Chapter 19: The Secret of Laundry Soap

To optimize my abilities meant learning to use them according to the laws of physics: mastering tricks that would allow me to lift more, throw further, and last longer before burning out. I had already created stone-tipped tentacles once; that allowed me to accelerate objects without wasting significant energy. I knew I could learn to do the same with every single ability, literally everything that earthbending masters and architects had spent years honing.

I wasn’t trying to show off or claim I worked harder than the honest laborers around me. There were too many subtleties to learn from them, a truth I had realized back in the desert when Bael and Hamri showed me the basics of fighting, sharpening, and survival. During those first few days, though, they just forced me to use abrasives correctly. Because of my poor technique, the stones wore down far too quickly; as it turned out, the grinding disks themselves could be reused. It wasn’t a difficult trick to sharpen the individual grains within the abrasive and use them until the disk vanished… literally. It’s hard to translate the colorful language the workers used to critique my "fast but wrong" approach while trying to hammer my hands into the right position. But I did it, eventually adding a strange scroll filled with the "profane vocabulary of Earth Kingdom laborers" to the Spirit Library’s collection.

As I fell asleep in the room Coal had given me near the forge, I could almost feel Wan Shi Tong somewhere in the distance, reading my scrolls and cursing me with those very same words. In return, I studied the well-earned books Afka brought from the library; they helped deepen the practical knowledge I gained throughout the day.

"I don’t get it," Coal said one morning. I had arrived at the forge earlier than everyone else, as usual, and found him drinking tea. "You come here like it’s a school. Even when I was a pipsqueak, I never showed up to learn with a smile like that."

"Hello." Coal wasn't alone; “Charcoal” was with him. He didn't greet me, but rather Afka, whom he loved to spoil with treats. Spirits could enjoy delicacies too, and the little sly fox only had to nuzzle the giant to trigger a fit of adoration and a desire to pet her.

"Just make sure you don’t show off too much!" Coal eyed me suspiciously. "If the people from the Factorio show up and you agree to work for them, what am I supposed to do?" Even though he didn't understand my passionate drive to outwork everyone else, he put in every effort to help me keep the forge’s profits rising.

"I’ve been meaning to ask," I said, leaning against a pillar and tilting my head. "What is the Factorio?"

"...A production hub in the depths of Omashu," the owner replied after a long exhale. "There’s a massive concentration of crystals beneath our city. There are jennomite, those edible crystals, and then there are other varieties processed in the Factorio to make glass, mirrors, and other trinkets they love in Ba Sing Se. And that’s not all; they mine coal there, too," he added, nodding toward Cruist. "And metals. Working in the Factorio is like a miner's life, but I wouldn't suggest poking your nose in there."

"Why?"

"Dangerous," Cruist finally spoke, his stern gaze meeting mine. "Dust storms from cave-ins poison and bury many newcomers. And if you lose your legs, you can’t bend anymore."

"Yeah, those guys are skilled, but I’ve seen more cripples come out of there than I can count," Coal sighed, turning toward the men arriving for work. They quickly stripped off their outer layers, revealing massive muscles, and donned their aprons. After shaking hands, their muscles practically creaking from the tension, they all looked at me. "Now, to work!"

The repetitive days continued to sharpen my mastery. For effective striking, something an earthbending smith has to do constantly, the guys taught me how to shape stone objects on the fly. I learned to pull a perfectly hewn shape from the ground – a cylinder, a cube, or a simple sphere depending on the task – and then channel my power into it correctly. It was startling how much more dangerous a projectile became when it had the proper form.

As Anubis used to say, this was a complex exercise in power and transformation.

"You can do it, Dagoth!"

"Don't give up! Brace those muscles like a man!"

"Ra-a-ah!"

Feeling heavy hands on my shoulders and hearing the guys shouting encouragement, I gritted my teeth and hoisted a massive tray of compressed coal. I had to heave it into the white-hot furnace that powered the entire forge. Lifting gargantuan weights was a requirement for an earthbending smith; you won’t get far only lifting stones your own weight. You have to work with volume. And this was just the beginning...

"Now, get to it!"

"Faster, while the fire is breathing like a dragon!"

