Run Through the Jungle (01)

Riki felt the water beneath his raft as is flowed down the river. The air reeked of boiling vegetation and he lay still on his back, trying to will a breeze into being. As his mind wandered across that steaming savage jungle, from the village where he set out on the Painted Desert's edge to the tribe of sharp toothed pygmies which devoured the rest of his expedition, his body once again moved seemingly of its own accord to the water. Only the sharp sound of the cool water boiling at his outstretched hand recalled his mind. That cool water, so filled with voracious hunger.

Shaking the confusion from his mind, Riki kneeled on the raft's sodden wood slats. The canopy of tree limbs bowed low over the water here but every branch he grasped too easily bent under his weight. Those trees would not hold him. Turning away from the trees Riki looked down river and to his amazement saw something blocking, though not damming the river's flow.

The structure must have been built of stone, though those were now shades of green, blanketed in moss and mold. Two tall turrets flanked either side of the river and the water flowed into the front gate's gaping maw; toothed with a crookedly raised portcullis. As he neared those towering walls Riki noticed that the river, while still flowing, did not seem to flow around the structure but only into it. Behind and around the structure was a grassy meadow who's ground was some feet underwater.

Riki ducked as the raft slipped under those portcullis teeth.