The river rippled and surged over the bridge. With a sound like a crashing wave, the water rose and formed into a strange serpentine creature, with a head somewhere between an eel, a snake and a horse. It turned to look at the two first years, slowly sliding through the river until it could meet their eyes. "So..." The voice didn't seem to come from anywhere in particular, and the creature's jaw didn't move. "You're new..." The surface of the water making up its body went smooth again, rippling as it focused on the water elementalist girl. "New blood and new water. You want to cross my bridge?" Emphasising its control over the water, the entire watercourse of the river turned into the creature's body, curling into a tube that rose a foot or so over the riverbank, settling down a moment later.

[@Stern Algorithm][@Pseudo Stygian]