It’s sort of funny how fear can sometimes provide a shield against itself. In any other circumstance, Nuriel would never have dared rush into such a thick and wild jungle in the dead of night. That was just asking to end up as something’s midnight snack. But the shock of seeing that sea-creature emerge from the surf had put all of that out of her mind, and before she remembered what a bad idea running loudly and blindly was, she had already gone in far deeper than could be considered sane.

But remember she did, mainly when a deep, resonant roar echoed through the trees, one that stirred up the island’s nightlife and sent them hollering. Birds screeched, monkeys whooped and hollered, and things that Nuriel had never even heard before joined in with the yelping, growling, and…chirping, or something close to it. Nuriel immediately froze in place. The roar hadn’t come from behind her. Rather, it had come from…somewhere pretty far off, so there was that at least. And none of the animals taking part in the tumult sounded like they were nearby either.

Still, what in the Great Gassy Hell was that?! Nuriel had been to many different places and seen many strange and exotic animals. She had heard the vicious snarls of tigers; the deep, guttural bellows of bears; and the raspy growls of lions. But she had never heard anything like that. This seemed to combine elements of all three, but was so much louder, so much more powerful, like it had the rough edges shaved off and blasted through an elephant’s trumpet.

Slowly the clamor died down, leaving nothing but the odd bird call and the chirping of insects. Nuriel cast a fearful glanced over her shoulder, half expecting to meet the emerald gaze of the sea-creature.

The path had so far been fairly straight, wide, and clean, but even so she could not see the break in the trees that opened to the beach. In fact, she couldn’t see much of anything at all. Her eyes were adjusting to the dark, but even so they could barely make out anything other than vague silhouettes.

On the one hand, that meant that she hadn’t been followed. Good. Maybe the sea-creature really was bound to the water. On the other hand, she had kind of fled headlong into a dark jungle, one that was apparently packed with all kinds of savage wildlife.

Shit.

Nuriel glanced around. No, she still couldn’t make anything out. In fact, she had sort of gotten turned around and probably couldn’t find her way back to the beach even if she wanted to.

Grimacing, Nuriel took a hesitant step forward. She reached out with her hand, hoping to feel something that wouldn’t bite, claw, sting, lick, crush, or swallow her.

Her hands brushed against wood. A tree.

Nuriel patted around the tree’s trunk. It seemed pretty solid, but also plenty gnarled in that way jungle trees got. Maybe…

Gripping it with both hands, Nuriel pulled herself off the ground. Then she began to climb.

With as much time sneaking in and out of places as she did, Nuriel was quite the proficient climber, but even she found hoisting herself up a strange tree in utter darkness to be something of a challenge. She couldn’t see where her next handhold was going to be and just had to feel around until she found one, all the while praying that she wouldn’t disturb something’s nest.

Come on, she thought to herself. Just a little further. Just a little further.

Then her hand came down on something smooth and hard.

Immediately her palm was filled with a frenzied fluttering. The shock almost caused her to lose her grip and fall, but she managed to hang on with one hand while ripping the other away from the thing whose rest she had disturbed. She heard the buzzing of its wings as it flew off.

Nuriel swallowed. Well, exceptionally large beetles were a thing here, and they seemed to be capable of flight. Lovely.

Though she really didn’t want to, Nuriel reached back for the tree again. This time she just felt familiar bark. Taking in a deep and shaky breath, she resumed her ascent.

Then the tree seemed to open up. Nuriel felt around to find that she had reached a sort of hollow formed in the base of several branches, one filled with a sort of springy moss. Also, there didn’t seem to be anything crawling, slithering, or biting around.

All right. That’ll do.

Nuriel gingerly eased herself around and laid back. It was large enough to fit her if she kept her legs close. And it was considerably better than wandering around down below in the dark. Not a whole lot better, but at the very least everything that could get her up in the branches could also get her down on the ground, so at least she was now safe from anything that could only get her on the ground.

It wasn’t a very reassuring thought.

Still, she was sort of stuck at the moment, so there was nothing else to do but make herself comfortable and wait until first light. It promised to be a miserable time though. Her body was still shaking from her fright, and every nightcall sent her twitching. There was a bitter humor to it, in that when she hadn’t wanted to fall asleep earlier she had dropped off right away, but now that she would have preferred sleep to this watchful fear, there was no way she was going to be able to…

The darkness again swallowed her up.

…

The ship is being buffeted by wind and rain from above and the rising and falling of the sea from below. Waves crash over the railings, sweeping across the deck and threatening to send the crew overboard. Every man has tied himself to whatever is available: to the masts, to the deck, to the railings, but that might not be enough. They all know that they very well might die that night.

And none know that more than Nat the dumb cabin boy, real name Nuriel Cunningham, whom is currently behind held aloft by her slender neck by a thick, meaty hand. The hand belongs to Mr. Roderick Soil, the ship’s bos'n.

Mr. Soil, a man heavy of muscle, large of belly, and bald of head, had always been a rough and calloused old cuss, an experienced sailor feared by all and who feared nothing in return. All of that salt and piss is gone now, and his striking blue eyes are wide with madness, the kind brought upon by terror.

He holds Nuriel over the railing, her kicking legs dangling over the crashing sea. It is he that had discovered her secret. It is he that had dragged her up into the storm and exposed her true identity to the crew. It is he that now declares to all that the storm is her doing, that it is punishment for her deception, and if they wished to survive than they had to harden their hearts and remove the sin from their midst.

