The distant bubbling and the occasional splash from the springs outside shrouded my footsteps as I approached the tunnel’s one, sharp bend. I held my breath as I peeked around, although considering the faint light that my eyes – as the only thing on my body I hadn’t looked over – were probably casting; I doubted I was hiding from anyone very will.

My satisfaction at the view that greeted me nearby the cave’s mouth would be difficult to downplay. A vindictive smile twisted my lips as I laid eyes on the well done corpse of the little green monster that had clawed my guts to shreds. It looked as though the searing heat of the tunnel had baked its body through. Mostly I was just thankful its friends weren’t still waiting in the entrance.

Although they could be anywhere out there in the mist.

I suppressed a shudder.

I walked over to the corpse and gave it a tentative kick. Surprisingly, considering the incongruous weight and strength it had used to tear me apart, its corpse skidded across the ground like a dried out cow-pat. Little chunks and splinters of bark clattered against the stone floor and I spotted the shiny tip of my ball-point pen protruding from its desiccated eye socket.

I pulled it out, holding it up between two ashen fingers. Like everything else here, it seemed more now. It caught the weak sunlight from outside and shone in a way the cheap aluminium it was made from had never done before. I held onto it tightly as I edged towards the wall of pale steam that marked the edge of the hot-springs.

The steam that I’d struggled through yesterday seemed to part around me, not so much as dampening my skin as it continued to swirl up from the bubbling water. A strong breeze blew the majority of the mist to the side, and the sun was visible through the much thinner haze. The pools themselves were much easier to make out. They were surprisingly vast, hundreds of them, all varying from hardly a metre across to large enough to sink a bus in, spread out into the distance. After a certain point they were lost in the warm haze of the place.

With the panic and pain of yesterday relegated to memory, I could admire spring’s beauty. From a distance. Keeping my back mostly to the cliff and both eyes on the swirling mists around me, I followed the cliff to my right. I had picked the direction at random. There was the same chance of finding my way out in any direction I picked. I knew nothing about this place. I hoped I wouldn’t be searching for long-

An infinite plain of foggy grass floating atop the corpses of millions.

-and that’s an unsettling thought. Ignoring the fact that I may have found myself in a Russian doll of hellish, infinitely expanding dimensions. I forged on, running my fingers along the smooth edge of my pen as I walked. The threat of those little creatures lurking in the mists still remained, and there was frighteningly little sound apart from my own quiet footsteps and the occasional clatter of a dislodged pebble.

As the mist and steam slowly began to clear, I got a better view of the crystal-clear water, which slowly grew more and more placid with each pool I passed. Around each pool, the eroded stone began to give way to gravel and loosely packed dirt. A few shrubs, low grasses and mosses springing up between the pools.

Small, green feathered birds flitted back and forth between bushes, dipping their long beaks into the cracks and crevices at the water’s edge and coming out with squirming bugs and tiny, soft-shelled snails. The quiet flutter of their wings and their delicate calls were the only sound other than the distant cries of larger animals and the occasional croak from massive, wet skinned and worryingly colourful amphibians. They resembled poison dart frogs in the way that a shih tzu resembled a malamute. Brightly coloured skin with prominent black markings over vivid purple and yellow tones stretched across bodies bigger than my entire head. They lounged on the banks of a number of cooler pools, as still as statues until they struck.

I could only guess what awful poison their vibrant colours warned about, as the only time I watched one move, it snapped one of the darting birds out of the sky in a single bite.

Despite their obvious danger I couldn’t help but watch them with fascination. Everything at home was explored and documented and photographed to the point of suffocating boredom. Only the most advanced scientists and sociologists really encountered anything new. To see something so strange, and have no inkling of where it came from or what it might do or be, it was exhilarating enough that for a second, I almost forgot where I was.

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The cliff to my right grew shorter as the mist cleared further, the holes punched into its surface growing smaller as fewer and fewer hot springs appeared to my left. With less steam floating about and cooler soil to spread their roots through, the plant life around me exploded.

