The planet was much stranger than the Titan could have imagined. Now that he was able to have a proper look around with a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree field of view, he was amazed by what he witnessed.

Chief among the sights which drew his attention was the sky itself, high above the canopy. The sky was a much more vivid hue of baby blue, almost a neon shade, with streaks of clouds that seemed almost pink in color. Now that he could truly look up and see the vine creepers covering the canopy above, he saw that they were not still, as he would suppose them to be. Instead, they gently writhed and undulated as if from a non-existent wind blowing through them. That meant that this place was not as cut and dried as Titan, if the trees were alive then they might be dangerous, and he resolved himself to not venture close enough to find out for sure if he could help it.

Along with the makeup of the trees surrounding him, he began to question the atmosphere itself, for though it seemed a perfectly habitable mixture of oxygen and nitrogen just like on Titan, it had a peculiar taste to it, something that he could not quite put his finger on. It also seemed must easier and more pleasant to breathe, and he did not seem to need as much of it either. Every breath felt invigorating, almost like plunging into a cold pool of water. His senses were more alive, his eyesight and thoughts sharper and more alert.

The Titan began limping in a direction, deciding first to investigate the large oval egg-shaped objects just beyond his sight on the other side of a grouping of trees. When he approached, he was amazed to see that the objects were gently contracting and expanding, almost like lungs breathing. They looked similar to turtle shells, which was the closest thing that his mind could equate them to with something that he was familiar with, but they appeared to be made from something more membranous than chitinous as he first supposed. Perhaps they were some type of alien fungus? As he looked around, he could see many of these giant objects, most of them being slightly taller than his own height, dotting the landscape.

There were also other fungal type things growing everywhere he looked, in fact, he figured that if his assumptions that what he saw was in fact fungal in nature, that it made up roughly two-thirds of the environment around him. And unlike Titan, where just a few trees in any given area seemed to have clear dominance, this landscape was alive with astonishing variety. There were other types as well than just the shell shaped ones, there were also many varieties of the sea anemone types, with their reaching tendrils. In fact, his mind could not clearly categorize and lump certain vegetation together, everything that he saw seemed completely unique and different than everything else. The last thing he noticed was something that seemed to be almost everywhere he looked. It covered many of the trees and seemed to blanket the entire ground. What he had at first figured to be a type of grass below him was actually some form of yellowish green moss.

This moss was entirely uneven and spread out before his eyes in many places much how moss grew on Titan, but in some places, it seemed to grow to gargantuan proportions, almost like weeds. In one spot ahead of him it reached up to the sky in one little patch many times his own height and did not seem to be simply growing on something larger. There seemed to be no discernable rhyme or reason to where it grew and to what height. Just then something caught his eyes high overhead, his overcharged senses drawing his attention to it with incredible speed. It was a group of bird-like creatures he supposed, though they looked vaguely like rays from Titan’s oceans than anything comprised of feathers. At the altitude they were flying he could only made out scare details, but they also appeared to have some sort of fungal shape to their heads and long brightly colored streamers for tails. It was difficult to properly judge sizes in the air at such a distance, but they also appeared much larger than anything that could take flight on Titan.

Since there had been little to salvage from the container, as he had been imprisoned with nothing, he decided to simply pick a direction that looked interesting and begin walking. Every direction seemed as interesting and exciting as any other with much to explore and see, so the choice was largely just random.

The Titan continued to walk through the ethereal landscape, amazed by all he saw. There were some plants that he passed by that were completely see-through, and others that were weirdly gelatinous. Everywhere he looked, the landscape reminded him that he was a far distance from Titan, and nothing around him would let him forget that fact. His mind was racing at the possibilities surrounding him.

A single rock formation stretched up in the distance, and he watched it as he continued to limp along as best as he could manage with so many injuries. Most of this world seemed to be soft and squishy and fungal, but the one rock formation he did see seemed out of place. As he continued to walk, he noticed that it sparkled like glitter in the sunlight from some unknown mineral deposit.

