Wake up floating on air, practice wind magic with Anabelle, and meet Splash, a water sprite drawn to your extraordinary mana. A second bond opens a whole new world of magic.

Listen to this episode ↗ · Watch on YouTube ↗

You fell asleep floating on air, and you wake up the same way.

For a moment, you forget where you are. You stretch out your arms, roll onto your side, and reach down for your blanket. Unfortunately, you find nothing. No blanket at all.

You open your eyes. Below you is the flat stone beside the lake. Above you, sunlight shines through the strange wind barrier that you or your wind sprite created last night. Leaves drift around its edges, slowly circling your little campsite. And right in front of your face is your wind sprite.

“You’re awake!”

She flies backward, does a little flip, and comes swooping toward you again.

“Did you sleep well? I slept wonderfully. You snore a little bit, by the way.”

“I do?”

“Only a little.”

You sit up, still floating. You think for a minute that it’s probably okay if the wind barrier disappears, and it does. Fresh morning air brushes your cheeks, and leaves scatter across the stone.

“There’s something I forgot to tell you yesterday,” your sprite says.

“What is it?”

“My name. You didn’t ask either, by the way, which is kind of rude. But, in case you were wondering, it’s Anabelle.”

“Anabelle,” you repeat. “I like it.”

She smiles. “And what should I call you?”

You tell Anabelle your name, and she repeats it carefully.

“Well,” she says, “now that we’ve properly introduced ourselves, I think it’s time you learn to defend yourself. You know, without me helping.”

You glance toward the trees. “Defend myself from what?” you ask.

“Well, I mean, hopefully nothing today, but you’re going to explore the world, aren’t you? There’s all sorts of dangerous things out here.”

You nod.

“Then you should probably know how to do more than just float away from things, though that is a pretty good defense to most stuff. Until something else can fly, of course, or you have to help somebody who can’t fly, and you leave them behind by flying away and looking kind of like a coward. But that’s kind of beside the point.”

You realize that Anabelle does have a point. After all, you really wanted an elemental sprite because you wanted elemental powers. Learning how to use them is exactly what you wanted. Why would you turn it down?

Anabelle holds out her tiny hands. Air begins to swirl beside her. Dust rises from the ground. A few dry leaves tumble into the spinning wind, outlining a round body, two thick arms, and a head. You stare at the creature standing before you.

“I thought I’d make you some, you know, practice enemies. Wind enemies. Windemies. I’ll keep working on the name.”

“Can it hit me?” you ask.

“Gently.”

The creature waves. You wave back.

“Now, yesterday,” Anabelle explains, “you learned to make the wind move you. Today, you’re going to learn to make it move something else.”

She floats beside your shoulder. “Start by feeling the air.”

You close your eyes, and almost immediately, you can feel the air flowing around you, between your fingers, across the lake, through the trees. It’s like it’s an extension of your body.

“Now, gather some between your hands.”

You hold your palms facing each other, and a little breeze starts to form between them.

“Press it together. It’s more powerful if you kind of compact it.”

You try to do just that, but the breeze slips out and blows against the side of your face. Anabelle giggles.

“You have to hold it there. Focus.”

“I was trying to focus.”

“I know, but try harder.”

This time you imagine the air staying inside a little ball, an imaginary ball. As you press your hands together, you feel something pushing back.

“There,” Anabelle says. “Now, send it forward.”

You thrust out your hands, and a puff of wind shoots across the stone. It reaches the creature and blows one leaf off of its shoulder. The leaf drifts to the ground. The creature looks down at it.

You look at Anabelle. “That was the warning shot,” you say.

“That’s very considerate of you,” Anabelle replies.

You try again, gathering the air, holding it, pressing it together, and pushing it forward. This time a proper blast shoots from your hands. The creature stumbles backward, its feet scattering dust across the stone.

“Yes!” you shout.

“Again,” Anabelle commands.

Before too long, you can send a wind blast without bringing your hands all the way together. You reach out, grab the air with your magic, and push it in whatever direction you like.

The creature charges, and you blast it backwards with the wind. It charges again. You dodge sideways on a gust of wind yourself, turn, and send another blast back in its direction. The creature bursts apart in a shower of leaves, and Anabelle claps.

“Very good. Wind doesn’t always seem that dangerous to people until it starts moving super fast, or around in a circle, like a tornado.”

She makes a small circle with one finger, and a tiny tornado forms beneath her.

“Same air, different movement.”

You hold out your hand and picture the wind turning. It spins once, then shoots sideways, and a pile of leaves smacks you in the face. You pull one out of your mouth. Anabelle makes a strange squeaking sound.

“Are you laughing at me?” you ask.

“No, of course not.”

She makes the sound again. “Okay, yeah, I totally am. That was hilarious.”