Nuriel struggles and writhes in his grasp. If she could plea for her life she would have.

Mr. Soil then releases his grip, letting her fall to her certain death in the waves below.

Then suddenly, the view changes, and now Nuriel is observing the horrid drama from above. She is now a giantess standing waist-deep in the ocean, looking down at the tiny ship, its panicking crew little more than tiny dots rushing to and fro on the deck, and the storm itself is little more than an irritating wet breeze.

Nuriel reaches down with one hand into the water and lifts the ship up. She brings it in close. Mr. Soil is still standing near the railing. She locks eyes with the tiny man, the one that had condemned her to die, and he freezes in terror.

Then, just as he had done to her, she opens her hand, letting the ship and all aboard fall to its doom.

Nuriel’s eyes snapped open, the tinny screams of the men she had doomed in her dream still echoing in her mind.

What they saw was so odd that she wasn’t sure if she had even awakened.

She was still up in the tree, and the sun had yet to stir from its slumber, so there was nothing to see save shapes in the dark.

But there was a new shape, one that hadn’t been there when she had nodded off. One that was very close.

It was dangling over her, a vaguely bipedal form that clung to the branches with all the dexterity of a chimpanzee. Maybe it was one, though it looked a bit too graceful. Also, while it was nearly impossible to tell, Nuriel was pretty certain that it had long, flowing hair.

And it was staring down at her with two shining crimson eyes, ones that glowed as brightly as the green ones belonging to the sea-creature.

Maybe it was because she was still caught in the sleep trance, but Nuriel didn’t feel afraid or even worried. She merely stared right back at them, feeling nothing more than gentle curiosity.

The red-eyed shadow tilted its head. It blinked once.

Then the eyes slowly closed and the shadows shifted. A moment later it was gone.

Nuriel still kept staring at the place it had been. She wasn’t fully certain if she had actually locked gazes with another glowing-eyed creature or if it had been a lingering dream. Probably the second one.

Hopefully the second one.

Nuriel let her eyelids drift closed and she fell into a dreamless sleep.

…

When Nuriel again awoke, the sun was high and shining, and the dark shadows of the jungle were now an explosion of color. In fact, all she could see when her eyes opened was a confusing blur of greens, reds, yellows, browns, and purples.

Well, it would seem that she had survived the night. Nothing had eaten her while she had slept. She supposed that she ought to be grateful, but given that she presumably had many more nights ahead of her spent in this island, all it would take for was one second of carelessness, and that would be it for her.

Especially considered those strange creatures with glowing eyes that were apparently stalking her. Had those even been real? She was pretty sure that the green-eyed monster had real, but the one with red eyes might have actually just been a dream.

Even so, it was clear that there were dangers on the island unlike any she had ever even conceived, and she was going to have to be doubly careful if she wanted to survive to see another sunset.

Also, the ground was shaking.

Nuriel shook her head to dislodge the last vestiges of sleep. It did the trick of giving shape and substances to all the colors she was seeing but didn’t stop the shaking. That was real.

Then she heard an animal’s call, one that started as a deep, bass groan before rising up to a high whoop. And it came from directly below her.

Nuriel glanced this way and that. Then she pulled herself out of her mossy bed and crept to the edge to look.

What she saw dwarfed even both the green-eyed and red-eyed monsters for strangeness.

A herd of animals, about seven in all, was passing by on the forest path, but they weren’t at all like anything Nuriel had ever seen. For one, they were absolutely huge, four or five times bigger than even the biggest of horses, and while they didn’t stand as tall as the elephants she had seen, they had at least as much mass, if not more. Their brownish-grey bodies were rounded into ovals, their heads blunt, and they went along on four squat legs. They each had a long, swaying tail that stuck out behind them.

And their backs, tails, and the backs of their heads were all plated with thick, bony armor and jutting spikes. Crushing clubs of bone were stuck on the ends of their tails. One swing would smash her to bloody bits with ease. One of the tails brushed up against the trunk of Nuriel’s tree and sent the whole thing shaking. It had just been a chance impact, but that was all it took.

Nuriel felt the blood draining from her face. She wanted to cower back and hide, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away. No wonder the path was so wide, if those things were what traveled it! They could probably carve out another path just like it with a leisurely stroll through the woods!

Below, she saw a couple of babies waddling around the adults. Either one of them could have trampled her into a paste with ease.

She watched as they passed by her, on their way without knowing or caring about the strange, hairless trespasser that was watching them. And she kept on watching them until they had lumbered completely out of sight.

Nuriel fell back into her little nest, completely gobsmacked. Well, that certainly cleared up what kind of island she was on! If her glowing-eyed neighbors hadn’t already confirmed it, she had the ill fate to wash up on one of those monster-infested lost worlds of legend from the stories!

Hooray.

Nuriel was sorely tempted to simply stay right where she was. No need to expose herself to anything else that might be stomping around. Those big beasts could have walked right over her without so much as noticing. And if the grass-eaters were like that, imagine what the local predators must be like.

Then Nuriel remembered the echoing roar from the night before. Oh. Like that. The predators were like that.

Her mouth had gone dry. She swallowed and sloshed saliva around to moisten her lips. Then she crept over to look down again.

Nothing.