The guys cheered as I stood before the anvil and began to forge. With rhythmic strikes of stone against glowing metal, I gave it shape, exerting myself like never before. If you loosened your grip or struck even slightly weaker than the last blow, the quality was ruined. You had to become a machine, maintaining your spirit for a consistently high result. It was all for the sake of high-quality armor for the Earth Kingdom soldiers.

After a full day’s work, I began to look at these laborers as heroes. They didn't know how to adapt to a battlefield, and they likely couldn't stand one-on-one against a Fire Nation soldier, but they had mastered the art of holding a high standard.

"Don't they try to recruit benders this strong into the army?" I asked during a lunch break. The men were eating healthy, high-calorie meals from small containers. At my question, they traded looks.

"If we have to defend the city, we’ll be the first ones running to do it," Cruist stated seriously.

"Our skills are for building strong structures. We don't have the projectile speed soldiers need. We’re strong, but we're slow."

For a second, I remembered the Pro-Bending tournaments from Avatar Korra’s time. In those heavy bouts, they relied on skill and speed. That definitely wasn't these slow-moving men.

"Besides..." one of them said softly while the others flexed. "We all have families. I want to protect the people I love. I truly want the war to end, but protecting my own is what matters most." He looked down at his food with a warm smile.

"By the way, Dagoth. Do you have anyone?" All eyes turned to me. When I gave a silent, negative shake of my head, they laughed and tried to convince me that someone would come along sooner or later. I sat there without a smile, looking detached at these people whose luck allowed them a quiet life. I, however, had to keep growing.

I still hadn't obtained the most important secret: the production of abrasives. The disks were brought to the forge from the outside, from the Factorio. That was also where the secret of a new sub-element, or rather, a new branch, lay: crystals. Even though the guys had grown fond of me and Coal didn't want me to leave, I had been intentionally improving the forge’s output just to wait for a specific day.

Opening the first chakra had allowed me to develop my bending slightly faster. This, in turn, bypassed any potential setbacks. Rumors of the forge’s high yields spread through the city, and soon enough, someone from the outside arrived.

"Recruiting for the Factorio. Anyone here want to help the city with some real work?" A plain-looking man with a stack of papers, looking every bit the bureaucrat, entered the forge and began fanning himself to ward off the heat. All the men turned toward him with a hint of hostility. Cruist stood up and loomed over the man, staring him down with crushing intensity. It looked as though his massive frame was shielding his friends. Or rather, he just wanted to scare the intruder; the bureaucrat was so rattled he took a step back, ready to bolt.

"U-understood. I’ll report that there are no volunteers..."

"I’ll do it," I said, standing up abruptly and stepping forward. My muscles were more defined now, hardened by heavy lifting. The knowledge from my books had prepared me for mining; I had read so much about extraction methods and mining lore that I likely knew more about it than anyone in the room.

"Dagoth..." Coal started, looking at me with the same heavy expression as Cruist. "Why?"

"...You’ve learned to defend yourselves perfectly, so you expect these walls to be an unbreakable stronghold for your loved ones. I won't tell you how naive that is; protection doesn't always depend on the height of the walls, but on luck. And you can only beat luck with strength."

Pulling my cloth hat back on and adjusting my mask, I walked toward the bureaucrat.

"That outfit... didn't you say you were from the desert?" Coal squinted as the others slowly realized.

"Wait, isn't that... the garb of the sandbenders? If you look at him from the side, he looks like the one from the rumors," they whispered. Hard work had made me grow, and labor had made me look even tougher.

"And such immense control..."

"That's the Sandbender," they said, watching my retreating back. The bureaucrat hurried to leave the forge, and I followed him with a steady pace, never turning back to face the complicated gazes of the smiths. I did only one thing for them out of gratitude. Afka, walking beside me, took a scroll from my hands, ran back to Cruist, and handed over a portion of my labors.

As they slowly unrolled it, they saw a massive list of optimized techniques I had developed. It was a fusion of library knowledge and practice, explaining how to deliver stronger blows, accelerate objects even faster, and most importantly, my Magnum Opus: the first chapter on how to open the Earth Chakra.

They didn't need my personal instruction. The guys were already so close to opening it; they just needed the push I had provided. When I finally did look back for a split second, I saw them huddled together, stunned by the techniques, and a smile touched my face.

"Hey, there’s a way here to get rid of ingrained coal soot!" one of them shouted, looking at Cruist.

The path to the second chakra had begun. The joy of my actions started to replace the feeling of guilt.