Young Justice: Poseidonis
August 18th, 2010
Lunch was an interesting experience. The Conservatory’s cafeteria was a sight to see, with floating ‘tables’ arranged not just on the floor of the cavernous hall, but also in several layers high above the ground. There also weren’t any chairs, with clusters of Atlanteans simply floating beside their chosen tables.
The food itself was just as interesting. There were no beverages to choose from for reasons that seemed obvious in hindsight, but surprised me in the moment. It was all seafood, but of a type and variety that was rather impressive. There was fish and shellfish of course, but also sea slugs, salad-like dishes made from kelp and seaweed, sea cucumbers, and bowls of red and yellow fish eggs. There was also something that looked sort of like bread, but it was a very pale white and had no crust.
It was also mostly either raw, boiled, or salted, something else that should have been obvious but just never occurred to me. After all, it would be bizarre for them to have fried or roasted food in the depths of the ocean.
I looked suspiciously down at the serving platter––at least that looked about the same––of bright blue and red snails. I lifted one up with the tongs floating beside the platter, then drew my wand and cast a diagnostic spell on the morsel. It was…rather poisonous. Not deadly, but I doubted I would enjoy the next few days after eating it.
I very deliberately set it back down and quickly got Zatanna’s attention. “Zee, maybe pass on anything you don’t recognize for now,” I whispered, “or at least let me check if it's safe for us to eat first.” I squinted at the weird, spiky log in her bowl, each of the stone containers enchanted to keep food from spilling out of it, then pointed my wand at it and cast the spell again. Huh, “That one…should be fine I guess.”
“That’s probably a good idea. I’ve been avoiding anything that's too brightly colored, but double checking is probably a safe bet. We have plenty of time to eventually try everything we want.”
I nodded in agreement and then went back to examining the food. Eventually, I filled my bowl with ‘salad’, a few pieces of a vaguely-familiar looking white fish filet, the ‘bread’, and then some of the roe––I had fond memories of eating something that looked very similar when I’d visited some distant relatives in Eastern Europe. I also made a mental note to portkey back to Gotham and get some normal food and drinks to keep in my room.
Once Zatanna and I had both confirmed that everything we’d selected was actually edible, we joined Tula, Garth, and a few of their friends at one of the small tables floating near the very top of the hall. Garth cheerfully made introductions and I had the interesting experience of shaking hands with a shy-looking squid person with three fingers on each hand named Topo, a dark-skinned girl with silvery-white hair, a dusting of scales on her cheeks and limbs, and jagged shark-like teeth named Fisna’pann, and a red-eyed, green-skinned boy with webbed ears, claws, and feet named La'gaan.
I can’t say that I particularly enjoyed lunch, but it was interesting. La’gaan was very curious about the surface world and asked a constant stream of questions that Zatanna and I took turns answering so one of us could eat. Perhaps because of the current venue, he seemed particularly baffled by some of the foods that Zatanna listed as her favorites. His fervent declaration that someday he would taste a carbonara nearly made me choke as I tried to stop myself from laughing. The others also had questions, and they were more than happy to answer our own in exchange.
Fisna’pann it turned out was from Shayeris, the same city-state as Aqualad, and didn’t have a great grasp of english. Apparently the language had only been made a mandatory part of school curriculums in the past few decades in an effort to allow Atlantis and the surface world to interact with greater ease, and the school she’d attended had not had a particularly well-run language program. She was thrilled when I proved able to speak the specific dialect of Atlantean used in her home city, something none of the others at the table could replicate.
Finally Topo mostly stayed silent, but that seemed to have more to do with preference than any sort of dislike or other issue. He asked a few questions about Zatanna and I’s magic that I was more than happy to answer, and added his own few cents when we asked about what sort of magic the Atlanteans were studying at the Conservatory. Apparently he specialized in a form of artistic animation magic, which sounded rather reminiscent of the wizarding painters back home, though he primarily worked with mosaics––a very common medium in Atlantean culture––instead of something like oil paints that just couldn’t survive being submerged.
