Little Town of Torriden (rewriting off Wattpad)

19 ~ Finding Annora

"Just follow me, I know where she is." Estelle turned with an expressionless face, leaving the brothers confused as to how she knew.

    "How many days do you think this trip will take?" Sebastian decided to ask, knowing Kian was curious too.

    "We will get there around sunset."

    The horses sped through the tall grass, sniffing the air. "How do you know where Annora is?" Kian bluntly asked, speeding up to be by the side of Estelle.

    "If I tell you, you either won't believe me or you'll think I'm crazy." She replied, glancing to the side Kian rode.

    "Just tell us." He responded.

    Estelle sighed. "Magic." She only looked ahead of her, feeling the movements of her horse.

    "Magic?" Kian didn't believe what he heard. "You expect me to believe you magically learned magic and used it to find the exact location of Annora? You know you sound unreasonable."

    "You don't have to believe me. But I'm not turning back." Estelle felt like Kian saw her as stupid, but instead of arguing, he let out a loud exhale before taking his gaze off of Estelle and looking ahead of him.

    The group approached a rather muddy, murky swamp, with trees leaning down with the weight of thick, bug coated vines, and frogs the size of bowling balls hopping around mindlessly, with the occasional meal of unlucky insects. The horses halted as they came closer, shaking their heads with the flying creatures landing on their faces.
   
    "We don't know how thick this mud is, or how deep this water is, let's find a quick way around." Sebastian looked at Estelle, hoping for a response, but all that he received was her thinking of what to say.

    Kian made a clicking sound and turned his horse to head to the right, expecting the others to follow suit. "We don't know how long that will take, and I want to get to Annora as fast as possible. We are going through."

    Sebastian needed to reason with Estelle, she was in a trance of finding her sister, and wasn't thinking of the consequences that could come with trying to go through this terrain. "Estelle, it's not safe, we can find a way around."

    "I didn't want you to drag me down, but you two insisted on coming with me, so I'm going to do what I want to, which is not wasting time finding some roundabout way. I'm going through whether you come along or not." Estelle looked annoyingly at the brothers, then called her horse forward, the sloshing sound of the gooey mud on the horse's hoof breaking the silence.

    Sebastian began to pursue Estelle, but Kian stopped him. "Don't. If she gets in trouble, that is on her, let's go around and meet her on the other side." Sebastian felt uneasy, a knot tying itself in his stomach, but complied with what his brother told them to do.

    While the two brothers slowly made their way around the untrustworthy swamp, Estelle struggled to manage in the sludge. Her horse hesitated going further, the brown slop creeping midway up its leg, but Estelle insisted on not slowing down. Her usual understanding of animal's limits seemed to be blocked out with the possibility of her sister's return.
   
    As the ground became more unstable, it took longer for the horse's leg to be pulled out from within the dark mud water, and a pinch of worry filled the woman's mind. As the two became one step closer to the end of this rugged terrain, there seemed to be an immediate and unforgiving drop, as if they had reached the edge of a cliff and proudly stepped off, out into the endless below. Loud and frantic noises erupted into the foggy air, disturbing the nearby critters.

    Instead of jumping back into its original footing, the horse Estelle sat upon seemed to be in the midst of getting dragged into the swamp. There was no time to try and figure out a solution to the problem that lay itself in front of her in a terrifying way, for as milliseconds passed by, the unknown strength from below pulled the horse brutally into the depths below. Estelle jumped in the opposite direction as fast as she could, her body plummeting into the mud and covering her in its filth. Shrieks of pain came from her companion, the noises being cut short as its head went under with no hopes of return. The girl felt a surge of emotions fill her heart, regret, pain, disbelief, and anger, all unmasking her emotionless demeanor that was fueled with the hope of finding her sister.