I woke up in a void, not knowing who I was, or what had happened. The grip on me was tight, but gentle, just enough to assure me that I wouldn't fall.

I blinked as a light approached. Faint, but undeniably alive, a pale orange, tinted with yellow, flowing and writhing, contorting as if in pain.

As we approached, I realised we were entering a tunnel of rock, with pools of near white hot magma on the gravel floor. This was the light reflected on the walls and ceiling, that I had seen as we drew near, crawling over the rough surfaces as the magma flowed endlessly on.

I cringed as my feet trailed barely a foot from the surface of the pools, but the figure carrying me paid no heed to my discomfiture. I looked up and saw that it was a man with pale skin, sharp features.

He looked neither young nor old; his hair was long and black and flowed over his shoulders, trailing behind him in the breeze as we traveled. He was wearing what I thought to be a decadent suit in the mid Victorian style, with white lace cuffs springing from the sleeves, covering the powerful arms and gentle hands gripping under my shoulders.

I turned back to the cave and found that we were drawing close to an opening. The magma beneath was flowing in abundance, deep and powerful, scalding my trailing feet as we passed over head. I watched as a blackened lump, lying between two pools became clear. It was a body. A man had been dropped, still alive, trying to crawl away from the molten rock, but had failed to escape and died. His charred remains, the blackened skeleton, were all that was left.

I watched as we passed the body, keeping my eyes on its form until it passed from view, then turned back to the object of my captors attention. The opening was enormous. It stretched from horizon to horizon, the rocks of the cave encroaching on its space, surrounding it in solid foundations.

The cave tunnel opened up into a room, stalagmites and stalactites like mountains around us, and we stopped mere inches from the surface of the opening. It looked like glass, but rippled like water with no reflection.

I reached out to touch the surface and my fingers touched icy cold air, tingling on the skin of my hand.

"Now, you will do this for me."

I looked up at my captor as he spoke, his voice was soft, and the quiet susurration of echoes around the cave spoke to me, sending a chill through my body. His eyes were the colour of mercury and stared at me as if I were nothing, just a means to an end.

He smiled, gently, and I realised from the heat surrounding my feet, that he was lowering me into the magma below us. I struggled, and his smile grew wicked. I looked down in panic, watched my feet as they were lowered into the molten rock.

I burned; the pain wracked my body, spreading up my legs and into the rest of my body until I could think of nothing else. But I didn't die, and my body did not disintegrate as I had expected. I was whole, my flesh stayed on my limbs, but the pain did not stop.

He continued until I was resting up to my waist in the magma. He woke me when I fainted, muttered incoherently to keep me awake through the pain. As I grew used to the feeling, as it began to no longer rule my world, he smiled once again.

"Now, my lamb. Be my conduit to the world."

And the pain grew. It spread up through every vein in my body, as if fire was traveling through my blood. Until, it replaced my blood. I knew it had charred the vital fluid from my body and I was now channeling magma through my very being.

He smiled at me again and touched the portal. It rippled around his hand and spread outward, leaving an open space in its wake. I could see through this opening now, into a blue sky, the sea below me.

"Now. Let it come forth."

His voice was no more than a whisper, but it triggered something within me and I gagged. My body, already on fire, tried to disengage itself as new, fresh pain wracked it repeatedly until my mouth opened and my stomach heaved.

I began to spew magma from my mouth, through the opening before me, down into the sea where I saw a beautiful ship was sailing.

The ship was built of iron, and to me, this seemed wrong. It was painted pearly white, decorated with gold and crossed with a thousand small windows. There was no steam rising from any part of it, only light, a light that seemed somehow stronger than the light I had known.

The magma flowed down and struck this ship, pooling on its surface, melting through the hefty iron to seep within.

I heard screams. Endless cries, incomprehensible in a language I did not recognise, a language that could not have come from my own world.

I watched, in agony of body and spirit as the magma spewing from my body dealt death to every soul aboard the ship, eventually sending it crashing to the bottom of the ocean, carrying the charred remains of it's occupants with it. They had been unprepared, and hadn't known how to react. No one had survived.

When it was over, my dark, beautiful captor closed my mouth, resting his finger tips on my chin and whispered, "You did well. I will return tomorrow."

And he left me, unable to move, stuck in the magma, my body aflame with the pain that should have killed me, the heat that should have charred me. Alone, with no respite.