The water elemental shuddered like a dog shaking off rain. Of course, that didn’t make any sense since it was made of water, but Alex didn’t have time to worry about all that. He couldn’t believe what he’d just been able to do: from the time he’d started learning spells, he’d never learned one so quickly before, not even back in Thameland…and that was before The Mark.

A sudden surge of jealousy hit him.

“Is this how easy it is for unMarked wizards?” he bitterly asked the water elemental.

It answered by bubbling at him.

“Yeah, you’re right.” He took a slow, peaceful breath. “Shouldn’t complain. I’ve just had a breakthrough.”

Thmp.

The water elemental jumped as he slammed his notebook down and began rapidly jotting notes.

BREAKTHROUGH! he wrote in all caps.

Have gotten better at using the power—Traveller-related?—that helps me cast spells that touch other planes. It takes away a lot of the burden of completing complex parts of summoning and teleportation spell arrays.

Successfully cast Summon Water Elemental after only 39 tries: a new record set for learning a spell. Woooo yeeeeaaah! :) :) :)!!!!!

He stopped drawing smiley faces after the third one, but it took some effort to do it. Excitement threatened to send him running around the room screaming like he’d lost his mind.

‘Focus!’ He scolded himself.

Next step. Evaluate limits. Measure casting speed. See if the power can be applied more efficiently.

First, test casting speed.

Taking a deep breath, Alex noted the position of the wall-mounted timekeeper, and began casting again.

Or at least he tried to cast again.

“Oof,” he groaned. His energy was low. He had to stop the spell.

Alex had been casting for a good part of the day and going through the spell and practising illusionary patch repeatedly, had used up a lot of his mana. He could fix that by using Life to Mana, but he’d rather avoid its unpleasantness if he could.

“May as well just wait for a bit and do something else in the meanwhile.” He said, starting one of Val’Rok’s more powerful mana manipulation techniques. “It’s been awhile since I’ve worn down my mana like this.”

His mana pool had grown dramatically over the past year, and he normally paced himself during practice, but today, he’d let his excitement get the better of him, which was understandable considering all he’d accomplished. But, he knew better than to let that happen. He could see Baelin looking down at him, shaking his head.

“Still, it’d be kinda nice to take a bit of a break from casting,” He said, dismissing the disapproving image. “Might as well make the best of things while my mana’s regenerating.” Alex looked at the water elemental in the summoning circle.

“Ah, right, hello again.”

It was bubbling, slowly drifting back and forth, pressing itself against the circle’s walls. It’s movements weren’t aggressive or anything, just curious.

Alex released it from the summoning circle and watched as it slowly slid around the room.

“It’s pretty cute,” he said to Claygon, who seemed to also be watching it closely. It was prodding the floor with tentacle-like protrusions of water now, like it was testing the surface. Time to try some harmless experiments he’d planned for the summoned creature.

Genuinely harmless, not the ‘Kybas sick sense of humour kind of harmless’.

“Here, I want you to try something for me,” he said, gesturing for the elemental to come to him. “Let me…wait, hold on.”

Alex switched to one of the elemental tongues of water, using its most common dialect.

“You…control your water…yes?” he asked.

His speech was broken, his accent terrible, and his audio-prestidigitation rudimentary, but it was a chance to practise the language. The Mark was already pointing out parts of the sentence that he’d gotten right, so his skills would improve for next time.

“Yes…” was all it said in return.

At least it understood him.

He searched for the words to give his command.

“Want you…to control-” he paused, then cursed softly. He didn’t have enough vocabulary to convey what he wanted to say, so he switched back to the common tongue.

“Ah well, it’ll come with time.” He said. “This is what I’d like to try. I’d like to see if I can use your core as a reservoir to carry potions in without them getting wet. Can you form a bubble in your middle that’s big enough for my hand holding a small object to fit into?” He extended his hand toward the water elemental.

The fluid creature bubbled, then made a sucking sound, a bubble the size of one of Selina’s fists formed inside.

“Cool!” Alex clapped. “Alright, now for your next task: I want you to form the same kind of bubble around my hand,” he pointed to his hand. “So that it doesn’t get wet. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” the elemental bubbled in its mother tongue.

“Okay…are you ready?”

“Yes,” the elemental bubbled again.

Alex took a potion bottle from his bag, and gingerly placed his hand in the bubble within the water elemental’s core. The sensation on his skin was strange; it felt cool and clammy, not exactly like water, but more like a silk glove. If the temperature of melting ice was just below room temperature, he imagined it would probably feel much like this.

There was a sudden bubbling from the elemental. Alex froze. Was it going to bubble over like a boiling pot? “Is there something wrong?”

“No…” the creature burbled, then it said something Alex didn’t understand.

Frowning, he had his Wizard’s Hands retrieve a book from his basket: a dictionary of better known languages of water elementals. Then using The Mark and a little guesswork, he phonetically worked out what the elemental was bubbling, then a Wizard’s Hand flipped to the right page for translation.

He chuckled.

It had told him that his hand ‘tickled.’

Alex had to fight an almost overwhelming urge to look for a way to summon the little creature permanently; it would make the cutest pet ever.

But, work and experimentation came first.

“Alright, well sorry for tickling,” he apologised, removing the hand holding the potion bottle from the creature’s core. It was a body enhancement potion. “I’d like you to try something else now. I’m going to pour this liquid into the bubble in your core. It’s completely harmless, but I’d like to see if you can keep the bubble around the potion, just like you did with my hand.”

