Chapter 8: "Let me go!"

Panic filled her as she saw the people walking towards them.

It was the same group of men that had tried to rape her that day, and they were coming for her.

Roxanne's stomach roiled as she realised she wasn't alone this time.

 The men were coming for them!

She whipped her head around, frantically searching for Annabelle with but Annabelle was nowhere to be found.

She had either fled or vanished into thin air.

Roxanne would be satisfied with anyone of the two.

As long as her friend was out of danger.

Panic filled Roxanne as she contemplated her current options.

"Oh shit."

She was in the river.

She hadn't bothered to put on anything except a simple white frock, and it was one that would definitely cling to her body now that it was wet. That would be like giving the men more motivation to come get her.

They would take one look at her dress clinging to all her curves, and they would run crazed with lust.

Why did they have to appear at this time?

Roxanne felt frustrated.

The fact that they had come back was enough to make her regret having a body like hers even. She was simply too beautiful.

Roxanne felt the urge to laugh at that statement but the situation she was currently in hardly called for laughter.

She was in danger, real and prominent danger, like the one she had been in a few days ago.

She simply sighed and took the next line of action she felt she could.

She swam.

The water had been warm where she had been earlier, her feet even touched the pebbles at the bottom of the stream and her head had been in Annabelle's laps.

Annabelle had probably run off with her change of clothes too and the small bottle of dye she had used on Roxanne's hair had definitely been abandoned now.

Roxanne steeled her heart and readied herself for the deeper parts of the stream.

She could always get another bottle. They could have it.

They planned to take something that she didn't want to give, something she would never give, not to men that picked on her just because she was the daughter of a fellow man, and not to any man that planned to rape her and justify his actions with whatever bullshit reason he would probably come up with.

She gritted her teeth and swam.

The water got colder further off into the stream.

She could handle the cold. The cold was simply a minor inconvenience.

Roxanne felt a chill run through her as she heard splashing.

She turned her head and felt intense fear pool in her stomach as she saw one of the men already in the water, moving towards her, with a cruel smile on his face.

The sight of the look in his eyes made her want to barf.

Roxanne felt she could hear the lack of a conscience in him as he spoke.

"Don't you want to play with some men, little girl? We have no one to play with y'know."

The men behind him all laughed carelessly and Roxanne resisted the urge to scream and shout for help.

She swam farther into the stream.

She had to get away from them.

The town of Agraville had only one main source of water. The ocean.

The town had a beach at its borders and so had an abundance of water. Some freshwater streams and springs also existed in some parts of the forest, but no one really bothered to use them because of the monster that lurked in the forests.

The same one that had a huge castle and the same one whose memory made her always feel a vague sense of reassurance.

She could do this.

She could survive these men.

Maybe she could pretend to be a witch and threaten them with a curse?

No, that would only create more problems for Lord Alex.

She thought in time with her strokes as she cut through the liquid silk that was the stream. It was a very wide stream and though she could hear the sounds of the men cheering the one who had decided to give chase, but all of that simply felt like background noise.

She already had a plan.

The stream she and Annabelle had chosen led to a waterfall. A very huge one.

The landscape dropped suddenly at one point, and with the existence of the stream, the waterfall came into being.

The waterfall dropped into a lake. A lake that was in the forest and one that was officially in the territory of someone that these men feared.

They didn't fear her and didn't fear the consequences of their actions, but they were cowardly enough to fear Ariel.

A man like them. 

Maybe she could get him to pay them a visit if she happened to run into him, and that was if he wasn't under the influence of the curse and killed her first.

That was the only way she could escape them.

They wouldn't be foolish enough to chase her into such territory.

Roxanne could feel the current getting stronger already, pulling her towards a waterfall that would probably kill her if she didn't execute her dive well enough.

"Hey bitch!"

Roxanne's head whipped to the sound and a stone hit her on the head.

Everything went black for a solid minute and Roxanne returned to the feeling of water filling her lungs at a rapid pace.

Someone had thrown a rock at her.

Her hands fought to get her back up and over the water level.

She emerged with a gasp and she coughed furiously. She could feel her lungs burning and the cold had seeped further into her clothes.

Roxanne realized with alarming clarity that there was someone she had been ignoring all this while.

"Gotcha!"

The man's hands grabbed her hair and yanked on it with a painful grip.

She screamed as she struggled in his arms.

"Let me go!"

"Let me go!!"

Roxanne struggled against the hold the man had on her hair. His other hand loped around her waist and something hard pressed against her leg.

The fear that raced through her came with the intensity of the roaring waterfall.

The last thing Roxanne saw before the world became a thunderous rushing sound was the fear in the eyes of her captor.

She screamed as they fell.