underwater fate

I dreamt that I was being "condemned."  In parenthesis because I'm not sure if it was condemnation from something I had done or it was something that just was inevitable  ...

An old weathered man in a gown was holding a staff spitting out words of my fate.  I would have to jump off the cliff that to my back. The part of the cliff I was standing on had red and ice blue posts that would light up with either fire or beams of cold. I couldn't walk left or right, just forward between the posts or I might get burned or frozen, although one of those options was going to be my end either way.  I didn't look for an escape because it had to be and I knew it.

Was I to jump into boiling water of fire or the frozen option?  It looks like it would be freezing to death, I could handle that I thought, not the worst way to go.  I looked over the edge and there was a mermaid emerging out of the water... I looked at her face and she seemed to be beckoning me with a pleasant welcoming look. I thought I had better just do this, so I jumped and plunged beneath the water... I could feel the icy cold and see a bit through the greenish water. I saw my hand and wanted to see how it would freeze.  I noticed I wasn't floating up to the top and I heard the mermaid say to breath in. Was I to die by drowning instead of being frozen solid? I breathed in and found that I could breath the water, I was swimming and not freezing.  But I still wasn't coming to the top, this was my world now.