Page 13 of Elemental Hall: Nautica (Elemental Hall #1)

The seraphin comes back to me the next day. I’ve been searching for it for so long, and it’s surprising that this is the day when it comes to me. Now, so soon after almost dying in the storm, when my emotions are still all over the place.

I am down at one of the beaches around Nautica, working on fine water skills I learned from one of the scrolls in the library.

I have jars of water in front of me and I’m working to transmute them into different substances.

It is hard, requiring a kind of fine control that is so much more difficult to achieve than summoning a powerful wave or a whirlpool.

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 just feeling how 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’t think the 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 scales flashing 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 same thing?” 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.”

I catch his arm. “Come on. I’m not saying I won’t help. What do you need?”

“I’m having trouble with the water transmutations, and no one else will work with me,” Darius says. “I figured that if anyone can show me the best way to do them, it’s probably you.”

I’m a little taken aback that he’s sought me out. Still, I recover quickly.

“Sure,” I say, gesturing to the vials. “How about this? I change a vial and you try to change it back. That way, you can see what I’m doing.”

Darius nods. He takes a seat on the sand near the vials. I sit opposite him, taking one in my hands.

“It’s all about fine control,” I say. “I think they’re challenging us with this to see how small a scale we can work on.”

“Or maybe just because they think that people will try to poison us later,” Darius suggests.

Would the elemental masters really think that? I know they’re training us in the expectation that many of us will go on to serve in the military, but even so, why would we be poisoned?

“You really think that?” I ask.

“Elementalists are powerful,” Darius says. “They become soldiers, but also explorers, diplomats. Powerful people, and powerful people attract enemies.”

I want to believe that no one will ever seek to poison me, but since Ash has already tried to kill me once, I’m not so na?ve as to believe it could never happen. I shift the water slowly, changing it to a swirling mixture of red and yellow hues.

“Do you need me to explain how I did it?” I ask.

“It would be better to feel it,” Darius says. He picks up another vial, handing it to me. I start to shift it, but this time, Darius’s hands close over mine as I hold the vial, his touch warm, his hands curiously calloused. I start in surprise, but he holds me there.

“I’ll be able to feel what you do magically through the contact,” he says. “Please, Sera.”

I go along with it for now, shifting the composition of the water slowly.

When I’m done, I feel Darius copying me, his power flowing through my hands into the vial.

There’s a tingle of lightning along my skin as he does it.

Apparently, nothing he does comes without a touch of the elemental forces he is strongest with.

The water clears, becoming simple water.

“You did it!” I exclaim, and I see him smile in triumph.

“Thanks to you.”

We’re so close in that moment, our hands touching, that it would be easy to get closer still. Easy to let myself be drawn forward to him, easy for this moment of joyous celebration to become more.

We both seem to realize that at the same time.

“Sera!”

It’s Orion’s voice. We both pull back at the same time, our hands jerking apart from one another as I look around to see him approaching.

“Darius and I were just practicing for the transmutation challenge,” I say.

“That’s why I came to find you too,” Orion explains. His eyes flick between us. Whenever they rest on Darius, they aren’t friendly. “The whole circle is having problems with it. I thought maybe you might be able to help.”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, of course. Maybe Darius could join us? He’s working on the same thing.”

Orion hesitates and I’m sure he’s going to say no. He’s just looking for a way to do it without hurting my feelings.

Instead, Darius stands and steps back. “Thank you for the offer, Sera, but no. I will do the rest alone.”

His tone is colder and more formal than it has been, a sudden distance that wasn’t there before. Maybe it has something to do with the way Orion’s hand has come to rest on my shoulder, almost possessively. I want to shrug it off, but I also want to lean into that touch, into Orion’s presence.

Before I can make up my mind which, Darius is already gone, off along the beach.