Chapter 11: Wet and Furious
The scantily clad waitress told the truth, Katrina realized that as soon as she saw the canal just outside the trade district. A thick layer of ice shone under the sunlight as if it was winter, despite the temperature being warm enough to completely forget about clothes.
"It's... Not melting," Sophia remarked carefully, trying to distract herself from all the stares people from the nearby market gave her.
"Must be magical ice, fancy-schmancy," Katrina squatted near the canal's edge and knocked on the solid substance.
In the next second, the girl lit up her fist and struck as hard as she could. The ice cracked under her muscular arm, but didn't react to the fire at all. A couple of fireballs didn't help either. It made sense, albeit this comforted neither of the girls. While wielders' powers abided by the rules of nature and the specific reactions between elements, mages could fuel their spells with mana to make them the way they wanted, ignoring natural laws. This ice was a fine example of that, it seemed like its temperature was fixed by the hydromancer's spell, and neither sun nor fire could do anything about it.
"Hm, well, that's an issue," Katrina sprung up, her round boobs bouncing along, "I thought someone who freezes stuff would be the easiest to deal with... But alas."
Then, the girls heard whispers coming from behind them and turned around to see about a dozen of people, their stares fixed on the two naked bodies.
"What's wrong?" Katrina smirked, "no worries, you can gawk at us however long you'd like!"
"Excuse me, miss," one richly-dressed man frowned, "you are certainly beautiful, but we aren't here for that. We need water to drink, and with the canal not working, we can't get any. I wanted to ask how long it'll take you to fix the problem, that's all."
"Oh," the redhead scratched her head awkwardly, "well, no worries about that either. We're thinking about solutions as we speak."
Yes, Katrina thought, she didn't have any right to forget that these people needed her and the sunwielder to survive. It was time for some serious thinking.
"Hey, Sophia... Could you rub my shoulders, please?" The redhead asked in a surprisingly cute tone, causing the sunwielder to blush a little.
"I'm just thinking better that way," Katrina smiled.
"Oh, sure," The blonde reluctantly took her hands off her privates and started massaging the knight. It felt a bit awkward after that day at the brothel, about which Sophia still kept silence, but she threw these thoughts away for the sake of their mission.
"No sight of the hydromancer herself, though?" The redhead asked the nearby crowd.
"Not at all," they replied in a defeated tone, "though she was seen a couple of times earlier this week... Villagers have been saying things about a girl with "shark-like features" swimming in the canals. Said that she taunted them, took suggestive poses and shot streams of water when they tried to approach her. Nothing beyond that, however."
"So nobody has any idea where she could be?" Katrina was immersed in her thoughts.
"Well, what are the chances that she's right there?" Redhead suddenly pointed at the canal a minute later.
"Here?" Sophia asked.
"Yes... A bit suspicious that a mage could keep such a large body of water completely frozen for so long. This must be a challenging spell to pull off, and if that's so, the hydromancer must be somewhere..."
Katrina stepped onto the ice and instantly slipped with her bare feet, falling down to all fours with her naked backside lifted up and pointed right at the audience.
"Is this... A part of your plan?" One of the folks scratched his head.
"No, now stop standing over my shoulder and let me do my job," Katrina replied harshly as she ignited her legs and began sliding on the canal's icy surface.
There had to be some sort of a trick in this whole construction, the ice block simply couldn't exist on its own. But how could the hydromancer pull this off? Katrina made her best to look through the ice and try to feel whether something was off, hitting and cutting it here and there. She was almost ready to give up when she heard a sudden crack at the very center of the frozen canal.
"Of course," the redhead slammed her forehead, "where else could the caster be?"
The girl carefully approached the center, then grabbed her sword in such a way that the handle was looking downward and striked. Her strength drove the weapon down through the ice, causing it to break and shatter into small pieces. Then, Katrina felt it, the sword hit something else. Something softer and warmer, which could only be flesh.
"Ouch!" A female scream made its way out of the icy hole, and a series of cracking that followed made Katrina jump away.
The icy surface broke apart with a deafening sound, launching its pieces everywhere.
"Get down!" Katrina commanded as she took cover along with her naked friend.
When it was over, a figure rose to the top of the canal and confidently stood up near its edge, landing her hands on her feminine hips. Katrina smirked when seeing her while Sophia just gasped: it was a beautiful woman, not much older than the firewielder herself, who was also completely nude. Her short white hair barely concealed the gaze of her murky, devilish eyes, and her body... While it was toned and beautiful, it was also incredibly weird. The hydromancer's skin was as blue as the clear sky, her limbs had claws on them along with a couple of fins, behind her back there was a tail of a shark, and on both sides of her neck, there were gills which slightly moved each time she took a breath. It almost looked like she was a shapeshifting mage who got stuck mid-transformation.
"Ow-ow-ow," the sharkgirl rubbed her forehead, "gods, why did you have to do that, you meanie? I slept so well!"