Well, now she had two choices: stay where she was or climb down and follow them. Nuriel wasn’t stupid, and she was very much in favor of survival. Father had taught her of the importance of keeping herself safe and out of sight, and she had taken his lessons to heart.

On the other hand, he had also taught her that nothing valuable was gained without risk, that knowledge was paramount to survival, and that staying in one place without seeing what was over the horizon was akin to rotting. Besides, she was going to have to learn her way around this strange new world if she wanted to keep her skin anyway.

Besides, she really had to piss.

Nuriel breathed in through her nose and released it out of her mouth. All right then.

She stretched her legs out and brought them back in over and over, easing away the cramps from her tight sleep. Then she swung them down and began her descent.

As odd as it was, going down was almost as bad as going up. Sure, she had been blind and terrified and half-convinced that the next handhold would turn out to be a giant snake that would immediately squeeze the life out of her, but now that she could see what was around her, she realized that she was pretty far up. And it was much harder to find places for her feet and hands while going down.

Well, at least this time there wasn’t any enormous beetles to frighten her. Nuriel lowered herself nearly to the ground and let herself drop.

The beasts’ passing had beat the earth soft. Nuriel quickly scampered to a spot a fair distance from her tree and shimmied her trousers far down enough to squat and piss out a long, dark stream. The relief of it made her eyes roll back into her head. Oh, that had been saved up for a while.

That done, she yanked her trousers back up and returned to her tree. Looking up at its length, she wrinkled her nose in thought. The little nest she had up there was pretty convenient, and she was unlikely to find another on short notice. But if she left, it would be nearly impossible to find it again.

She looked around until she found a tall stick lying in the underbrush. Taking, she stuck it into the ground straight up right next to the tree’s trunk. There. Something she would easily notice but animals would probably ignore.

When she was finally done, she started down the path after the procession. Even as far as they had gone, she could still hear them lowing in the distance.

The path was fortunately pretty straight and clear. It would have to be for those behemoths to pass through. At one point she found a stream flowing across the road, but that wasn’t a problem as it wasn’t any deeper than her ankles. Plus, she now had a source of fresh water!

She moved a little off the path to where the stream was pouring off a rock and cupped her hands under the flow. Drinking in the water brought her almost as much pleasure and letting it out had. She had partaken her fair share of exotic vintages, mostly without their owners’ permission or knowledge, but this flowed more sweetly down her throat than any of the spirits she had pilfered.

Well, except maybe for that one…

Nuriel finished quenching her thirst and continued on her way.

Now that she could see the jungle in the bright of day, it didn’t seem as threatening as it had the night before. Oh, it was certainly overgrown and wild, but it was actually quite lovely. There didn’t seem to be anything prowling

Up ahead there was a break in the trees, and beyond she could hear the armored beasts lowing contently. Though she hated the thought of actually using it for anything other than memories, Nuriel slid St. George from his sheath and made her way to the opening.

Now, Nuriel’s strangeness threshold had been gradually rising ever since she had woken up. It seemed that every minute spent on the island introduced her to something that put even the wildest of the sailor stories to shame.

But even so, what she saw then quite frankly defied even the most imaginative storyteller’s ability to describe.

Beyond was more than a clearing, it was a wide open field of grass and shrubs in greens and yellows, one large enough to contain a small village and its crops. Here and there a lonesome tree sprung up, almost in defiance of the expanse around them. The ground dipped gently down into a hillside from the jungle to a large lake at the bottom that was fed by a waterfall rushing down a cliffside.

And everywhere were monsters.

The family of armored beasts was nearby, contently grazing while the two babies chased each other around the adults’ legs. Another family group was further off, this one also of four-legged creatures that had longer legs, higher backs, but dark grey skin instead of spiked plates of bones. However, their heads were almost like helmets that flared up high into spiked crests in the back, with more spikes protruding around their eyes and from their noses. They looked like they probably couldn’t take as much damage as the first group, but they could certainly give out far more, especially with a running start. Things that looked like brown, horse-sized lizards walking around on two very long chicken-like legs strutted around, their bobbing heads balanced on long, flexible necks while their tails swayed behind them.

But it was down by the lake that the biggest of the monsters had gathered. There were several orangish beasts bigger than even the armored beasts, with longer legs and much thicker tails. They had mouths that looked like a duck’s bill and long, bony horns sticking out of the back of their heads. There were also somewhat smaller creatures with similar builds, but with dark green skin, parrot-like beaks, no horns, and a dangerous stabbing spike on each of their forelegs.

At any other time those would have been the sole focus of her attention, monsters of impossible height and girth. But she barely even noticed them, in favor of something else entirely.

Another…no, calling it a monster just wasn’t right. It was too big for that, too awesome, too terrifying, too incredible to be debased with the simple label of monster. It was a giant, a behemoth, a mountain that walked. It had an oval-shaped body with mottled grey skin larger than most houses and longer than most city streets! It had a supple, whiplike tail that stretched out longer than a full-sized schooner and walked along on four legs thicker than oak trees and taller than two full-grown men standing on each other’s shoulders.

And…

…and…and…and…

And its neck! It just kept going and going and going, stretching out high above the ground, seemingly in defiance of gravity itself, impossibly long for how high it was. The round head at the end, though it was large enough to probably swallow her whole, seemed almost comically small by comparison. It was dipping its head down to scoop water into its mouth from the middle of the lake despite standing on the shore, behind the other beasts! Sometimes it would pause drinking and raise its head up and up and up to bite off bits of shrubs that were hanging off the side of the cliff.

