Young Writers Society

The First Jungle

The First Jungle [DT]



You open your eyes. You didn't realize they were closed.

Where am I? is the first thought that goes through your head. You don't know yet, but you are in The First Jungle. An ancient jungle sacred to the demons of the Earth. It was the first jungle and will be the last, for powerful magic protects this dangerous land.

You begin to start your life in this "First Jungle". Maybe you've been here for centuries-- no one dies of old age at this magical place. Maybe you've been here for a few days. Maybe you've just arrived. Either way, The Master is becoming bored . . . and wants to spice things up. If you are not prepared, then you will be overwhelmed in a tsunami of terrors, left to drown in your nightmares and choke on your fears.

This is the First Jungle.

Beware.



1. @Yoshikrab [1]

2. @Magebird [2]

3. @TheMulticoloredCyr [2]

4. @GrandWild [1]

5. @Spearmint [1]

6. @blueca [1]

7.

8.

9.

10.

Rules:

1. Follow all rules of YWS and the SB forum.

2. Keep romance, actions, and statements strictly PG-13.

3. Violence allowed.

4. Please give me a tip of a hat or something on the DT before posting here.

5. We don't need to start after ten people-- we can start immediately. Time is fluid here.

6. Ask permission before physically injuring or killing another character.

7. Stay with the plot. Don't make your own decisions. Ask on the DT before writing something Plot-Changing.

8. Listen to the owner.

9. Have fun!

Amoku sighed and burned a large, droopy leaf. Life was boring these days. Nothing happening. He would even settle for that never-dying harpy that came over a week ago.

Amoku had already gotten accustomed to living in the First Jungle. He remembered the first day he was here. All he remembered was that his name was Amoku, short of Aamokan, and he was in a place called the First Jungle. He knew how to do all sorts of stuff, but basically his past was a whole. A few minutes upon arriving, some blindingly white bear descended from the sky proclaiming to be "The Master's Messenger". The bear told Amoku that the Master will be "Spicing things up" whatever that means and that The Master was the one who owned the First Jungle-- and his memories.

Apparently, anyone who enters the First Jungle meets a random blindingly white animal (It's not always a bear, according to the bear) and is told all of this information.

Amoku then scorched the bear into ashes and feasted on the remaining charred bones.

Amoku was geting tired of waiting for this "Spicing up", but at the time, he didn't know that he should be careful what he wishes for.

Everything felt wrong.

Part of that might have been because Loki had found himself in a jungle. He was pretty sure he wasn't from a jungle, seeing that he was wearing a suit. He also couldn't remember much, but he knew that this place was called the First Jungle. He also knew that looking like this meant his name was Loki, and that he had another name, too. He didn't let himself think about that other name much. He knew he wasn't supposed to use it right now.

About ten minutes into wandering aimlessly through the jungle, he found himself in front of an enormous white boa constrictor. That talked. Loki was pretty sure snakes weren't supposed to talk. The snake told him that he was sent by someone called The Master who owned the First Jungle. He also, apparently, now owned Loki's memories.

And meeting bright white animals was apparently a thing.

Oh, and The Master was about to spice things up.

Which wasn't a problem.

Definitely not.

The white snake went slithering off into the woods, and Loki began to seriously wonder when he was going to wake up from this nightmare. It hadn't been all that long since the snake disappeared, but Loki wasn't making much progress with figuring out how to get out of this whole situation. He was just so hot.

He wiped sweat off of his brow with the cuff of his suit's sleeve.

And then he felt something move.

In his pocket.

A moment later, a tiny little snake popped its head out of his pocket.

Loki stared at the snake.

The snake stared back.

And then Loki gave a startled, panicked cry because he couldn't remember if that kind of snake was poisonous. It didn't look like it was trying to bite him. It just looked kind of confused - and...scared? Loki didn't realize that snakes could be so expressive, but he filed that away as a thing for his future self to figure out.

...He had been doing that a lot since he got here.

The never-dying harpy had returned. Amoku was seriously wondering if the Lords of the Sky could hear his thoughts.

Wait. Lords of the Sky?

Who's that?

Must have been something that was of important before I got stuck in this damned place, thought Amoku.

A tree collapsed nearby as if to accuse Amoku of insulting the forest.

Amoku glanced around if the Harpy was going to come back for a second attack. This morning, the Harpy appeared for the first time in weeks and started throttling Amoku. Of course, his impeccable looks must have gotten to her because she froze for a moment as Amoku sent a wide kick to the face.

