Chapter 2: Water That Devours

When Zilah had awoken, she was on the jungle floor, on the verge of being covered with water from a river that looked to have cleared its banks not too long before she had woken up. She rolled over to her left side and slowly came to her hands and knees, letting her head drop down. She felt as if she had been hit by a train and was certain she looked just as bad. Feeling stiff, she was about to do a once over of her body, when something resembling a spear landed not too far in front of her. She staggered up from her position and grabbed it out of the ground, but the makeshift head had not been tied on properly, so the head stuck into the ground, while she was rewarded with just the shaft for her efforts. Zilah didn't notice. She was preoccupied by the little girl that looked like she bathed in blood on the regular.

"I'm-I'm just little…" a chill shot up Zilah's spine. The little girl started to walk towards her, crying with eyes that should belong to a dead man. Zilah would have gone to the little girl but…she was smiling. It wasn't right.

"Its not right." The little girl echoed back Zilah's last thought and stopped a few meters away from her.

Zilah backed up, brandishing the headless spear as if it could banish the little girl like a demon. The little girl covered in blood continued forward, this time flashing what looked to be a piece of bone, sharpened to a point.

"Its not right… I'm just little. We all made it there…but we each have to get four keys. BUT THE KEYS ARE INSIDE YOU!"

At this point the little girl looked like she was having a break down. She began pulling at her hair with her free hand, and instead of walking straight at Zilah, she stood still again, her eyes darting from one area of the jungle to the next.

"BUT THEY'RE ALL THE SAME! BUT YOU NEED FOUR DIFFERENT ONES!" The child began shouting at Zilah, on the verge of hysterics. Still the bloody child's smile never wavered.

"Its not fair!" As if the last threads inside the kids' head had snapped, she charged forward with her bone knife high in the air, leaving her mid-section completely exposed. Zilah was not much of a fighter and had misgivings about running a little girl through. Especially one so obviously broken. So, she repositioned herself to hold the shaft like a baseball bat and swung at the little girl with a quarter of her strength. If she had been at least a teenager, a hit like that would likely only piss her off. However, this was only a little girl. When Zilah had struck her, she could tell she hadn't been eating that well for a while because of the vibrations that shot up the shaft when she struck the girl in the ribs.

"agha ha aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" The child cried uncontrollably while clutching her side.

"Get up! Its not broken. Your lucky I don't hate kids…who the hell told you to come at me like that!" The little girls crying made Zilah feel terrible. She wanted to console this child, but felt if she was to condone this behaviour she would be a target of this little shit until she either figured out what was going on and found a way home, or she killed the bloody girl instead of just smacking her down.

The little girl sniffed up the snot that was running from her nose and continued sitting in the mud while hold her side and staring at Zilah. Zilah picked up the bone knife and pocketed it. She may not know what was going on here, but from what she could pick out from the previous babblings of the bloody girl, this place was dangerous, and she needed to figure out what the kid meant when she was talking about keys. She decided that it would be better for her conscious to keep the kid close.

'At the same time, the kid could be useful in giving me information' She grabbed the little girl by the arm and tried pulling her to her feet while fending off her pitiful tiny smacks.

'How did this weak little thing get covered in so much blood? How has she even survived out here?' There were a few things that made Zilah more then a little weary of the child but since she didn't pose and immediate threat, she pulled the little girl along with her as she looked for a place to take shelter and pry out the little girls' story.

A half an hour later, the little girl stopped struggling and allowed herself to be led around by Zilah. Taking this as a sign that she had calmed down a bit, Zilah took this opportunity to ask her, her name.

"Taylor," She answered when asked.

'That's a good sign, whether that's her name or not, at least she can answer correctly,'

" Do you know where we are, or who brought us here," Taylor cocked her head to the side and looked at Zilah, like she was the one who had just appeared out of nowhere covered in blood, raving like a lunatic and waving around makeshift weapons. It made Zilah want to laugh for the first time in what seemed like ages. Before Taylor could answer, she spotted what she had been making her way back for when she had stumbled on to Zilah. In reaction to the sighting, she stood still and contemplated her choices quietly to herself. Zilah stopped shortly after, when she too noticed the impossible wall of water and what looked to be streaks of energy swimming and rippling throughout it. Only the medium sized clearing separated them from the wall of water. Something told her to keep away from the wall, that it would mean death if she touched it. As Zilah began walking backwards away from the it, Taylor began sprinting across the clearing towards it. Zilah ran after her.