That was what Nuriel saw, a creature too large to be real, one that dwarfed all attempts to describe it. Even as far as she was, she could feel the tremors through the earth as it walked, moving with far too much grace and fluidity than anything that size ought to be reasonably capable of.

And there were four of them!

Nuriel’s legs wobbled beneath her. She took one unsteady step backward, lost her balance, and fell to her ass. She barely even noticed as she kept staring, her mouth agape.

How? How? How could a place like this exist? How did nobody know about it? This island was huge, and the things that lived upon it were sized up to fit! She had never heard of a place like this, with such freakish and powerful-looking creatures. And, sure, she had seen animals from other lands that were equally as strange, but she had at least heard of those before seeing them! These were wholly new, and they were much too big, and they was far too many of them, and why didn’t anyone know about this?!

Then she heard something snort.

Still on the ground with her legs splayed out around her, Nuriel turned to see one of the long-legged, long-necked lizards nearby. It was standing about four meters away, its head turned to one side to stare at her with a single bulging eye.

It turned its head around to look at her with the other eye and let out a hooting chirp. Whether it was a warning, an expression of curiosity, or a challenge Nuriel couldn’t tell. She was mostly focused on how easily the claws at the end of its feet could probably rend her flesh, if it didn’t decide to simply kick her head off.

Keeping their gazes locked, Nuriel slowly rose to her feet. The lizard raised its head in alarm and chirped again. This time, two more of the lizards took notice and turned to see what their companion was doing.

Making sure not to show it her back, Nuriel backed away, one careful step at a time. The important thing was to keep from running. Running might encourage it to give chase.

The lizard warily watched her as she backed away. Nuriel had to be close to the jungle entrance by now. Once she was in the trees she was probably going to be safe. She spared a glance over her shoulder to check the distance.

One of the baby armored beasts was right there.

It came up to about her waist and was staring at her with a sort of stupid curiosity. If she had just kept backing up she would have walked right into it.

Nuriel froze. Oh, this was bad. What was she going to do?

The baby suddenly let out a happy cry and started waddling forward, no doubt to investigate this strange new visitor and see if it would be fun to play with. Nuriel suddenly found herself caught between the urge to flee in several different directions while realizing that they all were very bad ideas.

The baby shoved its snout right up against her and took a deep sniff. As it did, the chicken-lizard began striding forward. Nuriel held out a shaking hand, hoping that these things thought the same way that dogs did and it would accept the gesture as non-threatening.

The baby sniffed her hand. Its nose was dry and warm. Okay, good sign. At least it wasn’t-

Unfortunately, it seemed that the chicken-lizards had some kind of understanding with the walking armories, and the one that had been eyeing her took exception to her making contact with the baby. It raised its head up and let out a shrill cry.

This drew the attention of one of the adult armories, and it turned to see its young fraternizing with an unknown invader. It let out a hoarse bellow and began plodding toward her, moving far quicker than something that size had any business doing so. Nuriel turned and ran as fast as her legs would carry her.

…

For the second time in under a day, Nuriel fled through the jungle, heedless of how much noise she was making, not even trying to be stealthy. She was again driven by pure panic. The only difference was that this time she could see where she was going.

Unfortunately, that meant that everything else could see her.

After a bit, a stitch started to develop in her side, grinding her down, and she had to stop. Bracing her hand against a nearby tree trunk, she hunched over and panted heavily, her other hand holding onto her complaining side.

As she struggled to catch her breath, she heard the sound of rustling, of something heavy moving through the underbush.

Nuriel’s eyes were already closed, but her eyelids squeezed more tightly together. She just couldn’t catch a break, could she?

Wiping the sweat away from her face, Nuriel opened her eyes and peeked out from around the tree she was leaning again.

The section of jungle next to the path was more open, consisting of several widely-spaced birch trees with red-hued bark and red leaves, the ground carpeted by green ivy.

But as for the creature, there was nothing to be seen.

Nuriel scanned the area, searching for any sign of movement, any sign of-

There!

At the far end of the grove was a clustered of ferns with several feathery stalks. And they were swaying, as if by the wind, but there was no wind to be felt.

There was something in them, something around her size. Nuriel squinted her eyes and tilted her head. If she focused really hard, she could just make out the shape of something shaggy…

Then one of the feathery stalks withdrew, followed by another. Nuriel inhaled sharply. The stalks weren’t part of the foliage, they were tails, the tails of several creatures hiding nearby.

Creatures that could probably see her better than she could see them.

To hell with that.

Nuriel again fled, slower this time and with a pronounced limp due to her side.

Where is it? she thought in despair. Where’s that damn stick? Where is-

There! The stick she had thrust into the ground was still sticking up out of the dirt, right next to her tree. Nuriel hastened up the tree with all the grace of an intoxicated monkey, ignoring her pain and fatigued, until she finally reached the safety of her hollow, into which she collapsed with her shaking arms and legs curled up close to her, praying to a God that she didn’t like that when she opened her eyes again, the nightmare would be over.

…

Nuriel was hungry.

She tried to ignore it. She shifted her position into something more comfortable, leaned back, and tried to think of something else.

She wasn’t sure how long she had been cowering in the tree. Hours? Minutes? Maybe even days. Maybe a whole week had passed as she had laid curled up and trembling. Maybe she had fallen asleep without realizing it. How would she be able to tell?