He would need to eat eventually, that much was a certainty, even though he did not feel particularly hungry now. He knew that he should be though since it had been many days or even weeks now since he had last eaten anything with nutritional value. This was where one of his current quandaries began, because where did he even start looking for food in such an alien environment? What among the creatures and plants surrounding him was even edible, and what could potentially be poisonous? For that matter, what around him could potentially be viewing him as a possible food source? Titans were keenly aware of the predator and prey relationship, and he did not know where he stood on that matter currently.

The Titan had no idea where to begin, with a completely alien biome so foreign to his own. It would take teams of researchers years worth of intricate and molecular study to determine these things, and that was time that he simply did not have. Would he just be relegated to simple trial and error, such as the earliest cave-titans might have done in the beginning? Having spent some time within the Wildlands of Titan and knowing their many obvious and sometimes hidden dangers, this prospect did not sit especially well with him. One wrong berry or root could be the end for him, either quickly or slow and painfully.

After walking for a bit, which was painfully slow going with a broken leg, so hobbling would have been much more accurate, he decided the first thing he would need was a splint of some sort. It took longer than he would have expected to find something suitable to such a task. A lot of what surrounded him proved to be damp, fragile and crumbly and he supposed much of it must be some type of fungus. Eventually he did come across something that would work for now, something very close to a thick wood-like branch. He could not study its molecular composition to tell if it really was a type of wood, but he tested it a few times and found that it would not easily break, so it would suit his needs.

The next thing was easy enough to find because the swampy forest was simply alive with ropy wriggling branches. He snapped a few off at random and used them like ropes to tie his leg tight against the branch. Neither component was ideal to the task but ended up serving well enough. After he had his makeshift splint in place, he was able to travel at a much quicker pace, without worry of further injury to his broken leg. He checked while he was doing this to make sure that he still had feeling in his extremities and the fact that he did spoke well on his chances of it healing.

He knew now that the best thing for him to do in such a densely canopied area would be to try to find some high ground to get a better picture of the layout of his surroundings. This, however, might be out of the question with his injuries. He looked around at the vegetation that grew far above him and in some cases seemed to reach into the very clouds themselves and realized that climbing anything around him would be too complicated in his current condition. Stumbling around blindly seemed safer, but he knew from experience was also not a very sound strategy for survival.

The strange mist started again soon enough, like a canopy of water in the air. It started suddenly and came out of nowhere and before he knew it, he seemed to be walking through a thin cloud. It was at this moment that his eyes began to fail him through the fog that his nose caught the smell of running water. He followed the scent and soon came to a river and stopped.

The body of water stretched as far as his eye could see, and there were many tree-like things growing up from it, with their stretching branches reaching out into the sky. Several of these trees had worrisome openings in them, and strangely enough resembled mouths. From the branches of some of these trees were Titan sized sacks hanging down, attached with some gossamer like webbing or cocoon. These were dark green and had a consistency that resembled reptile skin. They reminded the Titan of some type of egg sack or something of the sort. It sent shivers through him to imagine what might be gestating inside of them if that was indeed what they were. He looked down both sides of this river and stopped cold at what he saw.

The vision through the fog at one end was so utterly alien that he had no words to accurately describe what he was looking at. The trees and vegetation stretched out across the entirety of the river, forming what appeared to be almost a gigantic spider-web of mossy tendrils. Their mammoth appearance shrouded in the fog made them awe-inspiring, ghostly, and maybe even a little frightening on a guttural level.

Looking down at the water’s edge, the Titan studied it for a time. It seemed to be moving, which would mean there was little risk for stagnation, which appeared to be a good sign for a source of drinking water. But then again on a planet so alien that might not mean anything at all. He shuddered when he thought about some of the pests and parasites that he had heard about in far reaching areas of Titan and wondered what types of horrors an alien parasite might contain.

