The year that followed the capture of our first Fire Nation frigate changed everything.
At first, our raids were small, surgical strikes on isolated ships and lonely outposts. But with every victory, with every ship taken, more villages began to send their warriors and hunters to join us.
At the beginning, we were a single ship captured during a Fire Nation raid gone wrong for them, scraping by with scavenged armor and weapons. By the end of that year, we had a fleet of forty. Forty ships, each liberated, repaired, and repainted in the blue and white of the Southern Water Tribe. Some were heavy frigates that could challenge Fire Nation escorts head-on, others were smaller, faster raiding vessels used to harass and retreat before the enemy could react. We were still not powerful enough to sail beyond our icy borders and threaten the Fire Nation directly, but for the first time in a century, the Southern Pole could defend its own waters.
Word spread quickly.
The Fire Nation began to take notice when convoys vanished south of Kyoshi Island, and patrols never returned from the frozen seas. Reports must have reached the Fire Lord's court, rumors of a phantom fleet led by a single, spirit-touched waterbender who could sink a warship with a gesture. Let them whisper. Fear was a weapon, and I had learned to wield it.
With every ship captured, our villages grew stronger. The spoils of war flowed home, sacks of rice and grain, crates of coal, barrels of salted meat, even Fire Nation steel. The hunters who once carried bone-tipped spears now marched with steel blades and wore proper armor forged from our enemies' own supplies. Our engineers stripped captured ships of their engines, cannons, and steel plating, repurposing everything. Even the youngest children learned the rhythm of hammer and anvil, mending armor or sewing banners that would hang from our ships.
We were no longer a people scraping by on the edge of extinction. We were becoming a force.
I spent most of that year at sea. The deck became my home, the stars my ceiling. I learned how to command men who once doubted me, to read the tides and the moods of warriors as easily as I read the waves. Hakoda became my equal in counsel, and though he still wore the title of Chief, it was my name the men chanted when we returned from battle.
It was during one such raid, on a Fire Nation cargo ship bound for the colonies, that I found the twin axes.
The ship had been better defended than expected. Its captain was a broad-shouldered man with eyes like burning coal and a calm, deadly precision in every movement. We fought across the deck as the sea pitched and rolled beneath us, sparks flying with every clash of weapon on weapon. My spear, a chinese shuangyue halberd bought from Earth Kingdom, was nearly useless on the shifting deck, too long to maneuver between masts and ropes. Only my bending saving my skin and keeping me at an advantage.
He swung his axes with practiced ease, cutting through the wind and wood alike. When he overextended, I caught the haft of his weapon with a water whip and pulled him forward, smashing an ice-coated elbow into his throat. He fell, gasping for air that would never come.
When the battle ended, I picked up his weapons. They were twin axes, perfectly balanced, their heads forged of dark, burnished steel with a spike at the top, the handles carved from black wood bound in red cord. I tested their weight, their rhythm, and smiled.
A spear was a noble weapon, precise and formal. But on the rocking sea, these axes felt like extensions of my arms, swift, brutal, alive. From that day onward, they became my chosen weapons, their mirrored edges gleaming like frozen moonlight.
By the time the spring sun returned to the horizon, the Fire Nation had begun to realize that something far greater than pirates haunted their southern waters. Their fleets started sailing in tighter formations, their ships armed and wary. But by then it was too late.
We had already fortified every coastal village. The places that once burned beneath their raids now stood defended by walls of ice and stone. The villages that had been abandoned for decades were rebuilt, each one a beacon of resistance. They could hold for hours, against a small raiding party, until reinforcements arrived. And at the heart of it all stood Amaruq Qel'a, the fortress city that Wolf Cove had become.
From a distance, Amaruq Qel'a looked like a shard of the moon fallen to the earth, towering ice bastions ringed by metal reinforcements, watchtowers lined with ballistae, and fortified harbors deep enough for our growing fleet. Its great walls shimmered faintly with layered frost, the product of dozens of benders who came back from North Pole when words reached them of our success, our re-emergence, working in concert. No longer merely a village, it was a citadel, a statement to the world that the Southern Water Tribe had risen from the ashes.
The Fire Nation tried to retaliate, of course. Small scouting groups came and vanished without trace. We intercepted their messages, broke their supply lines, and left only silence where their ships once sailed. Eventually, even they stopped sending patrols. The South had become a graveyard for their arrogance.
Then came the messengers from the Earth Kingdom.
Omashu was first, then Gaoling, and even some smaller coastal towns that had long suffered Fire Nation raids. Their envoys came humbly, wrapped in thick cloaks against our bitter cold, offering trade in exchange for protection.
