Right. This damn thing has been the source of your problems for way too long. You lug the book out of your saddlebags, and you're about to throw it in the lake when you realise that you can do way better than that- you clutch it in your forelegs and gain some height, getting a couple of hundred feet up before dropping it over the biggest, cleanest, least broken patch of ice on the little lake.
The crunch it makes as it blasts through the ice to sink into the depths of the pond is deeply satisfying.
You land back by your saddlebags, and you feel the same way you always do when you take your frustrations out on something; half relaxed and happy, half a little bit guilty. You sit down for a moment, and decide you'll catch your breath before scoring the ice, just to enjoy the gentle whisper of the last winter wind, the last glimmer of the sunshine on the glittering ice. You take in the sights around you before you hear a sound that doesn't quite belong. There's a gentle bubbling noise coming from the tarn, and it doesn't take you long to identify it as coming from the hole you dropped the book in. The surface of the water is roiling, swirling with iridescent bubbles, and you've got just enough time to think it was perhaps a bad idea to throw the book into the lake when the water starts to pour over the edges of the hole.
The moment it touches your skin, you feel an appalling, burning cold so intense you'd scream if you could breathe. No part of you is responding- your wings are half unfolded, your eyes burning where you can't blink, and you can't breathe.
The water flows from the hole, running up your legs, colder than ice in defiance of its own nature. It covers your wings, and you can't feel them any more, and you can see the water's doing something else- it's flowing into another solid shape as it coats you. It's building another pony, a water pony.
It has wings just like you.
The water flows around your nose, around your mouth and eyes, and as the water pony's face becomes solid, you swear you can see it smile the moment you can't feel your face any more.
"Hello," it says, and you don't understand what that sound means and you can't breathe.
It says some more sounds, as the cold seeps into your skull and your ears and your tail, and by the time the water pulls you through the hole in the ice the water pony is speaking entire sentences you don't comprehend.
It's cold down here.
You hope she comes back for you. She seemed so familiar.
You can't breathe.
THE END
You received a Bad Ending. Poor Raindrops.
There's a few ways you could have gotten here.
To go back a step, Click here for Chapter 15.
Or Click here for Chapter 25.