A series of cliffs and plateaus form nine rings, six above you, two below. A boiling river of blood runs through the seventh ring, and you are standing in it up to your knees. You start to raise one leg out of the viscous current, but a centaur guarding the shore swings his bow towards you, drawing back the arrow on the string, and you quickly sink your leg back down. Again, the blood boils through to the bone, the flesh growing back in spurts.
Something begins to pull at you, wanting to lift you up into the air. You resist, but the pull is becoming insistent, an end to the pain it whispers in your head, it would be so good... But no, you cannot, you must not. You remember why you must endure... endure this agony for eternity? It's only been four days and yes you are sorry for what you've done but you can't believe you deserve this.
Then you realize you cannot resist, it has not been given to you to stop this, and your body is ripped into the air, faster than the centaurs can react. As you fly rapidly out of the inferno of the pit and past the enormous gates and the field of wandering souls, you pray your first prayer, calling out to God to keep you from returning to Earth, to life, to your corporeal body, begging Him to put you back in the river.
And you reflect on what you have done.
12th place (out of 38) in the 8th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition.
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