But she was hungry. She hadn’t been eating well even before being thrown overboard, and since then all she had been able to find to eat were those three coconuts from the day before. And now that the shock and terror had worn off, the emptiness of her belly was now demanding her attention.

Food.

Forget it. There was no way that she was going back there. What good would finding food be if she ended up as something else’s meal?

Food.

No! No food! She was going to stay up in the tree, where it was safe and nothing could find her!

Well, nothing except that red-eyed monster. Or angry primates. Or bugs. Or anything that could climb trees.

Food.

Enough! Nuriel covered her head with her arms and huddled down lower. She wasn’t leaving, and that was final.

And then she heard the sound of leaves rustling.

Nuriel stiffened. Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no…

The leaves continued to rustle, and with it was a low snuffling sound, punctuated by gruff snorts.

Please no, Nuriel thought. Please.

Trembling hard, Nuriel peeked out from between her arms.

It was a good thing that her fear had frozen her ability to make noise, because otherwise she might have screamed.

Three wickedly sharp blades had reached up to her nest, each one more than a foot-and-a-half long and slightly curved. They felt around until they had hooked onto a leaf-covered branch, and then lowered, pulling the branch down. There was more snorting, and then the branch came up again, this time missing a large chunk of its leaves.

Nuriel whimpered. Those weren’t blades, they were claws, ones longer than her forearms, each one capable of splitting her wide open with a single swipe! What good was her nest against something like that?

As Nuriel stared, the claws then reached up again to pull down another branch. Then she heard the same rustling sound to her right.

More claws were reaching up to the trees over there. Christ in Heaven, there was more than one of these things. She was probably surrounded.

Nuriel kept very, very still, listening and watching as the claws continuously came up and down, all the while silently begging for them to move on.

Then they extended all the way up over her nest, and reached in.

Nuriel instinctively kicked them with her legs.

The claws abruptly withdrew, and she heard something let out a hoarse, “Haroof!” This was answered by several other grunts, and the claws stopped coming up.

Nuriel tensed up. Shit, she had given herself away. They were going to investigate, they were going to retaliate, they were going to come up for her, she was so completely fucked…

But instead, she heard the soft thuds as several heavy beasts lumbered away, ones that gradually got further and further away.

Nuriel blinked. Had she scared them off? Had they decided that whatever it was that was lashing out at them, it wasn’t worth the trouble?

Please God, let them be gone.

When she was absolutely sure that they creatures had left, Nuriel finally untangled her limbs and got up to check.

The area around the tree was empty.

Nuriel breathed out a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived. Now that she knew that things lived her that could reach all the way up, her tree was no longer safe.

And she still needed to find food.

She backed out of her hideaway and climbed down to the ground. Then she stood still and listened.

No footsteps, no animal sounds coming from nearby, nothing to indicate that anything was close. Good.

Then again, if a stealthy predator was watching her from the shadows, she wouldn’t know until it had leapt onto her and started tearing out her intestines…

Nuriel roughly shook her head, banishing the thought. Then she looked at her possible paths.

She could go back to the beach and try to retrieve a few more coconuts. At least she knew for certain that something edible was waiting for her there.

But then, there was the problem of getting them out of the trees, and she couldn’t count on a convenient sea-bug to gift her with enough fright-induced climbing ability.

Plus, that direction led to a monster.

No. Not that way.

She also quickly discarded going in the opposite direction. The big animals grazing in the field might not be predatory, but that didn’t make them any less hazardous to her health, and they didn’t seem to care for trespassers. Besides, what food was she going to find there? Grass would fill her belly, sure, but she doubted that it would do her any good, though to be fair if this went on much longer she would be tempted to try.

Right then. That just left one road for her to take.

Swallowing hard, Nuriel pulled out St. George and stepped off the path and into the jungle.

As expected, it wasn’t easy going. The ground was largely uneven, and where it wasn’t covered with thick foliage, it was nearly swallowed up by a serpent’s nest of tree roots. She stuck to those parts. Tree roots might be a pain to walk upon, but at the very least they weren’t unlikely to poison her with a touch.

As she went, she kept an eye out for…pretty much anything. Fruit trees, wild vegetables, anything that she could eat. But she also kept her ears open for any sign of something that might want to eat her: snarls, growls, roars, anything down those lines, all the while trying not to think about the fact that when something did roar at her, it would be too late to do anything about it.

But then she did hear something, and it didn’t come from a predator.

Nuriel paused. She stood on a horse-sized root with one hand on the tree’s trunk and the other gripping St. George’s handle, ears open.

From nearby came the distinctive whooping of some kind of monkey, and from the sound of it there was a lot of them, and they didn’t sound stressed.

Nuriel considered her options. On the one hand, if there were monkeys about, they were probably near a food source, and anything a monkey could eat would be edible to a human, right?

On the other, a troupe of monkeys could tear her to pieces as easily as a jaguar. She would have to be cautious.

Nuriel followed the sound. The forest opened up into a grove of similar looking trees with wide canopies and yellow leaves. And in the branches were, as expected, monkeys.

They were lean of body and long of limb, with short silver-black fur and narrow snouts. They had long, slender tails that curled up over their backs in a spiral, and their eyes were an emerald green.

Nuriel paused. She didn’t exactly consider herself any kind of expert, but she had seen her fair share of monkeys. Even so, this particular breed was a new one.

