Hayden hit the afterlife, still aflame, screaming herself hoarse. The flames were blistering her from head to foot, blackening and pealing her skin back to start over again on tender layers beneath. The fire ate away her eyes and her lips shrank back from it. Her knees hit the ground, her arms spread wide, head tilted heavenward as her tortured cries filled the air.

Suddenly, in her darkness, someone was there with her. She felt a strong hand on her, big enough to cup her shoulder as if it were a golf ball. The stranger did not flinch away from the heat. Instead, the heat seemed  o flinch away from the stranger.

"Poor child," he said, and there was no doubt that it was a 'he'. His voice was as deep as rumbling thunder in a canyon. It echoed and rolled. It was a bass riff from hell. "I will end your suffering, your pain."

She felt an internal gust of wind, as if she dipped her toe in icy water and felt a chill over her body. The red-orange flames petered down and then extinguished, but it's permanent damage had been done. Hayden wasn't burning, she had now fused with the heat. Her skin had been replaced with burned, cracked wood, magma boiling beneath, spurting through gashes in bright hot arcs.

Her eye sockets filled with coolness and she shouted with the shock of it as her eyes replenished. She could see herself reflected in a shiny breastplate of her savior. It reflected her face, blackened cheeks and eyes glowing fiery orange. Her crispy lips peeled back from her stained teeth.

"Why?" she asked in a whisper. It was raspy and slow, like pouring a mixture of gravels and thick mud from a pitcher.

"I saw your suffering. I wanted to help."

"Where am I? Am I dead?" She soaked in their surroundings, which weren't unlike her own body. It reminded her of a cave below a volcano.

"You don't have to be."

"I don't want to be..."

"And so you won't."

He picked her up, crunching her shoulder beneath his wide fingers. She didn't feel pain. As soon as she was on her feet and he released her, she watched her new skin grow back. The savior looked down upon her. She could have been a toddler compared to his size. Every part of him not covered by armor swirled like a mixing bowl of magma and rock, but retained the shape of a monstrous man.

Hayden began to speak, but only a scream came out, because he threw what looked like some of himself at her, and she was engulfed again, for only a short moment.

When she opened her eyes again, she was submerged in cold water. She spread her arms to swim up, but was met with thick plastic. A tarp, she realized. To her surprise, when she laid her hand flat on it, it began to melt until it fell away from around her. She felt an other obstacle; a snake wrapped tight around her waist. It was a thick iron chain, weighting her down into the icy depths. She pulled and it broke free of its anchor, but the limp chain could stay around her waist, it didn't bother her now that it wasn't holding her in her water grave.

The surface of the lake bubbled maddeningly, as though a giant bath bomb ad been tossed inside. In the middle, Hayden's new face emerged. The whites of her eyes were shocking next to the charred lids and the flaming irises. Her lustrous hair was gone, replaced with a hard surface, lined with heat, which smoked as it burned the water away from her exposed parts. As she left the lake, she dried. Her clothes were gone, yet her human sex was no longer visible. Her chest had hill sized wooden lumps without any means to nourish any offspring. Between her legs was smooth and as fiery as the rest of her, with no sign that any openings had ever existed.

As Hayden quietly inspected herself, something stirred nearby. She twisted and threw out her hand in a stop gesture. Flames ignited in a flash, covering her hand, and then quickly died down to none. A squirrel stiffened as though struck by her hand from twelve feet away. She put her hand down and it zoomed safely into a tree. Hayden looked down at her hand marveling at the power. And then things were coming to her, as if she were being coached. She became filled with knowledge of her new limits and abilities. There was so many. She knew just what to do with them.