The first thing I feel is breath hot, damp, and too close.
It smells of smoked meat, a strange, pungent herb, and something fundamentally, musky and wild. It is the scent of a predator.
The second thing is the cold press of a spearhead against my collarbone.
My eyes burst open.
The face above me is humanoid, but the blueprint is wrong. The skull is broad, with a heavy, protruding brow ridge that shadows eyes the colour of old amber.
In the dappled jungle light, those eyes gleam with a faint, tapetal reflection, like a cat’s. The nose is flat and wide, the jaw a squared-off block of muscle and bone that looks capable of cracking open marrow. Shoulders so thick and bunched with power they block out the canopy, casting me in shadow.
He grunts-low, resonant, vibrating through his chest.
"Ghrúk-va."
The word is blunt, weighty, primitive only in the sense that thunder is primitive.
Panic, cold and sharp, flushes my system. I scramble backward, my palms scraping on rough moss and decaying leaves, the simple woven fabric of my skirt catching and tearing on a gnarled root.
"No-no-stay back!"
But hands clamp down immediately-massive hands,
calloused thicker than shoe leather. Six fingers. Each one is thick as my thumb, the joints knobby and robust. They end not in flat nails, but in thick, slightly curved keratin claws, worn down from use. They are tools, not just appendages.
The grip isn't angry; it's efficient, mechanical, like handling livestock. Another hand seizes my shoulder, hauling me upright.
I let out a broken gasp, my throat raw from screaming into the night. "Please-let go-What are you doing-".
My breath comes out as a broken, thin sound.
A woman steps forward, built like she could snap me in half. Taller than most men I know, with shoulders broader than mine doubled, her body compact and powerful-short limbs thick with muscle, posture slightly forward-leaning like she's always ready to spring.
Her face mirrors the man's: heavy brow, wide cheekbones, amber eyes with that unnatural shine. Her hair is braided with vines, her skin painted in red ochre spirals across her arms and chest. She wears hide straps crisscrossing her torso, holding pouches and a bone knife.
Without a word, she upends my work bag into the dirt. Lipstick rolls into the mud. My wallet spills open, cards fluttering like dead leaves. A crumpled protein bar wrapper.
She picks up my phone.
Tilts it.
Presses the button.
The dead screen reflects her painted face.
She recoils with a sharp, guttural hiss and drops the device so violently it bounces. She steps back, shaking her hand as though burned, muttering:
"Thráak ven'kal..."
The sounds are alien, vowels stretched long, consonants clicking and grinding deep in the palate. Their tongues, I notice with a sick fascination, seem to have a slightly different texture, producing a rougher, more layered phonology.
Three more males emerge from the foliage. They are variations on the same formidable theme: squat, unbelievably broad, with a bone density that seems to anchor them to the earth. Their eyes, all that same reflective amber, scan the surroundings with a predator's constant vigilance.

They are all clad in similar simple hide loincloths, and I can see now that their feet are also six-toed, wide and splayed for stability.

What kind of humans have six fingers or toes? Amber eyes?Fuck where am I teleported?