Then again, there was a lot of that going around.

Of greater interest to her were the green-striped yellow orbs hanging from the trees. As she watched, several of the monkeys plucked them down and took great big bites. The fruits’ flesh was pale red and looked absolutely enticing.

Nuriel's mouth moistened as she gazed longingly at the fruit. Her stomach’s complaining suddenly flared up, insisting loudly that it be filled with those things over there, and to do it right now.

There were a few of the fruits fallen to the forest floor. Many had big chunks bitten out or had been splattered by the fall, but she saw some that had survived the tumble intact. Keeping on eye on the monkeys, Nuriel took a hesitant step forward.

Then she heard a whoop of warning. Looking up, she saw one of the monkeys in the closest tree. It was crouching on one of the middle branches as it stared at her in curiosity.

Another whoop, and more monkeys came ambling to his tree to see what the fuss was all about.

Nuriel sighed. It was just like back at the field. Credit where it was due, the animals on this island were certainly wary of trouble.

Now the tree had a fair collection of wary primates, all of them focused on her. Nuriel slowly edged away, careful to not show them her back, all the while watching for their next move. The monkeys seemed…well, they were certainly curious. If she was the first human to reach this island, or at least make it this far into the jungle, then it was a safe bet that they had never seen anything like her before and were trying to figure her out.

However, they didn’t exactly look pleased to see her either. Many of them had bared their teeth and were hissing at her in warning, and more than one of them had plucked the yellow fruits from the branches and were holding them at the ready. That…made sense. It was obvious that this island was incredibly dangerous, so anything new was to be regarded with suspicion at best.

At least they weren’t charging her. Nuriel kept backing up until she was able to duck behind a tree. When she ascertained that they weren’t giving chase, she crouched down to consider the situation.

Most of the monkeys were still in that one tree, so maybe if she crept around…no, there were enough hanging around the other trees to spot her if she did that. In fact, it seemed that all of the monkeys that hadn’t immediately crowded into that single tree had spread out to the other trees along the grove’s perimeter. It was a smart defensive move, but it also complicated things.

Perhaps if she slowly approached without making any threatening moves, they would let her take a fruit or two. Nuriel sighed. And maybe she could strike up a conversation and establish a mutually beneficial bartering relationship. All right, put away the suicidal ideas. Yes, she was getting hungrier by the second, but…

Nuriel’s nostrils twitched. She heard buzzing. Glancing down, she saw that one of the fruits lying not far from her feet. It had splattered against the ground and gone rotten, attracting quite a few flies, so it wasn’t exactly fit for consumption (though to be honest, part of her was considering it), but it was there.

Now, how had it gotten all the way over there? She was far enough from the grove to rule out it falling to that spot naturally. There was no downhill slope steep enough to cause it to roll, and if it had fallen, it would have split apart on impact rather than all the way over here. Nuriel looked around. Sure enough, here and there lay more of the fruit, all of them spoiled and rotten, but still lying too far away from the grove.

Nuriel glanced out from around the tree. The monkeys were still there, watching to see if she’d come back.

And several were still had fruit in their grasp, ready to hurl at the first sign of a threat.

Nuriel got an idea. It was a risky idea, a dangerous idea, and some might consider it to be just as stupid as trying to unaggressive approach the monkeys, but she wasn’t blessed with a plethora of options.

Picking a number of stones off the ground, Nuriel walked back into view.

The monkeys immediately tensed up and started hopping up and down in the branches again. Nuriel took a few steps forward. The frantic hopping and hooting increased. Hairy arms were drawn back, hands firmly grasping their fleshy missiles.

However, Nuriel had some of her own. Palming one of the stones, she took aim at a spot free of monkeys, but close enough to make it clear that it was a deliberate attack. She drew back and threw.

The stone sailed off and bounced off the side of the tree.

That pissed them off. The monkeys began outright screaming. Nuriel readied herself to run, but they didn’t leave the tree. However, those bearing fruit did draw back a bit further.

So Nuriel threw another rock at them.

Finally they began to return fire. Several yellow orbs came hurtling her way. Nuriel dove out of the way and took cover.

It had worked! Sure, many of the fruits splattered upon impact with a tree trunk, a rock, or the ground, but several survived the throw to land fully intact. Nuriel scampered out and began gathering those up.

The monkey were still whooping angrily at her, and she couldn’t help but grin. Here she was, washed up on a dangerous and savage land full of monsters, and she was already outsmarting the local animals. No wonder that man was the dominant species on Earth. Hell, if she managed to survive long enough to find consistent shelter and a food source, she might have to get to work taming some of those-

Then something smacked against her face and sent her sprawling.

The world pitched and heaved as violently as the Santa Lillian’s deck the day before. Nuriel blinked away the spots in her vision. Right, she had taken a hit. Not the first time, nor would it be the last. Time to regather her wits and get out of range before-

Another fruit slammed into her buttocks.

That did the job of waking her up. Nuriel hastily clawed her way to her feet. She seized up St. George, gathered as many of the fruits as she could, and finally fled, as the victors continued to scream at her and fill the air with delicious ordinance in her wake.

…

The fruits didn’t have much in the way of juice when compared to their cousins in more civilized areas, and their seeds were large enough to be annoying.

Nuriel quite frankly did not care. Taste had never mattered to her anyway. She ripped them open with St. George and gulped them down in chunks, pausing only to spit the seeds out.