You grin and try again. This time you keep the circle small. The wind turns around a point just above the ground, and dust begins to rise. A little funnel forms. You move your hand, and the tornado moves with it.

“I’m doing it.”

“You are. Now see if you can keep doing it while something is chasing you.”

She creates two more wind creatures.

“Oh, come on.”

“You said you wanted to learn.”

The first creature runs toward you. You lift yourself over its head, land behind it, and send your little tornado into its legs. Leaves and dust spiral upwards. You find that you can sort of funnel them out of the top of the tornado, or mini-tornado.

Before you can celebrate, though, the second creature bumps you gently in the back. You tumble onto your hands and knees before remembering that you can fly. You shoot straight up into the air, point down at the second one, and this time, you blast it with another tornado. The tornado engulfs the little air creature, spins in a circle, and sends the air straight up and away from you, completely dissipating it into normal air and a few leaves that slowly drift down to the ground.

Then, you see something blue moving in the water.

You stop. Near the shore, a bright shape slips through the lake. You recognize it.

“Anabelle, look! It’s that creature from yesterday.”

The water rises. At first, it looks like a wave. Then, the wave grows arms. A huge creature pulls itself from the lake, its body made entirely of moving water. Two glowing eyes appear inside its head.

“That’s one of your creatures, right?” you ask.

“No, I’m a wind sprite. I can’t really move water. Unless I do it with the wind, of course.”

The creature swings its watery arms. You blast yourself sideways with ease, which still feels a little strange. Then, you gather the air around you, spin in a circle, compress it together, and blast it forward at the creature. The blast sends the creature stumbling backwards towards the lake, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really destroy it.

“Keep moving,” Anabelle calls.

You quickly dart upward and over to the left. The creature follows. You blast it again with air. The creature dodges to the right and sends a stream of water towards you. The water connects with your legs, then cold races around your ankles as it freezes into ice.

You look down to see ice wrapped around your boots and feet. You pull upward, but nothing happens. The creature has you locked to the ground with the water, or at least locked a little bit up in the air and closer to the ground.

“I guess this is one of those situations I can’t completely fly away from,” you say.

“No, but you need to try something else, quickly!” Anabelle yells.

You try blasting the ice with your wind, but it doesn’t really work at all. Some of the water splashes away, but the ice stays where it is. Then you remember. You need to try something more powerful. Something a little bit different.

You start to gather the wind around the creature. You move it in a spiral pattern, around and around and around, creating a medium-sized tornado surrounding the creature. The creature starts to look left and right, unsure of what to do, as you tighten the little tornado, smaller and smaller and smaller, until the water starts to get caught up inside it.

Bits of the water start to shoot upward. You direct the funnel over top of the lake, shooting the water out and back where it came from. Before long, all of the water is gone. You allow the wind to disappear, leaving behind a little blue creature that falls to the ground. A sprite.

“A sprite,” Anabelle says.

You slowly lower yourself to the ground, your boots and feet still covered in giant blocks of ice, luckily not still connected to the creature, but pretty annoying nonetheless. You move over to a rock, smash them as hard as you can until the ice breaks apart on one foot, then you repeat the process with the other before taking to the air and meeting Anabelle where the other little creature is lying on the ground, looking rather dizzy.

“What were you doing?” Anabelle demands. “Why are you attacking us? Are you one of those bad sprites?” she asks.

The sprite raises one finger. “Just give me a moment.”

She closes her eyes. “I think the lake is still spinning.”

You crouch beside her. It’s definitely the blue sprite you chased yesterday.

Finally, she looks up. “I was testing you, I guess.”

Anabelle folds her arms. “Well, you could have asked me if you wanted to test my human.”

“Yes,” the water sprite admits. “I probably should have. Sorry.”

“Probably?”

“I said I’m sorry.”

She looks at you. “I felt your energy yesterday. Your mana, it was so strong that I decided to follow it. But then you bonded with her.”

“With Anabelle?” you say.

The water sprite nods. “I thought the feeling would go away, but it didn’t. This morning it was even stronger.”

She presses a little hand against your chest. “It feels like something is pulling me towards you.”

Anabelle slowly lowers her arms. “That’s interesting,” she says.

“What is?” you ask.

“Your mana. I noticed it yesterday, too. Every time we use some, there seems to be more. Honestly, I made you fly around and everything just to see if you’d exhaust it, but somehow you didn’t.”

“So, I have a lot of mana?”

Anabelle laughs. “You seem to have an almost unlimited mana pool somehow, as far as I can tell anyways.”

The blue sprite stares at you. “Do you think it’s enough for two bonds?”

“Maybe,” Anabelle says. “Honestly, this is the first time I’ve been bonded too. I have no idea.”

You hold out your hand. The water sprite rises, still wobbling slightly.

