It was unendurable. But if I could endure it anyway, I could survive and win. I had to think that. Desperately, I tried to cast Spring of Life to restore myself—but I couldn't muster the concentration to call upon the technique. Even more desperately, in throes of agony from what must have been thousands of degrees, I tried to take a healing pill from my Inventory.
It melted in less than a second as soon as I brought it out, and it dissipated into mist in about five times that long. I was out of options. I was out of time. Somehow, that realization made the pain I was experiencing from the heat of the closest thing I'd known of to the literal fires of hell even worse.
Deliriously, I imagined the Boatman. I may or may not have actually hallucinated him appearing before me, saying "now this...this is a river we all must cross one day, whether in tens of years or millions."
"But for you...not today."