When she was done, she was still hungry, but did feel at least a little better. Unfortunately, she now had a new problem.

In finding the grove and fleeing the monkeys, she had turned herself around so completely that there was no way she was going to be able to find her way back to the path and her tree. Which was just as well, as it was not at all sufficient as a long-term shelter. Still, it did work as a temporary home base, and she was going to have to find another before it got dark.

Sighing, Nuriel set off.

Despite the shade of the canopy, the day soon grew hot, and while the fruits had been pretty dry, she had still gotten a fair bit of juice over her chin, arms, and shirt, which the heat was now drying into a sticky film. That was uncomfortable enough, but when it started to attract flies it became unbearable.

Nuriel swatted them away, but the cloud of crawling legs just kept growing.

Water. She had to find water and wash it all off of her. Nuriel increased her gait, slapping at whatever exposed skin she had, but the swarm was not to be deterred.

This was bad. The buzzing insects were annoying, but if they started biting, then they were potentially lethal. There were many tropical diseases in the Caribbean islands spread by biting insects, and dying of those was so much worse than even being eaten alive. And if enough bugs targeted her, then she would suffer both.

Nuriel broke out into a run, waving her arms around her head, trying to drive the flies away, trying to escape, but they just wouldn’t let up.

Then, as she sprinted across the top of a slope, the ground beneath her feet suddenly shifted. Her legs slipped out from under her, and she fell.

The next few moments were a terrifying blur as she tumbled down a steep hillside. Fortunately, untold years of rotting leaves at the bottom formed a nice blanket for her to land in. In fact, it was almost comfortable.

Unfortunately, that same squishy blanket also made for an excellent home for several creatures that Nuriel would have been happy to never disturb.

Nuriel’s senses returned to her in degrees. The first thing she became aware of was that she was lying in something soft and wet. The second was that despite her sudden tumble, she seemed to be unhurt. The third was that, for whatever reason, the flies had neglected to follow her down, so there was that at least.

The fourth was that something slimy was making its way across her arm.

Nuriel leapt to her feet. A huge, green-bodied slug was crawling over her right forearm. She hastily yanked it off and hurled it away.

Something slithered onto the nape of her neck. Nuriel yelped and hurled that slug away as well. She hastily hopped out of the pile of rotting leaves until she found ground that was reasonably solid.

Nuriel hastily searched herself all over. No slugs, no slugs, all right. Good. They were gone. They were gone, and…

Her gaze then lifted to take in the hill she had just fallen down.

It was steep, but not unclimbable. In fact, further down the way the slope evened out enough to make ascending an easy matter! And further along…

Nuriel’s heart skipped a beat.

There was a building nearby.

It was about half again as large as a mercantile booth, the likes of which were often seen at city docks, and was square in shape. It was entirely made of grey hewn stones, with an open rectangular window in the wall facing her and another in the one across from it. The roof was pyramidal, formed by four tiers of stone bricks with the broken remains of some kind of statue at the center.

The structure was clearly manmade, and it was very, very old. The stones still stood, but they had been worn rough by the elements and now were home to several patches of moss. Nuriel couldn’t see much in its shadowed interior, but there seemed to be quite a lot of rubbish, mainly decaying leaves and other similar mulch.

Nuriel cocked her head in thought. Well, maybe she wasn’t the first human to set foot on this island after all. It seemed that people had lived here, though whether this was evidence of some long-lost civilization or if it was simply an abandoned building and its owners were still thriving somewhere else was up in the air. And honestly, Nuriel wasn’t sure which possibility she preferred.

She slowly walked up to the building and peered in through the window. She couldn’t see much other than dead leaves. Then she slowly made her way around its perimeter. The next wall to her right had no entrance at all, neither window nor doorway, so she was about to pass it by.

Then she stopped. There were things carved into the stone, relief images of some kind. Time and exposure had worn most of them away, but she could make out a few details. She thought she could see a representation of one of the horned beasts with the helmeted heads and the high backs. There were a few symbols that she didn’t recognize, as well as what looked like several people standing in a row near the bottom.

And hovering over them was a head of some kind of animal, a head with a long snout similar to a particularly thick horse, one with a wide mouth and a great many sharp teeth.

It looked like a dragon.

Nuriel swallowed. Well, actual dragons were no less far-fetched than anything else she had seen, so if any were actually present, she really, really hoped that the tales of their preference for the flesh of young maidens had been exaggerated. St. George told the tale of the slaying of a dragon, but he would be greatly inadequate in replicating the feat.

Shivering, Nuriel continued her inspection of the building. The window on the other wall didn’t tell her much more than the first had. However, the final wall had a proper doorway, a rectangular opening large enough to accomondate a full-grown man.

Nuriel stood at the doorway and peered inside. There was no thought of actually using this structure as her new home. It was entirely too exposed, its placement at the bottom of a hill left her open to all sorts of bad, and she wasn’t about to risk waking up every morning covered with slugs. Still, she was very curious about its purpose, and if one existed, it stood to reason that there might be more, maybe one in a more ideal location.

There didn’t seem to be much inside though. From the look of things, the far wall, the one without any window or door, contained some kind of alcove, perhaps a small fireplace. And there did seem to be stone benches under each of the windows. Maybe this had been a guard shack or an outpost of some kind.