More animals moved about below thick shrubbery as well, but it was too dense to catch more than a glimpse of them. Amongst the scrub, a few sickly trees were barely holding on. However, the further out I looked, the more closely they grew, until a veritable wall of lush greenery blocked any further view.

Above the tree line, rising like mossy hulks into the blue sky, a series of lush mountains lined the horizon. They came together in a ridgeline so long and jagged that I couldn’t spot where it ended over the treetops. I glanced up at the cliff by my side. The view from its peak would be expansive, though reaching the top would be a daunting task. I wasn’t a rock-climber, and even with the numerous handholds marring its face I wasn’t confident I could reach the top without slipping.

And that’s without thinking about my skin flaking off the moment I put weight on it.

Standing before a veritable wall of foliage, surrounded by thickly growing ferns and vine-wrapped trees I was reconsidering my reluctance to scale the cliff. It was only the subtle lay of the land overhead that indicated an easier way up might lie deeper in the jungle.

I could hardly hear myself thing over the constant drone of insect wings and the too-heavy pitter patter of fast legs that emanated from between the thickly packed trunks. The way forward was cramped, damp and judging by the nightmarish sounds filtering out, filled with bugs. Large bugs.

I shivered and it had nothing to do with temperature. I could already imagine the feeling of clutching, insectile legs latching onto me. The buzzing and scratching of their carapaces as they crawled through the underbrush and across my bare feet.

This is stupid… I have to go in there.

The jungle formed a dense perimeter around the springs, a veritable wall of greenery that grew into the distance until it disappeared between a shroud of drifting steam. I stood, frozen by indecision at the jungle’s edge. Going through still seemed safer than scaling the cliff face, but every time I almost took a step deeper into the damp foliage the skittering of hundreds of feet through the undergrowth stayed my feet.

I glanced over my shoulder, but the short, green monsters hadn’t suddenly appeared again. This far from the misty springs they wouldn’t be able to get so close without exposing themselves between the shrubbery.

As though the universe hadn’t tipped its hand enough in the past day, it showed its disdain for me when the shadow of on the trunk nearest me split in half and sprouted wings.

It shot towards me like a pegged football, a foot of glossy, black, segmented chitin and spiked limbs that Droned loud enough to make my teeth chatter.

Fear shot through my veins, backed by a rolling wave of roiling flames. I threw my hands up to protect my face. Comforting heat shot through my body, and pleasure joined the cocktail of panic thoughts clouding my mind. Thin lines of shimmering blue fire incinerated my ashen skin all over my body and short, blue flames roared from them, scorching the air all around.

Ecstatic pressure built from my chest and shot down my arms in a fraction of a second as the overgrown bug flew closer. Its wing’s seemed to buzz through air as thick as molasses and my mind struggled to comprehend what was happening inside my body.

I watched helplessly as an explosion of heat and fire blasted out from my extended arms from my fingertips to my elbows. It enveloped the bug completely in a torrent of blue, red and yellow flames that sallied on for another ten metres into the thick undergrowth. The force of the explosion stopped the monster in its tracks and the heat… no I stripped the energy from its shell in a few scant moments, leaving nothing but ash behind. The trees behind the incinerated bug were scorched beyond recognition and they began to smoulder in the minute of silence that followed.

Ash carried on eddies of air stirred up by the intensity of my flames slowly settled to the ground, and smoke began to rise from the undergrowth to join that already streaming from the burning trunks.

I stared down at my hands, now inert once again but entirely stripped of skin. They were thinner, and sharper than before, like the opposite of gloves. As though the rest of my body was gloved, and they were exposed.

Fuck this is weird.

Small embers poked innocently from amidst the charcoal-like-flesh that hid below the surface and jagged cracks ran all over the rest of my body. Despite the smouldering tree-line and the uncanny pleasure still rolling through my body as I looked at the destruction I’d caused. I couldn’t help but feel…

Ecstatic.