But he knew that he would have to test it sooner or later. Frightening as it was, he knew that he would not be able to go long without a water source. He briefly contemplated how difficult it would be to build something that could just continue to collect the abundance of water in the atmosphere, but with his broken leg he figured it could be quite a while before he was building anything complicated. With visions of parasitic creatures eating him from the inside out and bursting through his chest, he carefully knelt and scooped a handful of water to examine it.

It felt slightly oily but otherwise, much like water. The oily part could possibly have been his imagination after all. If it rained fairly normal rain, then it would make sense that the rivers would be fairly normal rivers as well, wouldn’t it? The Titan decided upon a simple test. It may not be very scientific but could tell him much. He unzipped the navy-blue jumpsuit that he had been forced to wear as a prisoner and peeled off the tee shirt that he had on underneath. His captors had not been consistent in allowing him changes of clothing in the past two months of his confinement, so the piece of cloth was well deserving of a good washing anyway.

The Titan began washing the shirt in the river, and when he was finished and confident that there was no dirt contained within the garment, he plunged it back underneath the water. While submerged, he curled the shirt in on itself, to form a type of balloon shape and slowly lifted it from the water. Though the shirt material was not conducive to use for a true water receptacle, it did pull a small puddle up with it and kept what didn’t spill off the sides within the center. The Titan’s maw smiled as he saw this as it was something he had seen on a holo-vid once and was not sure if it would really work or not. He held the makeshift filter up as he watched as the water drained through the material in the center. When the puddle in the middle of the cloth had drained through, holding the shirt carefully as not to jostle it much, he brought it closer to his face to examine what remained on the material.

At first there did not seem to be much sediment left over and he took it as a good sign. But then as he watched carefully, his sharp predator eyes noticed something troubling. If it were not for the atmosphere’s refining effect on his senses, he might have missed it. He caught movement on the shirt and looked closer. There appeared to be a pepper-like residue that was wiggling and jumping about. Then something bristling the fur on the back of his hand alerted him to something even more disturbing. He looked and saw a fat little worm-like thing with several small tentacle-like appendages moving around where a face should be. These appendages all ended in vicious looking hooks.

The Titan stood up and after flinging the creature away, began shaking his shirt out in the open air insistently. There would be no drinking of this water. No sir. None. He silently thanked whatever spirits may have been watching out for him to allow such an idea to crop into his head. He could not and did not wish to imagine the consequences had he decided to plunge right in and attempt to drink that sinister water.

Now that he knew this water source would be of no use to him, the Titan decided to make his way back to his container. When he had first escaped from it, he decided he would never look back after it almost had become his tomb. But now the more he thought about it, the more he decided it could be useful as a temporary shelter, at least until he was able to figure something else out. As he hobbled on his splint back the direction that he had come from, he could not shake the sudden feeling of being watched. And alone on an alien planet, it was not a pleasant feeling at all.

His nose caught a whiff of some strange pheromones, and his heart skipped a beat. All his senses were on edge and now they heightened even more so. He could not see the sun in the sky through the fog but could feel the deepening shadows and knew that there was a limited time before the darkness would engulf the land and swallow him up with it. He turned to face the shuffling sound to his side.

Suddenly something revolting came out from the fog and vegetation and took him by surprise. It was about the size of a large congral back on Titan, about five and a half feet high. It had a seemingly aquatic translucent body, and five long spider-like legs on each side with a type of webbing like a frog between them. The center of mass serving as the body was grotesquely ridged, and reminiscent of a spider-body, but some long worm-like appendage extended out where a head should be. A mass of dead black doll eyes appeared on the end of this appendage. It reared back with its front legs off the ground.

Though he may have been on an alien planet with no references to draw from, the Titan knew a hostile and threatening gesture when he saw one, and he knew a terrifying creature when he saw one as well. Perhaps these things were universal in nature. The creature scuttled forward like a crab, the many legs giving it an incredible burst of speed. But the Titan found new speed within this alien atmosphere as well. Even with the broken leg he managed to move aside, and had he not been crippled, probably could have easily outrun the monstrosity.