Then, as she shifted her position, something partially buried in the leaves caught the sunlight and glinted.

Nuriel blinked. Had…had that been gold?

It glinted again. Whatever it was, it was definitely metal. Nuriel got in closer and crouched down to get a closer look.

Her heart started beating faster. It was gold all right, some kind of bracelet from the look of things. And she was pretty sure it was set with some kind of blue stones, right under the covering of leaves.

Nuriel started to grin. Maybe it was St. George’s influence, maybe it was all the pirates she tended to sail with, maybe it was Father’s lessons, but she did have a attraction to all things shiny and valuable. And sure, maybe a jewel-encrusted gold bracelet wouldn’t do her any good, but hey, if she survived it stood to reason that she would one day find a way off the island. It wouldn’t hurt to take along something that could a few coins in her pocket.

Nuriel reached over grab onto the bracelet and pull it free.

It came up, and it brought a human bone with it.

Nuriel hastily dropped the bracelet and leapt back. The sudden motion caused the pile of leaves to shift, revealing the leering eye sockets of a human skull.

Oh no. Oh no, no, no.

Now that she was really looking, she could see the shape of the rest of the skeleton, its slime-covered forearms sticking out from the leaves, while cracked and snapped rib bones, vertebrae, and leg bones were strewn about outside of the pile, no doubt the work of local scavengers going for the marrow.

Nuriel’s heart was still pounding, and this time it wasn’t from anticipation. She didn’t buy into many of the superstitions spread around the sailors and brigands she ended up spending most of her time with, especially now that one of those beliefs had nearly gotten her killed. She had been on plenty of voyages in which no storms had risen up in protest to the presence of a girl on board, and no one had been more the wiser. In her opinion, fearful men will always invent a reason to blame their own

But that didn’t mean she didn’t have a healthy respect for forces well beyond mortal understanding. In her opinion, nothing good could come from upsetting those from the world beyond, and she did what she could to avoid attracting their attention. She didn’t rob churches or the clergy, she avoided places of sin and indulgence, and she kept her distance from cemeteries, crypts, and other houses of the dead. Luck might be a myth used by the weak-willed as an excuse for their own failings, but ghosts? Monsters? Malevolent spirits? Oh, those she had no problem believing in.

And for good reason.

Father had not held to the belief that the places where the dead slept were to be avoided. In fact, he had often said that others’ irrational fear of ghosts and spirits made them a prime hideaway in a pinch, as well as a great place to meet with certain…business associates that wished to avoid scrutiny.

But one night, all that had changed.

Father had left Nuriel in the tiny attic room that had served as their home at the time, impressing upon her to lay low and wait for him to return, that he was going to the cemetery to sell off a few pilfered items to a prospective buyer. And as such instances were common, Nuriel hadn’t thought much of it.

But then he had returned much, much earlier than normal, and rather than come bearing a pouch of coins, he had returned empty-handed. What was more, he had been terrified. His face had been utterly pale, and he would not stop shaking.

We need to leave, he had told her. Right now.

Nuriel had tried to ask why, but he wouldn’t hear it. He had only told her to gather anything she could carry, keep quiet, keep her head down, and follow him.

It hadn’t been the first time Father had led her in a hurry through the city after something had gone wrong, but she could not remember an instance before or after when he had looked so scared while doing so: always starting at every sudden sound, always glancing over his shoulder and at the foggy night sky, and, strangest of all, avoiding the shadows and staying where it was lit, the opposite of what he normally did during an escape.

And though she had obeyed and kept quiet, Nuriel had also been unable to shake the feeling that they were constantly being watched, that something was lurking in the shadows, stalking them every step.

A few days later, when things had calmed down and Father had seemed to regain some of his wits, he had finally told her what he had seen: that the deal had been a trap, and that the buyer had not been interested in the merchandise at all. Instead, the buyer had been interested in him.

He didn’t say anything, Father had told her. I just knew from the way he looked at me, with those dead eyes. That bastard. He wasn’t human. I don’t know what he was, but he wasn’t human.

Nuriel still hadn’t understood, but she took Father at his word, and ever since then, even after Father had been taken from her, she had avoided the houses of the dead, lest she also encounter something that looked human but wasn’t, something with dead eyes.

And if for no other reason to confirm her fears, the skull started moving.

Something was inside it, something black and…writhing. A slender black limb reached out of the eye socket, one about as long as her hand, fingers included. It was followed by another, and then another, and then another.

Nuriel stood in abject horror as the largest and blackest spider she had ever seen crawled out of the skull and slowly made its way over the mess of rot and decay.

Horrific intuition struck her, and Nuriel slowly looked up, focusing on the structure’s walls. Most of them were still bathed in shadow, but now that she was paying attention, she could see movement.

A lot of movement.

Then, though she really, really didn’t want to, Nuriel looked up.

The shadows of the ceiling and the upper parts of the walls were moving, were writhing, were moving towards her. There had to be hundreds of spiders living in the stone structure, some of them tiny little monsters the side of her pinky nail, while others were as large as her fist. They crawled over one another in that horrible, stiff-legged manner of spiders, which always seemed so alien, so unnatural.

And what was more, they were all crawling toward her.

Oh, fuck this!

Nuriel turned and ran as fast as her legs would take her. All thought of stealth and not attracting predators was gone. Now all she wanted to do was put as much distance between herself and that spider-infested and probably haunted tomb as possible.