Fight or Flight

Chapter 21

Enola

I was in the middle of swallowing a gulp of water from the lake when I felt a powerful surge of magic around me. I had just enough time to recognize the 'wrong' feeling of the hidden spell that I had been sensing all day... then I felt a horrible helplessness as I realized I was unable to finish swallowing the water that was halfway down my throat.

I couldn't move!

The magic spell had paralyzed my body. I struggled to reach for my own magic, but my throat was starting to burn. The counter for a paralysis spell was... you needed to weaken the hold on your muscles, and push your own magic against the spell...

My attempt at concentration turned to panic as my vision began to blur. I couldn't breathe! I needed to swallow to take another breath of air, but I couldn't – my muscles weren't working, even for something as simple as a subconscious motion I had done thousands of times before. I had to... I had...

An icy fear filled my body as the drifting spots of black swam across my vision. They grew larger, blotting out my view of the water right in front of me, and I had a sensation of falling... then everything went black.

~

My head really hurt.

That was my first thought as I came back to consciousness. I had a terrible headache. I started to craft a spell to deal with the headache... but when I reached for the magic to power the spell, nothing happened.

A cold feeling came over me as I tried again, only to be met with the same lack of results. Something had happened to my magic – I wasn't able to cast spells.

I tried to claw my way to my feet, but something heavy was pushing down on my back. I opened my eyes and tried to lift my head, but it was just as stuck.

A heavy net was pinning me down.

Thick ropes were wrapped around me. They felt soaked, and even though I couldn't move my head, I had enough of a view of the ropes to see water dripping from them. It must have been underwater until recently, and... hidden in the lake? My groggy mind slowly began putting things back together, and I glanced around as much as I could with my head stuck in place.

I was still near the lake, but had been moved away from the shore. It was still daytime – it couldn't have been more than an hour later, at most. The net was held in place by heavy boulders, and it didn't budge at all when I tried to pull against the ropes. I was stuck.

There didn't seem to be anybody around me, but... somebody must have dragged me away from the shore and put this net over me. The ground was wet around me, which suggested that whoever it was had been hiding in the water...

"It's awake. Be ready!" The chill inside me grew stronger as I heard the naga language – a language I had painstakingly memorized to help convince my parents I was ready to join the Sea Guard – spoken in a strange voice. The voice of a naga.

I struggled against the ropes again, suddenly even more desperate to get away, but they kept me just as trapped as before. I reached for my magic and tried to summon the simple fire spell that had gotten me blamed for burning down the lair...

The spell sputtered and died without so much as drying the ropes around me.

I tried the simple spell again, but the results were the same. I could feel everything through my mage senses – the ropes were there. My magic was there. I could sense two creatures behind me, could feel the slight discomfort from a headache that one of them was dealing with... but when I tried to use my magic to affect the ropes, it just ended up being washed away by some unseen force. A spell of some kind was stopping me from using my magic, no matter how much of it I poured into the fire spell.