"Taylor, don't! We don't know what it is!" The anxiety and fear that she had felt while in the grey had returned, only this time she feared for the little girl covered in blood.

"Taylor, please, don't touch it!" Her voice went up a few octaves when she noticed that the distance that she had covered was not going to be enough to make it to Taylor on time. With only about a foot left, Taylor jumped headfirst into wall of water. Zilah dropped to her knees as she watched the little girl float up the inside of the water wall. The energy that was previously minding its own business, took notice of Taylor and began to swarm her. Every time a spot of energy would touche the little girl, pieces of her would float off and be converted into the very same energy that was eating away at her. Zilah grew numb watching someone so young dissolve before her eyes. It was for the best that the little girl dove headfirst. Thanks to her impatience, her back was facing Zilah. She couldn't see Taylors face twist from the morbid smile that was a permanent fixture on the little girls face, waiver and open to let out the agony she was in. The water wall trapped her screams inside of her.

Taylors last thoughts where, ' I guess I wasn't worthy,' a falsehood that she believed since the water wall didn't take her home, like leader had told her.

When the last of Taylor was converted into wisps of energy , Zilah got up and headed back the way she came. She felt sick to her stomach. Absolutely nothing that had happened to her so far made any sense, at all! If the girl was going to jump, why even bother paying any attention to her in the first place. The more she thought about little Taylor, the more anger she felt. The more anger she felt, the more guilty she felt. As a Scorpio, Zilah hated feeling guilty and would go through large lengths to avoid that feeling. The guilt only served to make her angrier, and the vicious cycle continued until she found an empty den that she squeezed herself into. She worried that an animal may comeback when she fell asleep later, so she rolled a boulder in front with the help of a branch while leaving a spot large enough for her to crawl through. Being ready for anything at this point, she positioned the branch on the inside so that all she would have to do in case of an emergency, would be to crawl in and push down on the branch. Zilah sat outside of her cave dwelling and gazed at the sky. She hadn't noticed before, but it looked as if there where two light sources in the sky. There where other anomalies that she should have taken note of, but the guilt started to gnaw away at her again.

'It will be more productive to build a fire and find fresh water.' With this in mind, Zilah decided to name the wall of water North and anything in the opposite direction south. Searching around her camp site, she looked for something to help mark the way so she wouldn't get lost, but mostly so she wouldn't wander too far north. The wall of water made her feel small and reinforced the idea that she was not on Earth anymore. She found berries that looked like blueberries but irritated her skin on contact. She grabbed a palm sized leaf that was hanging from a tree and wrapped the berries up in it. Confident that she wouldn't get any on herself she squished them up as she walked in search of water. Every few meters, she would mark a tree or a rock with the juices of the berry. A few hours had passed her by without spotting any fresh water that hadn't been contaminated by the river pushing past its banks. Every half an hour or so she would have to make a detour as she would find the muddy water heading for direction in volumes too heavy to be run off. It seemed to Zilah that the river system was just moving at will, at this point.

'Its like its hunting me,' the thought sent a shock wave through out her body as she realised that this is exactly what was happening. Understanding mixed with the feeling of being called out for being an idiot set in and she began searching for high ground. She had already noticed that the more south she went, it was more hilly, but the slope was too gradual to offer any protection from the pursuing waters. Throwing the berries on the ground, she started running east.

'If there's a person controlling the river somehow, its likely the markings I left with the berries that lead them to me,' She didn't know how it cold be possible to control a river, but it seemed the most likely event. Zilah could hear voices up ahead in the distance. They sounded as though they where getting ready for something. She concluded that these were probably the people trying to corner her like a drowned spider. Infuriated, Zilah dug deep within herself for the calm and level headedness that she would need to get out of this situation. Picking up speed, she dashed for the sturdiest tree with low branches that she could find with a quick scan of the area. In her mind, she thanked her brother who had always begged her to go climb trees with him when they where younger. She scuttled up the tree as fast as she could. She got about halfway up the tree when she felt a cold, and wet pressure engulfing her ankle. Zilah was so sure that climbing the tree would force her attackers out into the open, because water can't climb trees, right? Her mind had been so hectic that she did not fully think this plan through. When the water jerked her back with the force of a grown man, she nearly cursed out loud for not thinking about the obvious fact that a tree is a plant, plants drink water, hence how the attacking river was able to climb the tree. The attacking water began to devour her, and Zilah really did scream hysterically, when flash backs of Taylor being devoured by the energy in the water rushed to her eyes. By the time the water had completely encased her, Zilah had passed out once again from complete fear, and mental exhaustion.