Then, he ran.

Now, he was looking up to see if she was still there. She wasn't. Probably ran away in fear of his handsomeness.

Grumbling inwardly, Amoku decided that he probably wasn't going to live there anymore. He was going to be . . . a nomad! One who travels everywhere but never stays! Yes!

Amoku turned and saw a guy that looked basically like a CEO. Whatever a CEO was, Amoku didn't know, but all he knew was that the guy looked like one.

And then the Harpy came.

Amoku turned to Mr. CEO, "Follow me if you want to live."

Then he pushed himself into the forest, deeper into the First Jungle.

It had been a few hours since Queenie had woken up in the jungle with Bobby curled up on her chest. A few hours since they'd had a truly baffling experience with a pure white boar. A few hours that Bobby had not taken to calm down.

The kid, instead, appeared to be on the verge of a panic attack.

"Breathe," Queenie reminded them, "Inhale....exhale." As hard as she thought, she couldn't seem to remember why she knew this kid's name, or why she cared that they were panicking/

Bobby followed along, not saying anything, which was just as well. Whatever force compelled her to care about this kid's well being would easily give out if he burst into tears.

They passed through some foliage, both as quietly as possible in the rustling brush, and stopped. Something flashed in the corner of Queenie's eye, and she signaled for Bobby to stay there.

Carefully, she crept toward the sight. A flash of color, the sound of a voice...two voices? There!

Two people were moving together through the forest, and neither of them were dressed for it. One of them even looked like they were heading to some kind of posh conference, or even a gala. They'd be hard-pressed to be more overdressed. Then again, Queenie was in a crop top, so it seemed no one but Bobby had dressed for the circumstances.

She moved unseen ahead of them on their improvised path and hopped out from behind an oversized fallen log she'd been using as cover, perching atop it as casually as if she spent all the time in the world in this forest.

"Hey fellas," she called casually with a friendly wave. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bobby creep down the path she'd taken, unseen to the others, and hide behind the log. Good. It was best if he didn't reveal himself until Queenie had verified that these people were safe.

Loki wasn't really sure what was going on, but some part of him just knew that it was good to avoid harpies. He wasn't even sure how he knew that their pursuer was a harpy. He thought he had lost all of his memories, but maybe avoiding harpies was some necessary survival skill The Master had been surprisingly nice enough to leave him with.

Just as he was coming to terms with that (and still struggling to come to terms with the snake in his pocket, who still looked absolutely terrified) he found someone else suddenly appearing in their path. He skid to a halt to narrowly avoid running right into her.

Loki glanced over his shoulder.

He didn't see the harpy, so maybe they were good now?

"Hi," he awkwardly blurted. The snake shifted in his pocket; Loki still felt like he was sweating buckets. Something about his introduction felt wrong, like he was supposed to have more pizazz to it than he actually had. Maybe a little bow was right? It made things feel a little more...right, but it still felt like it would be wrong for a situation like this. "My name's Loki. Loki A. Lias."

He resisted the urge to frown - and look as uncomfortable as he felt. That name felt fake. Really fake. A. Lias sounded like alias, and Loki had something to do with tricks. It didn't feel like a real person's name, but he knew it was the one he had to give right now. It was the only one that made sense with how he looked.

He glanced between the girl and the guy he had been running with.

"...Did The Master take your memories and bring you here, too?"

Amoku looked back, "Yeah. I don't know about you,"--Amoku glanced at the girl, "But my memories are all taken except for some snippets."

Amoku added, "I've seen the harpy before. She's not that nice and not that strong, but she can't die. So we'll only defeat her through avoidance."

Queenie arched an eyebrow. Defeat her. Yeah right. Queenie wasn't some kind of monster hunter. She didn't know much about herself - frustratingly - but she did know that.

"You guys have fun with that," she said, "I'm going to be working on getting out of here. Couldn't care less about some harpy."

Despite himself, Amoku sighed and replied to the girl, "You can't get out of here. I've been trying to for the past few months. We don't even know who we are, much less how we can get out. We don't know if there's even a world out there. However, I do know that we can still die and feel pain, unlike Ugly over here,"-- Amoku grabbed a stick and chucked it at the harpy, "So I'm intent on survival."

Loki glanced back in the direction of the harpy.

