Page 6 of Elemental Hall: Nautica
I plunge further into the depths of the well. There is a strange glow here, coming from points on the side of the well. I use that light to show me the way down, until finally, I can see the bottom.
There is something gleaming in the reflected light. It’s a bracelet.Thebracelet. The one we were sent to find. I grab it, putting it on my wrist so that it won’t fall. I turn, looking up, ready to swim back to the distant glimmer of light that is the surface. There are many points of light between me and it, though, and weirdly, as I watch, those points start to move.
It takes me a second to see them, the huge-mouthed creatures that have those lights dangling from their foreheads. They are humanoid, but they are anything but human. They swim out from their hiding places now with webbed hands and feet, and they swim straight at the students.
The students scatter, dodging them, darting this way and that, heading for the safety of dry land. I surge for the surface, relying on speed to escape them. I burst past one, the currents pushing me on before it can sink sharp-pointed teeth into my flesh. I swim up, and up. Normally, when diving deep, I would pause, surfacing slowly, but there is no time for anything but blind flight now.
Then I see that one of them has Aria in its grasp. She is struggling with it, but she cannot break away. On instinct, I throw out a hand toward it. The water does what I want it to do, slamming into the creature with the force of a sudden riptide,tearing it away from Aria. I grab her arm and she flinches, obviously thinking that I must be another of the creatures. Then she sees it’s me and we both start swimming for the surface, with all the assistance I can give us.
We breach the surface of the water together. I push Aria out, then haul myself onto dry land, lying there, getting my breath back. After breathing water for so long, air feels almost wrong, somehow.
Elemental Mistress Halan is looking on, staring at me as if she isn’t sure what to make of me.
“Well?” she asks. “Didanyoneget it, or do we all have to go again?”
I realize what she’s talking about. I stand, taking off the bracelet. I toss it so that it lands in front of her, rolling to a stop next to her foot. She stares at me, and now, she isn’t just curious, she’s shocked.
“Well,” she says after a moment. “Perhaps it isn’t too late for you to start, after all.”
Chapter FOUR
“I can’t believe that they just threw you straight into one of the challenges with no preparation!” Aria says, as we make our way along one of the tracks that dot the network of islands. “They give us lectures every morning and we spend most of our lives in the library to get ready for this kind of thing.”
“I can’t believe thatyou’rehealed already,” I reply. I’d thought she was more injured than that.
Aria shrugs. “Nissa has a gift for healing. Besides, I wasn’t that badly hurt. Thanks to you. It could have been a lot worse.”
She shudders briefly, like a dark cloud passing in front of the sun, then smiles again.
“But that’s life in Nautica. All the elemental houses, from what I hear.”
I frown at the implications of that. “So, they just throw us into deadly situations again and again? Are theytryingto kill us?”
Aria looks puzzled. “You don’t know the way it works here?”
I shake my head, keeping pace with her as she hurries forward. I get the feeling that she is almost never still. “I’ve heard stories about the academy, and the recruiter who found me said something about everything being a test, but beyond that… no, I don’t know how things work.”
Aria’s look of puzzlement only grows. “I… guess that’s possible. Sorry, I’m not used to anyone who hasn’t been told how special they were since they were young. Half of the people here have been trained by elementalists almost since they could walk, learning all the theory, preparing for this. You didn’t have any of that?”
I can only spread my hands. “I’m from a small fishing village, Aria. I’ve always liked the sea, but I never dared to dream it was anything more than that.”
“And you still made it through that challenge? That’s… I’m not sure I could have done something like that. Then again, water isn’t the element I’m best with.”
“So, everyone starts with water?” I ask. “Isn’t that impossible for anyone who doesn’t have an affinity for water?”
“Just because you don’t have a natural affinity for an element doesn’t mean that you can’t do anything with it,” Aria explains. “We can all learn the basics with each element, but obviously, we’ll always be better with some than others, and we’ll probably have to follow the forms more closely.”
“Forms?”
Her expression suggests that she still isn’t entirely sure that I’m not joking. “Elementalists have worked out ways of thinking and feeling that let you achieve particular effects. We learn them by rote until we can achieve the effects we want. With some of the strongest elementalists, it’s hard to tell what their affinity even is.”
“And the challenges?” I ask. It’s still hard to get over the sheer deadliness of the one we all just faced.
“The elementalists say that the best way to make progress is to immerse ourselves in situations, and… well, we’re all meant to be getting ready to potentially defend Lumina. I guess they think that we should be ready for danger. We have classes, but the challenges are what really matter.”
She keeps leading the way along the path, through the trees. There’s a clearing there, in which a number of students are gathered. Some seem to be practicing with their powers, summoning flames in the air or making plants rise from the earth. Several seemed to be practicing combat techniques, throwing punches and kicks.
A stone tower stands in the middle of the clearing, so wound around with plants that it almost looks like a tree. Five doors lead into it, with stone statues above them representing the core elements: water, fire, air, earth, and spirit.