The elemental gave a burble.

“No, you can’t absorb the water in it.”

The next burble sounded disappointed.

“Yeah, I know,” Alex said. “There’s nothing you like more than taking water from ‘impure liquids’ and absorbing it, but do this for me, and I’ll reward you.”

There was a questioning burble from the water elemental, and Alex guessed that the little spirit was wondering about the reward he’d mentioned.

“I think you’ll like it,” he said pleasantly, making sure to be nice.

His spell gave him full control over the creature, but there was no sense in pissing it off instead of trying to form a good relationship with it.

Aggressive water elementals were a nightmare.

People often thought water elementals were harmless compared to other elementals, something Alex used to think before taking Professor Mangal’s class.

After all, the simplest bumpkin understood that a creature made of fire was deadly, and most people could easily see how an earth elemental could also be dangerous, taking earthquakes and such into account. There were some folk who underestimated air elementals, but most gave the creatures of storm and sky respect. Anyone who underestimated them usually changed their opinion when one of them started shooting lightning their way.

But by and large, the average person tended to think of water elementals as safe creatures, according to Alex’s textbooks. Folk feared the sea with its depths, massive size and waves, but not water itself. People didn’t live their lives in fear of rain, ponds and small streams. Water was associated with life most often, not death.

One of Professor Mangal’s more illuminating lessons on the subject came back to him.

“-do not underestimate them,” his summoning professor had cautioned. “Even the smallest of water elementals can pose absolute danger if provoked. Water has a great mass to it, and so a water elemental’s strikes have a surprising amount of force behind them.”

She had pointed to her mouth. “If one manages to gain access to your mouth or nose, they can easily and quickly smother you to death. Worse: a water elemental can control its form to such a degree, that it can seep through almost any crack or gap in any object. Anywhere water can go, a water elemental can go.”

Her finger had tapped her ear. “Have you ever left the beach and had water stuck in your ear? Imagine that, and now imagine that the water inside your ear wants to kill you.”

Some of the class—including Alex—had turned grey at the mental imagery.

“Oh yes. Such things are most gruesome. And it gets worse: there are some water elementals who consider most life forms a corruption. You see, alchemists have determined that roughly 60% of a human adult’s body mass is entirely water. That varies somewhat between individuals and races, but the point is that we have sealed water within our frames. Some water elementals see us as a perversion; nothing more than walking prisons corrupting the pure water we have inside…and so they extract it from us as easily as they would absorb the water from a cup of wine or a mug of beer.”

Several students had gasped.

“When they are finished draining a living organism, it’s left in a state of dry, dusty skin, and crumbling bone.”

Alex shook the image from his head.

This creature might be cute, but it would be best not to upset it.

“Alright, here we go,” he said, pouring the tinted potion into the elemental.

A bubble of colour formed in its core: an ‘orb’ of potion encased by water. He watched the potion bubble shift around inside the creature, waiting to see if the bubble shrank, or the elemental’s colour changed because the potion was seeping into it. No seepage.

“Good, they’re not mixing. Just like oil and water,” he noted. “Alright. You can have that potion if you want it. But, if I were you, I’d absorb all of it, not just the water part. I think you’ll like it.”

The water elemental paused like a cat contemplating a bowl of milk, then bubbling happily, it began absorbing the body strengthening potion. It gave Alex a happy little burble as the mana raced through it, powering up its watery form.

He chuckled and fed the creature a few more potions, not just as a reward, but also as a sign of goodwill. It continued happily absorbing each potion, drinking in the mana, and when they were all gone, it let out what sounded like a big burp.

“Well, it sounds like you enjoyed yourself.” Alex laughed.

“Hey, you wouldn’t mind sharing your name with me, would you? In the future, there’ll be more tasty potions for you if I summon you again.”

The elemental paused, as though hesitant. It occurred to Alex that the creature might’ve been quite young, at least by otherworldly spirit standards.

It suddenly bubbled a name at him, one that sounded remarkably similar to-

“ ‘Bubbles’ it is,” he laughed, feeling a shift in the air as the elemental was being pulled back to its home plane. “I’ll call you by name next time, okay? Until we meet again!”

With a shimmer, Bubbles disappeared.

He jotted down the results of his experiments.

Water elementals make a good potion delivery system. They can hold potions in themselves and carry them to enemies. Might be able to use that to work around orbs of air or any other measures enemies take against gas.

He tapped his pen on the page, frowning and opening a textbook on water elementals. Slowly turning pages, he came upon an entry about their ability to extract water from living creatures.

Just as water elementals can extract water, they can also inject water into living beings. Past cultures have used this ability to effectively rehydrate those who had suffered heatstroke.

“Well, well, I think we have a new strategy, Claygon,” he said, looking up at the stoic golem. “Since water elementals aren’t hurt by an impact because they’re made of water, maybe I can have you toss Bubbles at an enemy, then it can inject a potion into them and extract their water stores all at the same time.” He considered that for a time, liking it more and more. “I think I made a good choice here: water elementals could speed up my alchemy too if I have them distil water for me.”

As new options swam through his mind, he felt his mana recover. Alex closed his books.

“Now, let's try this again,” he said, preparing to cast Summon Small Water Elemental again. “I need to figure out this power that helps me with spells that touch other planes.”

If he could figure out how to use it, it could change his entire path through wizardry.

His power could increase faster, faster than even in his wildest dreams.