Trepidation || Wanda Maximoff

50|One More Breath

Riley's POV
I woke quickly, my breathing too fast. A panic attack was clawing at me trying to complete control me. Eventually it won as my breathing increased and increased. I tried to calm my self down but my mind was blank as if panic and stress where wrapping around my mind allowing only them to be thought about. Eventually my breathing slows as I manage to gently tap the tune to some music while counting to the beat. My stomach grumbles and gurgles as if begging for food, though I cannot give it any.

Again I am forced into the training room where I am instructed to kill a certain amount of people in under a certain time. Today was different though, I had to use spears and was not allowed to use my webs or climb up the walls. I was over the time limit by just under thirty seconds so the guards were permitted to beat me up. Battered and bruised I was dragged to the room to be punished.

"We are cutting your meals down to one meal every two days, permanently. You deserve it after how disobedient you have been, you have two days left of no food and then you will be given a meal every two days. You deserve no more than that" Hades tells me, I not weakly.

"You will be chained to the tank over there" Umbridge says, I look over and see a large metal water tank with a strip of glass around the top of the tank around the size of a head. The tank must be about seven to eight feet tall.

I am put inside the tank and a chain is tied to my ankle the chain must be 4 feet long with a large weight on the end. I am not chained to the bottom I am chained to a weight. A very heavy weight but its still a liftable one with the added strength I have. There seems to be some sort of drainage system. Where a lever on another wall can open the large drain and drain the Water slowly. But why would there need to be a drainage system?

"The water will slowly fill up the tank, not completely, just to the glass area. To survive you will have to swim to the surface and breathe but the weigh will make that harder. The more we need to punish you the longer you will stay in the tank. There may also be punishments after. Who am I kidding there will be punishments after but this will always be the first" My answer is given to me by Mother Gothel/ Dolores Umbridge.

My anxiety builds along with the water level.

"You will be here for ten minutes today" Hades orders

As the water level gets to my head I tilt my neck so I can try and breathe as easily as possible for as long as possible.

Eventually the water level rises too high, I have to use as much energy as I can to get to the surface. I would use my webs but the water blocks it and it seems the ceiling or roof of the tank has been laced in some material or chemical that doesn't allow the webs to stick.

As the time passes my energy decreases as fatigue sets in, my muscles cramp as I try and swim to the surface to gain just one more breath. Thats what I keep repeating myself. One more breath. My lungs burn as I cough and splutter as the struggle just to get one breath increases. I let out a deep breath to blow the water out. My body fights me on this, it wants to breathe in, yet at the same time refuses to. Once more I break though the surface, spitting out the horrid, cold, mirky water. I try to put more power into my arms and will my legs to kick. It wasn't this hard a few minutes ago. I squirm, trying to get on my back, but it doesn't work. My legs are weighted, heavy quite literally. They slow. It's so hard to get them to move. A chill seeps into my bones and weighs me down along with the weight on the chains. Even my arms grow heavy. My body screams out for rest, it aches for it, and I just ache. I have to keep kicking. But I just want to stop. To let the water consume me and let the pain end, to finally be allowed some peace.

I lay in the water, with no energy left. My eyes are open the smallest amount allowing me to see the water level slowly decreasing. eventually it reaches me I breathe a deep breathe and cough out the water in my lungs. I lay there on the brink of unconsciousness. I am lifted up and placed on a metal table. How many of these do they have?

People in lab coats, who I can only assume are scientists, take my blood. They must have messed up the last batch. After taking the blood they need, they walk out of the room. Hades grabs a knife and cuts my arm, The pain shot up my arm like fire. I look around and realise it wasn't just a knife it had a very textured surface that added to the pain. The pain exploded in my head with a blinding whiteness. It made me dizzy. It made me reel. The pain was like needles that had been dipped in alcohol had been jammed through me skin, like my arm had been replaced with ice and electricity wired straight into my spine. I scream as the knife is dragged along my arm. Even though the cut was no longer than 4cm it felt so much longer, it could have been almost drowning adding to the pain I felt throughout my whole body a long with my blood already being taken.

The guards drag me back to my cell where I lay in silence and agony. And, just when the pain was at its worst, it dissipated, like fog off some terrible lake as I drifted off to sleep again, drained.

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Hello readers, I know that the chapters have been shorter but I just have some writers block on what to do. I also don't want them to drag on and it get too boring. Hope you are enjoying :)

Yay chapter 50!!!!