Eventually we were kicked out of the hall by a pair of irate servants. We had been the last people left in the entire chamber and the staff needed to clean up and begin setting up for the evening meal. We said our farewells and then Garth and Tula escorted us back to our rooms.
We all piled into my small suite and Zatanna and I both gratefully retook our seats, worn out even from the comparably short swim from our rooms to the cafeteria and back. There had to be a better way to get around then just swimming, and I knew exactly what I was going to be working on later today.
I conjured a pair of goblets, filled them with water, and passed one over to Zatanna, who gratefully accepted the offered drink and immediately drained it dry. I refilled it for her, then took a long drink myself and sighed in relief. I was very thirsty and being constantly surrounded by water that you were completely unable to drink was rather annoying.
Tula stared at us for several seconds, then finally asked in a tone of utter confusion, “What are you doing?”
“Drinking?” Zatanna said, sounding slightly confused herself.
Garth looked fascinated. “Incredible. So that is how surface worlders take in their needed water? I had always wondered, what with all the air.”
I shook my head ruefully as Zatanna questioned the two Atlanteans. Apparently they absorbed some amount of water through their skin and could easily consume salt water as needed during meals or just while swimming around. Now this was what I had expected to see when I’d discovered I was in a whole new world, not just a slightly altered future version of my own home plane. As much as some Atlanteans did look like normal wizards and witches I might have seen in Diagon Alley back home, they were clearly quite physiologically different from Zatanna and I.
A few minutes later, we all gathered around the desk and Tula and Garth began their slightly amateurish but clearly practiced presentation about the basics of Atlantean magic. The conservatory had a genuinely impressive array of classes and curriculums that students could choose to pursue. The majority of what was taught were different forms of elemental magic.
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Hydromancy was of course the most common, but far from the only option. There were classes on geomancy, aeromancy, luxomancy, ferromancy, and even pyromancy––though they mostly worked with heat rather than outright flames––and basically any other sort of elemental magic I could think of.
However, there was a lot of other magic available as well. Enchanting, art magic like what Topo specialized in, healing, and so much more. There were courses available on how to create the special tattoos that most magic-focused Atlanteans used to focus their powers, an entire curriculum designed to train future soldiers and guards, and even some on the theoretical underpinnings of how magic itself function.
It was rather a lot, though I did notice a few interesting gaps. The Conservatory didn’t seem to have any equivalents to herbology, potions, or transfiguration, and apparently the secrets that the ancient Atlanteans had used to transform their people such that they could survive beneath the waves rather than on land had been all but lost in the past millennia.
After the initial presentation, Tula and Garth demonstrated a few basic spells, and then did their best to coach us through performing them ourselves. After more than an hour and two-dozen separate analysis and detection spells, I finally figured out what exactly Tula was doing when she made the bubble of brightly glowing water weave in and out around her fingers. I extended my right hand out, palm down and my wand securely stored in the wrist holder hidden in my sleeves. I just had too––
Something clicked and the bowl of water I’d conjured to practice with lit up, both visibly and to my magic-sight spell. I slowly curled my fingers into a claw and the water responded, a tendril rising up towards me like a snake. I flicked my hand forward and it shot away, the tendril splattering against the wall and the light dying as my control broke.
Tula, who was lying on her back on my desk with her head dangling down and her feet tapping rhythmically against the wall, started clapping. “You did it!” she exclaimed. “Garth, look! Hydrys got it!” She turned to me. “Do it again, do it again! Before you lose it!”
Zatanna and Garth both crowded around me and I once again extended my hand out above the bowl. I focused, shifting my magic in just the right way and then, just as before, the water lit up and a mental muscle I’d never realized I had flexed for the second time.
“Very impressive,” Garth told me, clapping me on the shoulder. “It took me far longer to first connect with my magic.”
Well, that wasn’t really a surprise. I was already a fully-trained wizard and also probably twice as old as Garth had been at the time. Still, I appreciated the encouragement.
After my initial success, I was told to ‘mess around to really get the hang of it’ and then Tula joined Garth in assisting Zatanna. Two hours later she finally succeeded as well, and, not long after, our tutors had to go to attend to other duties temporarily. They said they’d be back around dinner to take us to the cafeteria, and Garth promised to show me the way to the library after we ate.