When the arachnid-creature surged forward, the worm-like appendage shot out like a whip, which he discovered quickly to be the real threat. The end of this splayed open with segmented barbs reaching out, and he glimpsed a sideways opening mouth between them. He caught the squirming appendage by the barbs and began wrestling against its obvious intention to have him for dinner.

That’s when the front legs of the creature shot out in an attempt to spear him. His reflexes were fast enough to see them coming, but with his hands occupied and his broken leg, he was not able to dodge aside quickly enough, it all happened so rapidly. These sharp legs which he now discovered were ridged and lined with more barbs tore at his skin through his fur, scraping the sides of his body. He managed to keep from being impaled, but they stung terribly just from making contact at all and left an irritating sensation akin to poison ivy. Angrily, he balled up a fist and reached under, punching the thing hard in its squishy body.

The creature’s front legs reared back for another strike, but this time he was ready. He released the squirming tongue-like head and stepping to the side, took firm hold on one of the legs as it landed. If this thing thought it would make a meal out of him, then it was time for the native wildlife of this world to find out that Titans did not go down easily and naturally rose to the top of any food chain. Though intensely revolted by the alien creature’s appearance, he was determined to give the thing such a fight as to create a permanent evolutionary fear within its ancestral cultural memory. Its offspring and theirs and theirs after them would fear an angered Titan.

The Titan jerked with all his strength, and the translucent leg snapped like a crab leg. He then swung around to the side and began punching at the body with all his might, ignoring the sharp pains from his wrists as they landed. The arachnid creature did not take the assault lying down and began thrashing wildly while lashing out with those spear-like legs. Every time they fell and scraped him with their barbed ends it stung but made him angrier. Then he felt a sudden sting on his back and whirled to see the head of the monster trying to latch on with its barbed mouth.

A wave of primordial revulsion swept over the Titan and he punched the head too, which flopped like a speed bag. The next few moments were a blur of frantic motion from both enemies. The arachnid attempted to wrap the Titan up with the remaining good legs and the contest turned into a wrestling match. They went rolling along the ground and he suddenly had multiple deadly objects thrust towards him at once from seemingly all directions. As they rolled for a few moments, he managed to reach out and scoop up a rock along the ride. A rock was a rock on any planet, and he was happy for that. He began wildly bashing at the thrashing wormlike head that was trying to position itself for a thrust that would allow it to latch on.

The Titan bashed and bashed and did not stop until the legs curled up and the creature ceased moving. Even then he was hesitant to stop in his primordial survival state, fighting through several crippling phobias all at once. He bashed the head piece flat until weird slime began oozing from it and managed to hobble back to his feet and scramble away. He then tossed the rock as hard as he could into the body of the now unmoving creature for good measure.

During the fight he was only reacting and surviving, no other thoughts broke through the red haze that had temporarily taken over his mind. Now that the fight was over, several disturbing thoughts began flooding in. What if there were more of these things? What other dangers were waiting to feast on his flesh? Were these creatures the apex predators of their environment, or were there other, more disturbing things that preyed on them?

The landscape suddenly took on a much more ominous appearance as he began to think there could be danger lurking everywhere he looked. The thick rolling fog only furthered the deepening paranoia that was beginning to develop.

The Titan managed to hobble back and found the relative safety of his containment unit after a little searching. His arms still trembled with adrenaline from the encounter even after an hour had passed. The shadows were deepening further and there was no way he would sleep out in the open now. Not so long as there could be more of those things out there. Or maybe even worse, his brain told him. He crawled inside the container which had once been his prison, but now seemed the only safety in a hostile world. After squeezing back through the opening that he had fought so hard to create and get out of, he pulled it back closed behind him and curled up into a corner as the darkness set in.