As the daylight meets my face, my eyes slowly flutter open. I sit up and look around. What happened? Where am i? I think my plane crashed. I look around, taking in the scenery. A large jungle on a small island surrounded by the sea. i look over at the scattered plane scraps surrounding me. I look sown at myself. My clothes are shredded, leaving me nearly bare. The island is quiet, save for the rustling of reptiles and the ocean waves crashing against the shore. I stand up and nearly stumble back down. My legs are cut, blood trickling down my calve. I stumble towards the water, sitting down in the sand and letting the waves tickle my feet. I watch the birds that fly by, waiting for something -Anything- to come help me. I hear a loud rustling coming from the forest, then a loud crash, like metal being slammed into a tree. I turn around, looking for the cause of the noise. My eyes widened in fear. My body shakes violently. I take a slow step back and look right into its eyes...(to be continued)

I scuttle backward on my haunches and manage to climb back to my feet. I continue backing away from ... what exactly? I would call it, could call it ... only a Monstrosity. My stomach twists into tight little knots ... cramps of terror, for lack of a better term. I back into something hard and yelp, a high girlish scream that I'm not proud of, but which buys me a moment, as the Monstrosity is momentarily startled and leaps back itself. I file this away as I feel what is behind me with scratched palms and lacerated fingers. As I suspected, it is a tree with a relatively smooth bole, something tropical.

The more important discovery is the long, loose branch hanging just to my left. I wrap my hand around it and it encircles the relatively straight branch comfortably. I yank on the branch hard. It does not disengage from the tree. It's at this point that the Monstrosity seems to recover from its momentary fright. Its large, circular eyes reflect my own visage back at me as its mouth curves into a wicked grin, revealing razors of ivory and a pale pink -- evidence of its last meal? -- a few of them broken. That so few are are broken attests to their strength, considering it's clearly a predator. How many bones must it have bitten down on? I consider my next moves carefully. I nod to myself, draw in a slow deep breath, and scream in the loudest, most piercing tone, then turn and run.

I'm deeply grateful to the Universe, God, whomever or whatever allows the branch in my left hand to break neatly away from that tropical tree in my closed fist as I bolt past it and away from the Monstrosity. I hear nothing at first. Then the horrific sound-wave of its roar reaches my ears and nearly stops my heart, as does the sound of its immense body chasing after me, crashing through the foliage in pursuit! I can still imagine its six or seven eyes, perfectly circular and clustered together just like a spider's, though many times larger. The rest of its body looks nothing like a spider's. It's shaggy and moved on both its front and hindquarters, the way a gorilla's might. This creature also has razors for claws, very sharp black articulated appendages and opposable thumbs. Every digit is equally sharp, and as I think this thought, I pour on the speed. I'm immensely grateful to my running partners, now, for pushing me even as I pushed them. If I survive this ordeal, which is a big "if," it will be largely due to their diligence in training me hard in preperation for this trip, which I will discuss in detail later ... again, only if I live to do so.

For the next few minutes, I'm sure I've escaped it. I hear no sound of pursuit, no roar, no crashing branches. Nothing. I begin to smile. To relax without slowing down, at least I think so. Then a savage searing line of fire slashes me across the back. I stumble, fall, roll away to the side, getting all manner of dirt and detritus into the thankfully shallow parallel slashes across my spine. But barely managing to sit up, I know for certain that I'm in very serious trouble. I may never see Erin, my girlfriend, again. Or my brother Lawrence, my only living family, who relies on me.

Therefore, I must rise. And I have to survive! There's nothing else for it. I reach into my pocket and pull out my folding knife. Flicking it open, I start, tentatively at first, to sharpen one end to a point.

Sharpening a branch with a folding knife while bleeding in a hostile jungle was not how I envisioned my competency arc, but here we were and character development waits for no one. I worked the blade carefully, thinking about Erin’s laugh and Lawrence’s terrible taste in movies, because nothing motivates survival like the petty need to argue about directors again. The Monstrosity did not roar this time, which was somehow worse, because silence from apex nightmares usually means strategy.

I tested the weight of the spear and immediately downgraded my expectations from heroic to mildly stab adjacent. My back burned but my brain was annoyingly calm, the way it gets when panic realizes it is not in charge anymore. That was when I noticed the ground was wrong, too even, too clear, like a place things came to on purpose.

A shadow passed over me that did not belong to the creature I had met, and I realized with a cold little click of understanding that the Monstrosity had not been chasing me away from its territory at all. It had been herding me.

As the realization sinks in, my eyes dart in every direction. I look down at the ground, made of smooth black stone covered in moss and little white flowers. I look at the clearing around me, larger than I had expected on an island like this. It's surrounded by sharp vines on three sides, covered in wicked-looking red thorns. Someone built this on purpose. The Monstrosity? Or something else, someone that commands all the horrors on the island?

My fist clenches around the pointy stick, my knuckles turning red and white with tension. Finally, I look up.

The shadow in the sky belongs to something like a giant snake, floating on four fleshy wings that remind me of a butterfly's. If the ape-creature was a Monstrosity, this is an Abomination. I don't have time to make any more observations before the Abomination screeches and dives toward me.

I do the only thing I can do: I run. I feel the flying creature's breath behind me, but it doesn't feel hot--it's cold, despite the tropical air, and it smells like carrion and flowers.

The moss beneath my feet slips, and I hear a horrible cracking sound as the pain in my back flares up. I don't know at first what just broke, and I assume for a moment that it's my spine. But it's actually the ground under me. The black stone shatters, and I fall through a narrow crevice into a cavern--no, a tunnel. Behind me, the Abomination claws at the crevice, trying to open it and reach me. I stagger away from it, hoping I can get far enough away that it gives up.

The adrenaline propels me through the tunnel for a while, but then I collapse, all the strength leaving me as the fight-or-flight reaction fails. This tunnel is dark, but I can make out shapes on the walls. They're carvings, put here deliberately by a human. I run my hand across the stone shapes, trying to make sense of it, but it's too dark and I'm in too much pain. Eventually I give up and lie down, hoping that I'm finally safe and I can rest.