“My name is Splash,” she says, and she settles onto your palm.

The connection happens almost immediately. You feel Anabelle beside you, familiar and bright. Then, you feel Splash. And suddenly, you feel the lake. You gasp.

Water rests between the stones. It clings to the moss. Tiny droplets float in the morning air. You can feel or sense all of it.

Splash smiles. “Oh, there you are.”

You look at Anabelle. She grins. “Well, that answers that.”

A few minutes later, you stand at the water’s edge with one sprite beside each shoulder.

“Hold out your hand,” Splash says.

You do.

“Now, feel the water. Ask a little of it to come closer to you. You are part of the water now too.”

You imagine the water moving towards you, and a little bulge forms in the lake and rises upward. You pull harder, and a wave splashes over your boots. Anabelle laughs, but you try again.

“Focus,” Splash says, as if that actually tells you how to do this, but you do focus. Just as you did with the air, you try to imagine the water forming into a little ball. The ball rises up out of the lake and wobbles above your palm. You move your hand left, and the water follows. You move it right, and the water follows again.

“Very good,” Splash says. “Now, one of the most important things about water magic, especially when using it to defend yourself, is the ability to freeze it or unfreeze it at will. Start by trying to feel the inside of the water, the little tiny movements of the individual pieces. Focus on them and imagine them slowing down.”

You focus, and you feel that the water itself has a sort of vibration to it. You imagine that vibration slowing down, and frost and ice start to spread across the ball of water. A moment later, a lumpy piece of ice is floating above your hand instead of water. You grin.

“Very good. Now, to make it water again, imagine those little things, those little vibrations, moving faster.”

You imagine the individual pieces of water moving faster, and the ice transforms back into water almost instantly. You practice passing the water from hand to hand, freezing it into ice and allowing it to transform back into water.

“Now, if you want it to evaporate, imagine them going even faster.”

You hold the water between your two hands and try to imagine it vibrating faster. The water starts to boil. Then, it starts to steam, and then it evaporates into the air itself, becoming water vapor.

“Good. Now try to gather it back. Pull it towards you. Allow it to slow down and reform into water.”

You focus on the water that surrounds you. And suddenly you feel it in the air itself. Tiny little bits of water vapor are all around you. You pull them in towards you, imagining them focusing into a ball, and slowly they form into a little ball of water once again.

“Water is almost always around you,” Splash says. “Even when you’re not near a lake or river, you can find it in the air itself or in the living things around. Now it’s time to practice,” Splash says, looking over at Anabelle.

The water moves up out of the lake, forming itself into the shape of a little water creature. The air does the same. The two creatures take a fighting stance. Anabelle and Splash look over at you and give a nod.

Suddenly, the two creatures attack, the water creature blasting streams of water straight towards you and the air creature blasting air. You shoot up into the air to dodge both, but the stream of water follows you. Instead of trying to dodge it, this time, you connect with it instead, grabbing onto the stream of water, spinning it around your body, and blasting it straight down towards the creature who sent it.

The water connects with the creature, and you imagine it instantly freezing, which it does. Air blasts you backwards, making you flip a few times before eventually regaining your composure. Another air blast shoots straight towards you, but this time, you split it apart with your hands, commanding it to go around you. You form it into a concentrated ball, perform an epic front flip, and release the energy. A ball of air shoots straight towards the air creature and instantly blasts it apart.

“Well, good job,” Anabelle says.

“I agree,” Splash comments.

You spend the rest of the day practicing. Your command of both air and water improves rather quickly. Both of the elements start to feel like they’re a part of you. You blast from the air into the water and move through both elements with absolute ease.

Before too long, you start to get a little bit tired.

“I think it might be time to rest,” you say as you land on the ground beside your backpack and take out a little snack. “Wanna create the shelter again?” you ask Anabelle.

“Why should I do that when you can do it yourself?”

“Oh, fine,” you respond, and you reach out to the air once again. Only this time you decide: why stop with air alone when you now command water?

You spin the air around yourself, creating a little dome, and you pull all of the moisture out of it. You move it just outside the spinning dome of air and freeze it into a dome of its own. A dome of pure ice. Two full layers of protection around yourself for the night.

You think about making yourself a bed out of ice as well, but decide against it. Sleeping on air was probably one of the most comfortable things you’ve ever done, and sleeping on ice or maybe even water doesn’t sound so great.

You float up in the air and allow yourself to lean backward at just the right angle. You compress the air beneath your body, forming it into what feels like a little cloud that surrounds you. You close your eyes, focus on your breath, as the two sprites land on top of you. And both of them curl up to go to sleep.

With each breath, the tension releases a little bit more from your arms. It melts away from your legs. Your shoulders drop, your face softens. And your mind slowly wanders off to thoughts of new dreams, new adventures, and new sprites to come.