You find yourself sailing upon a sea of molten red; an odor strong and metallic that burns your nose and lungs, a brightness that blinds the eye and hurts the mind. It sears brands upon your face and chains upon your body; a steel-gray shell, an iron ship, is all that stands between you and the burning lake. You have not come here by choice, but there is also no way back; you must continue forth, and see the river clear, yet the journey is so long, and the path there so unclear.

Worst of all, you do not pass here alone.

These mighty colossi, formless and bare, they wade through the fires, they march there upon you, like moving mountains of brick and stone. Their faces, if they be faces, remain hidden from your gaze; their eyes, if they be eyes, remain far beyond your sight. They hold hammers upon their arms, and raise them. They seek to sink you? Has death grasped your soul at last? You feel an impact that shakes the teeth, so hard your vision blurs. Their hammers had fallen upon your ship, side by side in perfect symmetry. Your sight dims again, and you feel another shake. Their soundless blows rain upon your vessel, deforming it, caving it ever more so; what had brought you to these fates? Yet they hammering holds no malice. Their touch, though rough, bears no malice; their hands, though heavy, seek to destroy not, but to shape it to greater heights, like a smith upon his forge.. They wish to forge it, then? To mold your raft into a vessel, a galleon standing proud? You know not, care not, think not of such grand designs! You know only of your fate, your current fate, your roiling fate. You grasp your arms around the mast, hoping you will not be thrown off and burnt into an withered ember! For now, you must hold, hold to your life, hold on tightly!

You hold on tightly.

You hold on tightly..

You hold on tightly...

...