They are not Homo sapiens. They are something else. Something that shouldn't exist.
I shrink back, wrists burning under their hold.
The eldest steps forward then, and my stomach drops. He's enormous even among them-towering a foot over me, thick-necked like a bull, scars crisscrossing his chest in pale rivers from old wounds. His face is a map of authority: one eye slightly milky from injury, the other sharp as flint. He moves with controlled power, like a tiger conserving energy.
He kneels fluidly, ignoring me completely, and picks up the silver device from the dirt-the one that zapped me into this hell.
He turns it over. His scarred, thick thumb, with its strange sixth digit, traces the etched symbols with a startling reverence. His voice rumbles deep,
"Var'thaa-kher... Deh-Shila..."
The others echo the words, a low chant. "Deh-Shila. Deh-Shila."
My mind, even through the fear, is screaming. Deh-Shila. A proper noun. A name? A title? A place?
My heartbeat thrums so hard my ribs ache.
"Please," I whisper, voice cracking. "I'm not dangerous. I'm just lost-lost from my home. Please, just let me-"
The spearpoint jabs my shoulder-light but warning.
Silence.
They bind my wrists with strips of tough, fibrous vine that bite sharply into my skin. "Chaa’vek," one says, the word clearly a command for 'move'.
They drag me forward.
As we walk, their silence is unnerving.
For creatures of such immense mass, they move through the undergrowth with a preternatural stealth, their wide, six-toed feet distributing their weight perfectly.
I, in contrast, snap every twig, rustle every leaf. My human gait is clumsy and loud in this silent world..
I stumble; they never do.
Their language is a low hum around me:
"Kel'thir ommai."
"Sah-naath vrum."
"Deh-Shila ven'ra."
Harsh consonants. Long vowels. A throatier resonance than any human tongue I know.
Then, something huge crashes in the distance—a sound of snapping timber and displaced air.
All four of my captors freeze in perfect unison.
They are not looking; they are listening. Their heads tilt slightly, their large, cup-like ears twitching. Their nostrils flare, sampling the air. The shift is profound, a sudden, visceral reminder of the animal that lives just beneath the surface of their human-like intelligence.
The forest holds its breath with them.
One murmurs a single word, deep and rumbling:
"Tharrin."
Danger?
The woman nudges me with the butt of her spear. Hard.
We move faster.
The forest thins abruptly, opening into a clearing that is less a village and more an extension of the jungle itself.
Huts are not built but woven from the living roots of massive, unfamiliar trees, their roofs a thick thatch of broad leaves.
Hides, scraped impossibly thin and supple, are stretched over frames constructed not of wood, but of gigantic, curved bones—ribs and vertebrae from creatures I cannot identify.
The fire pits are deep, lined with stone, the smoke carrying the same acrid, herbal scent that clings to my captors
And the people. They stop. Every one of them. Children, already showing the stocky, powerful build of their parents, freeze mid-chase.
Adults halting their work—knapping stone, scraping hides, weaving—and turn. In eerie, perfect unison, dozens of pairs of reflective amber eyes lock onto me.
The silence is absolute, and in it, I read a universe of meaning. It’s not just fear or curiosity. It’s superstition. Awe. Dread.
One woman yanks a child behind her, whispering urgently.
A man lifts a spear with an expression that is not aggression but wariness.
Another presses his hand to a carved necklace as though invoking protection.
Then, silence sweeps through the clearing.
A ripple of words follows, spreading outward:
"Vel'aka ommai..."
"Thir'a-sen."
"Deh-Shila vorem."
They shove me into a cage made of fire-hardened roots, lashed together with sinew. My knees hit the packed earth floor hard. The door, a heavy grid of the same material, slams shut with a final thud. A thick bar of polished bone slides across the outside with a definitive thunk.
I scramble up, grabbing the bars. They are as thick as my wrist, rough and immovable. "Please! You have to listen to me! I can explain! I'm from—"
A younger male, perhaps an adolescent, approaches. He doesn't look at my face, only taps the bars sharply with the butt of his spear. "Shaav." Quiet.
He turns and leaves.
Later, a bowl of clean water is pushed through a gap. A chunk of roasted meat, dense and gamey. A handful of strange red berries. My hunger, a sharp, gnawing animal in my gut, wins out over my fear.
The berries burst on my tongue, taste metallic but edible.
Children gather in distant clusters to stare. When I look at them directly, they scatter.
Occasionally, adults approach.
Never close.
Never speaking to me.
But watching.
Always watching.
Their movements are heavier.
Their posture straighter.
Their bodies are more compact, more powerful, built for explosive strength.
A woman-tall as a man, shoulders broad, muscles bunching beneath her skin-bares her teeth at me once. Not a smile.
A warning.
Nightfall unleashes hell. Jungle roars-screeches splitting air, paws padding huge shadows past torchlight.

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