Benevolent River Spirit

The waterbend cost is where the whole card lives. On paper this is a 4/5 flyer with ward and a scry-2 landing for two blue mana, a rate that would be absurd if the mana cost told the truth. It doesn't: the additional waterbend is the tax, and you can pay it with mana or defray it by tapping the board you've already built. That flips the usual convoke-style calculus. Instead of paying full price, you're spending your existing artifacts and creatures as one-time labor, meaning the spirit lands cheapest when you're already ahead and stays stranded in hand when you're behind. It rewards a developed board rather than a bare battlefield, which is an unusual place for a two-mana blue creature to want to live. The body backs up the investment: ward makes it expensive to remove after all that setup, flying keeps it relevant on defense and offense, and the scry-2 smooths the following draw so a big turn doesn't leave you flooded. The design tension is honest, tapping five worth of permanents to cast a single threat is a real tempo cost, but a 4/5 evasive body with a protection tax attached is the kind of payoff that justifies emptying your board's untapped resources for a turn.