Zora: Shadows and Magic

Part 3: Kidnapped

Chapter VII: Zora 

Zora hit the water head first. The warm water felt suffocating as it pushed in all around her. Immediately the combating current sought to suck her up in its powerful clutches. She immediately sprawled out her arms to try and fight the current and break the surface for breath, when she felt a hard grip around her kicking ankle. Zora was dragged deeper down into the bay.

The water was mixed with chum and flush from the many docked ships but was still clear enough to see Tryston next to her when she opened her eyes, she saw that he also was being pulled in the same direction. His lack of body movement suggested to her that he may have been knocked dizzy from their fall.

Fight as she could, she could not break the grip so she could not stop her forced descent, and as she reached greater depths, she began to feel the weight of the ocean compressing against her small lungful of air as well as against the rest of her body. Her head began to throb and her limbs were becoming more increasingly more tired and difficult to move. In the near weightlessness of the water it was hard for Zora to generate any effective force against whoever was pulling her down. Her fading hope was that whoever it was would tire out themselves and would be forced to let her go.

Damn! I feel like I'm being drowned by an ox!

The water temperature was beginning to drop and her visibility was cut by half as light from the sun lessoned. Then the pull on her ankle shifted and all of sudden she was being pulled towards the cliff. Then everything was swallowed into darkness.

She ceased to struggle to try and save what energy she could but as Zora continued to be pulled down through the dark panic began to set in, her lungs were burning and her skull felt as if it would crack at any moment. She could not see or reach out and feel whether the other two in her company were still next to her. Her mind tried to gauge in some capacity what was happening and how she could escape but the lack of oxygen combined with the increasing pain was making it very difficult. Though her eyes were shut she began seeing bright white spots behind her eyelids.

Cowards! Who would kill someone like this?

Even though her mind was beginning to fog, she still could think of one name who might be responsible. Only one faction had the ineptitude and apparent resources to plan and pull off such a perfectly timed kidnapping and murder, The Order. She had already guessed that was who sent the mock guard soldiers after them.

The white spots began to dim as they were swallowed up by a black haze that began suffocating her consciousness, and then the force around her wrist suddenly released. Her body began to float upwards, but far too slowly for her to reach the surface in time. She tried to break through the haze, but it was as if her mind and her body were swimming through tar.

Then, through her muddled thought, something inside of her began to glow hot. She felt strange shots of heat pump through her, like a separate will trying to jump start her body into motion. Suddenly her rage was stoked by something unknown, but then whispering taunts filled her foggy mind,

Are you really so weak? Will you really just die like this, forgotten and buried like some gutter trash?

Her anger spiked inside of her at the thought of her presented weakness. Her heart started to beat heavily against her chest, forcing a power to suddenly rush to her limbs. The power stung through her like searing hot metal but she felt strong, really strong. Her arms began to take heavy strokes and she began to kick her legs violently, she built immediate momentum and climbed through the condensed dark at a rapid rate, soon she made out a circular shape of light above her.

Even for being in water she felt incredibly light, as if she were swimming through air, not water. The power pulsing through her didn't just fuel her limbs with impressive strength, she felt her awareness somehow expand beyond her own body. Without having to look, she kicked hard to her left and swung her arm in a large arc and felt her hand hit what felt like someone's head, she grinned wickedly and grabbed tightly a hold of what must have been wet hair, at the same time she felt a strong hand grab the back of her shirt. She focused all her new found strength into swimming as hard as she could towards the light.