Neptune Rises

My father did not keep a record of my own progress, at least not to my own knowledge, but I feel it is important to track Kel's training, so as to better compare his abilities to that I have come to view parallel to the teachings of the Codex. One day my son shall inherit my post as guardian of our element, and it should be written that even the smallest glimmers of light in this world scorned by war and conflict can grow to supersede evil.

I was playing with the child down by the coastline just yesterday when his capacity for bending the flowing forces of water were first revealed. I knew the boy would have the skill, as both his mother and I are skilled in the art. But it is very rare for a boy just barely out of his diapers to be manipulating his gift in such a hot headed manner. There was a group of penguins that Kel became intrigued by, and despite voicing my misgivings about chasing wild animals, the boy paid me no heed and followed them until he had fallen off a slight overhang, surely right into the freezing depths below. I panicked, as any parent would do. He was my only son, my first born, and I would not see him taken from he so long before his time.

But when I ran up to the shallow cliff and prepared to dive in, there was a peculiar sight laid before me. My boy, just old enough to no longer be considered a toddler, was floating at the surface, almost completely encased in a chunk of ice! I raised him up and thawed his body before rushing him back to our hut. The boy seemed too calm for what had just happened to him, almost as though he had some sense of understanding when it came to how he created the mass of ice encasing him to float. Tomorrow I will see what range of control the boy has over it, these things can be hard to gauge as bending usually reaches it's apex for learning in the teenage years. If we can harness his abilities now, I can only imagine how-

A large selection of entries are heavily water damaged and unreadable

-aining methods are finally proving to be successful. In the year and a half we have been training, Kel has learned to manipulate water on every basic level that an apprentice at the age of thirteen does. While he learned the basic movements required to levitate small bodies of water right away, he now moves with the same fluid quality expected of a more skilled trainee. Were I a more arrogant man I could see myself cheering my seven year old on as he bested some of the better apprentices of our local master at arms. The way he shifts the weight in his body to mimic the ebb and flow of his art is almost akin textbook examples. He'll be manipulating the more difficult patterns and motions in no time at all.

In regards to that, I have decided to postpone pushing his training any further. He will not be allowed to continue to specific techniques until he has a broad understanding of the basics. He is skilled in everything he has attempted this far, and I've caught him experimenting with the motions to create his own techniques. Snow and water have enough responsibility within themselves to occupy him for now, but moving on to things like bending shapes and freezing them into solid objects needs to wait. When he is truly ready, then we will progress to using his bending as a martial art.

End of first journal
WORD COUNT 623

Kel has passed his test. It was truly remarkable. For the past week I have shown him a map of the known world and asked him to replicate it. At first he did not understand when I set a sheet of paper in front of him with an inkwell, but provided him with no pen. It was after the first session that Kel finally realized that his water bending was not confined to things he had previously associated with the term water. He had gained a brand new understanding that in many cases, liquids contained the property we understand as water, and that we can use these liquids with just as much ease as pure water, given the right amount of dedicated training and understanding of the differences.

At first he thought to form inky shapes of the continents in mid air, then laying them directly into the paper. I was astonished at his accuracy at times, but in most cases these blobs ended up splashing into inaccurate shapes, and his world was nothing akin to the one I would show him on my own map. Another revelation would strike him, though it took him three times as long to figure it out as the first one. He didn’t need all of the ink at once, he needed a pen. At age eight my boy began weaving the tiniest little serpentine shape out of this inkwell, and began drawing with it instead of finger-painting like the other children his age. His first attempt with this shape proved unsuccessful, but it did not matter, for the next morning I awoke to him drawing with great precision using only the narrow little tip of this appendage he had conjured.

And so, today with great ease, I was able to teach him the fundamentals behind the water whip technique, and thus began his training of water-bending as a martial art. It was much easier for him to learn, because he had already done it on a much more precise scale. I built some ice sculptures for him to thrash with his new found ability, and by that evening he was whipping them with enough ferocity to send cracks across their heads.

Perhaps another session involving restraint is needed. If he doesn’t learn to control his impulses, this could turn into one big mistake the minute he sets off on his own.

WORD COUNT 398

The boy calmed down a bit on the training dummies. Ive showed him how to use the basic motions he’s been learning for the past year and a half in combat, and he’s become a bit curious as to how he might go about attacking an opponent with nothing but streams of water. So today I began teaching him the jet technique. It wasn’t particularly difficult for the child to learn after gaining an understanding of the intricacies behind water based appendages.

His main problem at first was containing the water in a constant stream; it would leak a great deal from one point to his target. But after a while, he threw the blasts much more cleanly, though he still has a long way to go before it’s within his arsenal of nearly perfected moves. Still, the ferocity and force this boy brings to each technique is astounding. What kind of power will this one wield when he is my age? His first attempts at these forms are never quite right and yet, he has always been able to deliver the proper ends to them, with his water whips he was lashing my dummies clumsily, but still inflicting great amounts of damage. The same can go for today. By the end of our session I could scarcely believe my eyes
He had blown everything above the waist of my crude target clear off of its legs in a few concentrated bursts.

He seems to genuinely understand my teachings of restraint, and outside of our sessions my son has the heart of a lion turtle. I’m proud to call him my boy, it just can’t be denied the power he holds. I should never live to see the day it corrupts him. He may be the first true embodiment the Codex calls for a primus. Time will tell.

WORD COUNT 308