Page 25 of Elemental Hall: Nautica
It requires me to still myself, to push down my emotions into a place where I can focus on the smallest details of the water in front of me, transmuting it little by little, following my careful notes as precisely as possible. It’s the first time that I’ve had to work this hard for a water skill. It’s more like the feeling that I have when I try to work on things relating to fire or earth, air or spirit. I have to work through the skill step by step, rather than justfeelinghow to do it. I change the water to one color, then another. I transmute a little of it to tar. I pull the salt from one jar, using the water to push the particles of it down, leaving clean drinking water behind.
As soon as I’ve finished, I start to change it all back. The next of the challenges posted on the board in the library is that the masters will present us with a series of vials to drink, which might be helpful or might be harmful. We will all have to be able to transmute those into something we can drink if we’re going to pass. I don’tthinkthe elemental masters will give us deadly poisons, but I don’t want to take the risk.
I’m still in the middle of changing back a vial of red-dyed water when the seraphin appears. I see its glittering scalesflashing in the sun first, then its tail rising up into the air, slapping down on the water, sending a splash rising high. The seraphin surfaces and I stare at it, barely able to believe that it is there.
I move to the edge of the water tentatively, not knowing if I dare move out to meet it after last time. I’m calm right now, I have much better control over both my emotions and the magic that flows from them, but I can still remember the way the sea itself cast me out when my presence upset the seraphin.
I have to risk it, though. I need to go to the creature, need to feel its presence once again. I step into the water of the bay, moving slowly, letting it come to me. It moves to meet me with a chittering greeting, a series of dolphin-like clicks and whistles that seem to convey its happiness with my presence. I reach out to touch it and immediately feel the deep connection that I forged with it before. That hasn’t dissipated; it has simply been waiting for me to be someone it can be around again.
I can feel why even as I touch it: the seraphin are creatures with the closest connection to water of all the beasts of the ocean. They are intelligent and powerful, but their connection means that they are affected by an elementalist like myself more strongly than other sea creatures. When my emotions are in turmoil, the seraphin feels it like a riptide or a patch of polluted water.
I know that the way I might know the most basic things about myself. I feel the seraphin as if we are one being, as if there is no barrier of flesh between us. It dives, and I dive with it, clinging to its dorsal fin. It takes me down beneath the waves, out beyond the bay, into a world of deep waters. I can feel understanding pouring into me as we swim, knowledge of the tides, an awareness of this world. Sharks and eels pass us by, not threatening us even for a moment, clearly fearing the power of the creature that is my guide.
We pass over a sunken city, ruined buildings spread out beneath us. We dip down to it and the knowledge flows into me from the seraphin that this place belonged to some of the first elementalists, long before the division between Lumina and Umbrae, who sought to control the waves and failed. I realize then that Nautica wasn’t sited here by accident.
I see the shadow of something huge and squid-like moving among the ruins, vast in a way that nothing living should be. The kraken shifts into view and now the seraphin turns, pulling me away rapidly rather than face it. We head back in the direction of the shore, and for a moment, when I risk a glance back, the kraken is following. Then a buffeting wave from the seraphin pushes it back and we are able to continue away from the sunken city.
We make it back to the bay, surfacing again. I let go of the seraphin’s fin and it circles away from me, flicking its tail once before heading into deeper waters once more. I clamber out onto land and am surprised to find that there’s someone waiting there: Darius.
He is sitting near the jars that I have been working with, looking over my notes, looking a little concerned. A look of sudden relief crosses his face as I approach, his eyes lingering on me briefly as I step out of the water.
“Sera, I was worried,” he says. “I figured you wouldn’t abandon your things like this. I thought something must have happened.”
“The seraphin came to me,” I explain. “Do you know that there’s a whole sunken city out past the islands?”
“I… that doesn’t surprise me,” Darius admits. “It must have been one of the places destroyed in the first war, back when Lumina and Umbrae split. Do you know about the first war?”
“Everyone knows about the first war,” I point out.
“But does everyone know the samething?” Darius asks. “I’ve been reading about it in the library. Lumina’s histories make it sound as though Umbrae decided to attack it for no reason. As if they only ever fought defensively.”
“And that’s not what they teach in Umbrae?” I ask.
Darius laughs and shakes his head. He’s almost… beautiful when he laughs. It makes a change from his usual serious expression.
“Teach that we are in the wrong? Hardly. The Umbran version talks about short-sighted Luminans lashing out at those who represented a threat to their ways. About them blasting our lands in the war, making the land harsh and unforgiving.”
“And do you believe that?” I ask.
Darius shrugs. “I tend to assume that anyone in authority is lying.”
“It seems to me as though you don’t trust anyone,” I say.
He considers that for a moment or two. “Probably not. People mostly seem to be out for themselves.”
“It must be hard, living like that.” I can’t imagine never trusting anyone, never being able to get close to anyone.
“It means no one can hurt me.”
It still seems like a lonely way to live. It occurs to me that Darius probably didn’t come to the beach just to discuss an ancient war, or how little he trusts people, though.
“Did you come here looking for me?” I ask.
“I… need your help,” he admits. He looks a little embarrassed, as if it’s beneath him to ask for aid.
“What happened to not trusting anyone?”
He turns. “Forget it.”