They brought promises of grain, cloth, and coin if we would lend ships to guard their harbors and strike Fire Nation supply lines. For the first time in a hundred years, the Southern Water Tribe was being treated not as a forgotten people, but as allies, equals in the great struggle.
Hakoda and I gathered the council to discuss the offers. Some elders were cautious, others ambitious.
"We've only just rebuilt our strength," one argued. "Why spend it protecting foreigners?"
"Because every Fire Nation ship we sink beyond our waters is one less that will sail against us. And for how long do you think we can continue our activities. One day we are going to fall for a ambush if we don't change our way now." I countered.
In the end, we agreed to limited cooperation. Our ships would strike in the Earth Kingdom's southern seas, disrupting Fire Nation convoys and guarding there waters for limited time, in exchange for food and supplies. The arrangement benefited everyone, and it made our warriors rich.
For the first time in generations, the Southern Water Tribe knew prosperity.
Children ran through the streets with full bellies and laughter. Women wove banners dyed deep blue and white to hang from the masts of our ships. The black smoke of industry rose from Amaruq Qel'a's forges, where engineers worked day and night repairing captured engines and crafting our own.
The people began to dream again.
Our fleet, once painted in the Fire Nation's grim reds, now gleamed in colors of home. Sails of deep sapphire, hulls streaked with frost, and prows carved into the shapes of wolves and whales. The old tactic of feigned distress no longer worked and neither did we needed to hide who we were any longer. When our ships appeared on the horizon, the Fire Nation saw the blue banners and knew dread.
The raids became less about survival and more about strategy, cutting deep into the Fire Nation's supply routes. We no longer waited for them to come to us. We hunted them.
But with prosperity came something new, politics.
As the months passed, whispers began to spread among the warriors and the villagers alike. They spoke my name with reverence, sometimes even more than Hakoda's. Around campfires and in the mess halls of the fleet, I overheard them speak of "Chief Isaruq."
It started as a jest, a drunken cheer after a victory. Then it became serious.
The warriors had seen me lead from the front, seen me bleed and fight beside them, seen how I turned the tide of battle with both bending and steel. They saw not just a warrior, but a leader. And the idea began to take root.
Hakoda heard the talk too, but he was no fool. He called me to his quarters one night as the fleet rested in the harbor.
"They're saying you should lead," he said plainly, pouring two cups of warmed arctic plum wine.
I took the cup, feeling its heat seep into my fingers. "They talk because they're happy. It will pass."
He gave a quiet laugh. "You underestimate your legend, Isaruq. Spirits know, I'd follow you myself if I weren't already wearing this title. You made me stop from many mistakes that would have cost us dearly. Remember the time when I offered the captured ships to villages who sent their warriors and you put your foot down at that. Even threatened to sink them yourself to deny Fire Nation the satisfaction of crushing us again and turned them into patrol for the whole Tribe, protecting each village. And you were right, if I had split the fleet than Fire Nation would have sank it one day but I was too short-sighted, too bloodthirsty that I was willing to do anything to lure more warriors and failed to see bigger image."
I didn't answer right away. The truth was, the idea of leadership did tempt me, but I don't want it right now. There was still too much I didn't know.
"I'm not ready to lead the Tribe," I said finally. "Not until I've learned everything I can. The North has knowledge we've forgotten, bending arts, fortifications, even ways to work with the spirits. If I'm to build something lasting, I need to learn from them."
Hakoda studied me for a moment, then nodded. "And you'll return?"
"Of course," I said, meaning it. "Stronger. Smarter. More dangerous than before."
Word of my decision spread through the fleet within a day.
Some were disappointed, others understood. When I addressed the gathered warriors on the deck of our flagship, their faces turned up to the gray sky, the cold wind cutting through the air, I spoke simply.
"My people," I said, "for the first time in living memory, we are safe. The Fire Nation fears our waters, the Earth Kingdom calls us brothers, and our children laugh again. But this peace is only the beginning. I will go north, to learn, to grow, and to bring back the knowledge that will make our tribe unbreakable. When I return, we will decide together who leads. Until then, fight with honor. Protect our home. And remember, our strength comes not from one man, but from all of us."
The crowd roared in approval.
Their cheers echoed across the frozen bay, carried on the wind like the howl of a great wolf.
That night, as I stood on the walls of Amaruq Qel'a, the moon rose full and bright above the ice fields. The sea shimmered with silver light, and the spirits whispered softly in the wind. I tightened the twin axes at my waist and breathed in the cold air.
A new chapter was calling.
The South no longer needed a savior, it needed a future. And to build it, I would have to walk a path only the spirits could show.
Tomorrow, I would set sail for the Northern Water Tribe.
But tonight, I stood watching my people celebrate, pride swelling in my chest.
For the first time since I had awoken in this world, I allowed myself to believe that maybe, just maybe, we were winning.