Zatanna looked absolutely exhausted, and I was pretty tired as well. However, there was one project that I was absolutely not willing to put off any longer. If I had to bear the indignity of floundering around with all the grace and speed of an armless toddler one more time I was going to tear my own hair out.
Also my arms and legs were still incredibly sore despite having spent hours just sitting in a chair. I’d never known that swimming was such hard work! I considered myself to be rather fit––I wasn’t exactly a star athlete, but dueling required a certain level of physical ability––and yet just the short swim from our temporary accommodations to get food had left me tired and winded.
My first idea was transfiguration. I’d heard of a fascinating herb grown in the Mediterranean called ‘Gillyweed’ that, when eaten, granted the consumer temporary gills and webbed fingers and toes like those of La’gaan to aid in swimming. I was pretty confident I could at least manage the second part, though I simply didn’t know enough about how breathing with gills worked to risk transfiguring some for myself.
However, that didn’t really solve the problem of my exhausted arms and legs. I’d just be making myself swim faster, not reducing the strain on my body. Also I didn’t really like the idea in general, altering my body in such a way seemed…inadvisable, particularly without another wizard or witch present to revert the transfiguration if I made a mistake. Nor would I want to risk casting the same sort of magic on Zatanna.
My eventual solution was…well, not ideal, but at least functional. It was…Okay, it was basically just an underwater broomstick. Even though many people were starting to say that it was an outdated practice now that Cleansweep and Comet were both mass-producing them, I, like basically every other wizard and witch at Hogwarts, had charmed myself a few brooms over the years.
It wasn’t really something I ever focused on, but it had been an enjoyable way to practice my charm-work and had ended up being what boosted my charms OWL from an E to an O. The examiner had been very impressed by my ‘Blacksweep 5’, though he did caution me about maybe coming up with a different name.
“Hey Zee,” I called out.
Zatanna, who was lying on my bed slowly browsing through the catalog of classes and lectures that were scheduled for the coming weeks, glanced over at me. “Huh?”
I picked up the transfigured stick I’d been working on for the last hour and brandished it in the. “I want to test something out. Want to come?”
“Where are you going?”
“Just the hallway I think? Should be enough room.”
She looked dubiously at the four foot long rod with four fins like the fletching of an arrowhead on one end. “You’re not going to break anything, right?”
“I mean…I shouldn’t?”
Zatanna laughed and rolled off the bed, leaving the pages of the catalog scattered across my bed.
My first test could have gone better. I swam up into the center of the hallway, then climbed onto the makeshift broom. The cushioning charm seemed to be working well enough, so I leaned forward a fraction of an inch…
…and promptly lost the broom entirely as it whizzed between my legs and shot off through the water like a ballista bolt, leaving me behind entirely. After several meters, the charms I’d cast registered that there was no rider and the broom slowed to a stop,
Zatanna was laughing so hard she nearly fell backwards through the doorway to my room. I joined her after a moment. “I uh…definitely missed a spell or two,” I said slowly.
“I can see that!” Zatanna managed between peels of laughter. “Is that supposed to be like, a flying broomstick or something?”
“Something like that.” I sighed heavily. “It's so much easier when I don’t have to adjust all the spells to work under water. I really thought that would work.”
Zatanna stared at me silently. “Wait, so it's like, actually a flying broomstick?”
I nodded slowly, thinking back to the many conversations we’d had about my homeworld over the past weeks. Had…quidditch just never come up? It definitely hadn’t. “Yeah. Yeah. They’re not like an everyday thing, but they’re pretty common back home.”
“Broomsticks? Like actual broomsticks?”
“Well, you’d never use a good flying broom for sweeping of course, but yeah. We’ve been using them for centuries.”
“Weird.”
It was a little bit weird, I could admit. “But convenient.” I sighed again. “Well, I’d better get back to work. I want a prototype done by dinner, or better yet, two. One for each of us.”
“Yes please!” Zatanna exclaimed emphatically. “You’re the best Hydrys!”