"Are you sure throwing a stick at the harpy is the best idea?" he hesitantly asked. He wasn't sure he had experience with harpies. He felt like he should have, but he also wasn't entirely sure that this kind of harpy was the kind of harpy he theoretically was familiar with. Someone had told him the multiverse was weird once. He tried remembering their face and their name, but it just wasn't coming back to him. All he knew was that he mostly trusted their opinion.

There was still some doubt, but he didn't have the time or focus to place it.

Everything was just so hot. He felt like flames were dancing on his skin. Magic, too. He didn't know how he knew that, but maybe The Master had been nice and left him with a few useful memories?

The heat was normal for him. The magic, too. It meant something. He screwed his face up in thought and tried to remember. Heat had to do with magic. Magic gave off heat, especially high-tiered magic. And this magic - the kind of magic that could change a person - was one of the higher tiers-

He glanced down at himself.

Oh, he thought.

He was a shapeshifter, and he wasn't himself right now.

That was why he was so convinced Loki was both his name and wasn't. His real name (and his real appearance) was something that he didn't normally share anymore. There was a reason for that, too, but Loki was too busy feeling victorious about remembering something so important like being able to change his form. And if he was remembering things right, the only way to really cool down was to go back to his original form.

But changing his outfit would help, too.

As if sensing the oncoming change, the little snake in his pocket slithered up onto his shoulders. The snake sat there with a calmness that a regular old snake wasn't supposed to have as Loki's clothes switched from a suit to something much more comfortable in this weather: a loose, dark red tank top and a pair of black exercise shorts. The loafers were exchanged for a trusty pair of worn sneakers.

Only the locket he was wearing around his neck remained. That was important to him. Even if it didn't make sense to keep it, he had to keep wearing it. He couldn't imagine not having it on.

There.

That was better.

Day 7

Tarkin was nearly certain that he'd been here a week. He'd kept careful count of sunrises and sunsets, but something about the days felt off. The whole world seemed to stretch. Not physically, of course...that would be ridiculous. No, it was more like time refused to stay still. There were hours that felt like years and days that felt as if they had passed in mere seconds. It was enough to give anyone vertigo, but Tarkin was not just anyone.

Tarkin could not remember much from before his arrival. He recalled his name--Wilhuff Tarkin, what a beastly sound--and there were flashes of a world much like this one with massive apes and monsters beyond imagining. He knew he had killed some of those monsters, but why he had gone into that forest in the first place escaped him. An old man's face flickered in and out of his mind when he made his first kill in this jungle, but he couldn't put a name to the face. He had cared about this man at some point, Tarkin supposed. Some semblance of affection still clung to the hard, weathered features.

The meat from the white wolf that had greeted him upon his arrival was running low at this point. It hadn't been a very large specimen, and at this point Tarkin had resorted to cutting his rations in half. That was why he was perched up in this tree, eyes trained on the grazing herd of antelope below. It had not taken long to fashion a knife from the bones of his wolf, among other useful tools. The knife was now gripped tightly in his hand as he eased himself out of the tree's crook and onto a low-hanging branch.

One of the antelopes raised its head, twitching an ear. Tarkin paused as he too heard the screeching of a bird nearby. It sounded large, and something not far away had startled and was bolting toward him.
The antelope herd bolted. Tarkin cursed under his breath, sliding back down the tree. Kriff. He turned his attention to the sounds of twigs snapping instead. It sounded as if there were multiple creatures coming his way, not quite a stampede. He readied his knife and ducked behind some leafy bushes, every muscle tensed to spring out and slaughter whatever it was that came by.

That may as well happen, was the only thought Queenie spared toward the shapeshifting of the formerly well-dressed man, who now looked like some pretentious jerk who went to the gym to say he went, but didn't actually have to work out to maintain his figure.

Before she could respond to the other man, though, a small, dissused voice interrupted.

"No way out?" Bobby was uncharacteristically stoic, though Queenie guessed he was on the verge of a breakdown. It usually didn't take much more than one sentence to get him to that point.

"Yes, throwing a stick at the harpy will at least keep her at bay. It is literally impossible to make her even angrier than she is right now," replied Amoku. Following this statement, the harpy let out a shrill, guttural shriek even louder than before.

"I stand corrected," grumbled Amoku.

"No way out?" said a quiet voice somewhere to his right.

"No way out," confirmed Amoku, "At least from what I've found. I'm sure there should be some way out." Realizing that he didn't sound very convincing-- nor comforting, Amoku shrugged and continued to brush through the jungle, gesturing for the others to follow.