The water is up to your ankles now. It's beyond cold, chilling your hooves to the bone and slowly working its way up your legs. You awkwardly reach around with a fore hoof and feel around your back. "Nothing," you mumble, feeling a numbness starting in your hooves. You have no way of knowing exactly how fast the freezing water is rising, but it's already up to your knees and you've lost all feeling in your hooves. You bring your forehoof around to your forehead. You feel a thin metal cage surrounding what feels like a hard, blunt spike coming out of your forehead.
"I have a horn, now what?" you ask into the darkness, the water is brushing the underside of your ribcage now. You try pulling on the cage with all your strength but it sticks tight. You are getting a headache from pulling on your horn so hard, but you don't give up. You have to get the cage off, there is no way you can break the chain without magic.
The water is halfway up your side now and your legs are numb.
Your are tugging and tugging but the metal cage won't budge. The cage is gripping on your horn too tight. You are running out of time and getting desperate. You try to use your horn, hoping the cage won't affect it. You concentrate on your horn and try to cast a spell, or more accurately, you try to do something even remotely magical; you can't remember any spells. You feel a burning shock start at the tip of of your horn and work its way down the center of your horn to your mind. The fiery, electric pain reaches your head and you fall into a unwelcome abyss.
You can't breath, you are underwater. The water is so cold you can't feel anything. You almost inhale the crystal clear water, but you manage to override the urge to breath with the urge to survive. You try one last time to take the cage off your horn. You grip it as best as you can with the numb lumps of flesh at the end of your legs. You push forward with you legs and pull back with your neck.
You are almost out of air, the edges of your vision are darkening and spots are dancing before your eyes in the dim light of the doorway. You feel your chest straining to expel the used air inside your lungs, pushing against the back of your lips. You squeeze your lips shut and give one last heave. The cage gives off a screeching sound that is painfully amplified by the water as it slowly grinds its way off your horn.
Your eyes are open but your vision is almost completely black from lack of oxygen. You lungs are screaming for a breath, just one. You blindly aim at the chain holding you down and lash out with your mind, thinking of destruction.
There is a barely visibly explosion as one of the links melts in a fiery nova. You weakly jump up towards what you hope is the surface as your eyes begin to close for the last time...
You want to breath in the water...
You need something in your lungs...
Anything...
You feel your lips parting...
The water is leaking into you mouth...
Slipping past your teeth...
Filling your mouth...
Sliding down your throat...
No! you scream in your mind, giving one last thrust upward. You break the surface of the water coughing and take in a huge gasping breath, filling your lungs with life giving air. You tread water on the slowly disappearing surface as you continue to breath heavily, your vision beginning to clear.
You look around and see no other way out besides the dimly lit doorway. You try and breath as deeply as you can in the ever shrinking air pocket. Eight inches becomes four inches becomes two inches. You take in one last breath then duck under the water and clumsily swim into the doorway just below the surface. Seconds after you leave the room, the door closes behind you, trapping you in a long square duct with the only possible way out being ahead of you.
You swim forward as best as you can with your deadened body; you haven't been able to feel the temperature of the water since you lost consciousness. You keep swimming down the tube, feeling the pressure beginning to build up in your lungs again, but you do your best to suppress it.
You suddenly come to the end of the tube. The duct branches off upwards and downwards. The light is brighter from the top path but there is a strong current flowing downward to the bottom path, which is also lit but with a dimmer, flickering light. You don't have much time to decide which direction to take. You...
>Swim upwards against the current toward the brighter light.
>Swim downwards with the current toward the dimmer light.
Voting is now closed while I write the next chapter.