Give Me a Sword and a Thousand Words: [Battle] Laguna - "Undertow"

3. Freeze! It takes seconds to realize that the portal has closed behind you. It takes another moment to realize you can’t breathe. Draw or write your character struggling for air as the water closes in around them. 

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The singing in his ears was becoming difficult to ignore. At first, he thought someone was playing music outside. But as Scap rose to walk around and find out where the sound was coming from, it was strongest near the inner part of the Guild, not the doors.

A tug on his heart drew him towards the portal hallway. Pulling like a current, those deep currents of more than just wind or water, a snare of motive and will rather than just physical movement.

To the portal.

A countering whisper in his mind warned him that he was walking into something inevitably adventuresome, and he would probably be whisked away and tangled up in someone’s issues again.

Come to the City.

He couldn’t get his legs to listen to his brain. He couldn’t understand why his body chose to heed the ominous pull of the heart when the logical thing was to assess what’s going on in the first place.

You’ve been gone for so long. Time to pay a visit.

The song wrapped itself around his brain, drowning its protests, hushing its fears. There was no choice but to follow. 

Come back home. I’ve been waiting for you… 

Those should be comforting words. Scap did not feel at all at ease, haunted by the sing-song quality of this enchanting voice. And yet he hurried on with more determination towards his destination, the other portal entrances a blur as he chose one he knew he had never been to before–

SPLASH.

Water. The feeling of buoyancy and up, the hydrostatic pressure of many cubic meters of fluid pressing down. Bubbles escaping him. Salt in his eyes, his mouth.

The pull wouldn’t let go, now combined with a stronger magic. He fought it at first, in the blind, flailing frenzy that came with being shoved suddenly into a new and unexpected place.

What good was being able to hold your breath for eight and a half minutes if you didn’t have time to take said breath beforehand to begin with?

The ringing in his ears wasn’t just the song anymore, pressurized by watery darkness closing in. He had just enough presence of mind to carry out one train of thought, perhaps the most rational one he had made in those last five minutes. 

One could not expect to fight a current - whether physical or magical - and win. It was join and ride, or exhaust yourself and… well, he preferred not to consider that option.

When he resigned himself to the undertow, the song returned in full fortissimo, wrapped him up in its resonance, and whisked him away.

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