so I went to study various forms of nature and understand how they thrive without a soul.

I observed that the plants despite not having a soul still produce spirit energy. This is the reason that when surrounded by nature in places such as parks you feel refreshed and like your soul has been nourished. That's because it has. Regular plants simply release this energy into the air after creating it as they have little use for the energy.

I was able to observe this due to my lifebending. With every sub-bending type you are able to have a natural connection with that element. With my sandbending, without using my seismic sense, I am able to instinctively feel where the sand is around me and how it moves as it ebbs and flows in the wind.

This method is how I was able to sense the spirit energy. I knew that every human had a soul and thus a spirit. By observing nature with my life sense to see if that was the same case I discovered that they created the spirit energy, but that most of it dissipated into the air.

Now I had a new question. If all of life could create this energy, where did it go towards in people? Well, this energy went towards the soul. That meant that my soul had a type of energy. It took me a bit, but this energy I could now bend.

Now that I could essentially bend my soul, I got to work. I spent my time going into the spirit world and felt for my spirit energy attempting to manipulate it. It took me a while of going back and forth between the material and spirit world feeling the spirit energy in nature and my own in the spirit world before I could begin to manipulate it.

Once I was able to manipulate it is when I discovered the tether using in conjunction my life sense and new spirit sense. I had merely theorized it before, but now I had official confirmation. Through this tether I was able to feel my physical body in the material world. From there I tugged on the tether with my spiritbending, and pulled, and pulled, and pulled.

After what felt like an eternity my material body merged with my spiritual one and I was finally in the spirit world.

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“So here’s how it went. I made it to the spirit world how you taught me, then I reverse summoned my body. Now I was physically in the spirit world and started looking for the library. I went into the spirit world in the desert in the closest known location to where it sank. I think it made a difference as when I later went into the spirit world I seemed to be much farther from the library than when I went into it from the desert, but who really knows, the spirit world isn't exactly linear.”

I expected a sense of surprise when I was done with that sentence, but with both their jaws literally hanging I think I broke them.