Outside the Mirage

#28: The Pools of Favor

"So," Bennett said, "for the last part before I teach you the spell, you'll need to really fortify your arm. This spell is crazy dangerous and without it, you'll end up weakening yourself significantly."

"How do you know that?" Merlyn asked.

Bennett held up his stump where his hand had once been. "You probably read that I lost my hand in an accident, and that's true. But casting this spell the first time basically ruined my hand. I couldn't use it at all, losing it to save someone's life at least gave it a purpose one last time."

"Alright," Merlyn said, following Bennett. "So what do I need to do?"

"Well, you're not going to like it," Bennett said. "It's part of why I had to leave."

"Enchanted water," Vanessa guessed.

Bennett looked at her. "Yes."

"It's illegal," Vanessa said. "The Manual of Magical Law said it's dangerous."

"It can be," Bennett said. "Come. Let me show you."

He began to hobble away from the shack, following a small path that lead even further away from the main road. The three of them walked for a while before they came to a massive, lonely boulder.

"A boulder?" Merlyn asked.

"It's not just a boulder," Vanessa said. "It's a rock."

Bennett chuckled a little and placed his hand on the rock. "It's a door." As he spoke, the rock was suddenly covered in a variety of glowing runes. Merlyn's eyes widened and Vanessa looked like a kid on Christmas as part of the boulder disappeared into a simple archway. Bennett quickly went in, the other two following behind him, walking down a narrow stairway of stone.

"Enchanting water is tricky," Bennett said. "I told many of my students, Merlyn included I'm sure, that water reacts to magic differently than most things. Unlike most physical objects, once water has been enchanted, there's no way to remove the magic from it again. It's just impossible. The water and the magic become one.

"For a long time, B.R.O.M. believed that enchanting water had only one effect: creating a quick way to make an army of warlocks. This was a plan used by both the Red Woman of Mesopotamia way back in the day and far more recently by Demetri the Blackhearted. Both were pretty unsuccessful, but the barebones part of the plan did work. Drinking enchanted water can make someone of non-magic blood a warlock."

"Which is why it's illegal," Merlyn said.

"But they were wrong about the limits of enchanted water," Bennett explained as they continued down the stony stairs. "That is only one use of it. It turns out that if you just enchant water differently, it can be used for a variety of purposes, both for good and for ill."

"And that's what you've been doing?" Merlyn asked. "You've been experimenting with enchanted water?"

"Safely," Bennett said. "None of it is public, except that creek outside. And that creek is harmless, it just works as something of an intruder alarm. It alters me whenever someone passes over it."

Merlyn and Vanessa exchanged looks, the former concerned and the latter impressed.

Finally, the three of them arrived at the ground level. The room was larger than Vanessa expected, about the size of a school gymnasium, with three decent sized pools of water. Shelves had been carved into the walls, each with a variety of vials, each labeled. There was a small podium with a large book open on it, with what appeared to be a bunch of recipes listed out.

"I call it the Pools of Favor," Bennett said. "I've enchanted nearly two hundred vials of water to different effects. I have vials that can cure diseases and I have vials that can cause trees to grow in minutes rather than decades. I have a vial of water that, when poured on stone, can turn it to liquid. I have a vial of water that can regrow bones."