Chapter 3 - It Gets Worse Here Every Day

You know where you are?

You're in the jungle baby

You're gonna die

In the jungle, welcome to the jungle

Watch it bring you to your shun n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n knees, knees

In the jungle, welcome to the jungle

~ Excerpt from a traditional Itzel Hylek war song, often accompanied by rhythmic drumming, stomping, and ecstatic shrieking


Thunderbreaker Captain's Log: 29 Zephyr, 1328 AE

Fleet en route to Maguuma. Warm wind from the south. Midnight. I can't sleep from the roaring in my brain. There's a dragon there. I fear him, but I must trust my own strength. I've always considered myself strong. Ambitious. Captain material. I never knew doubt, until now. I can hear the dragon's voice on the wind, and wonder if I should have done the unthinkable—quit my post and returned to the grove. But won't he follow me everywhere? Still, it's so much worse in the Heart of Maguuma.

All is quiet for now. I put my chief engineer on watch, and the rest of the crew slumber in their hammocks in the hold. They have trusted me with their lives for two years, we are family. I just went on deck pretending to check our defenses. I looked over the rail for a long moment. If I were to jump, could I save my crew? The dragon saw me, and heard me, his roar piercing me from the inside out like I'd swallowed thorns. If anyone is reading this, tell my crew I love them, and I'm sorry. Because I know what tomorrow will bring.

~Log excerpt found in the wrecked airship Thunderbreaker's strongbox, attributed to Captain Diarmid and written on the eve of the attack.


When things seem hopeless, all an engineer needs is his toolbelt. If only he can reach it. Ffeldy writhed on his back as thin green vines tethered him to the earth. Thin green tendrils looped around his wrists and ankles, cutting into his skin and pinioning his arms at an awkward angle above his head. Fresh new leaves rustled as they opened and seemed to whisper in his ear.

Submit to Mordremoth…

Now the vines crept around his chest, his neck, and began to squeeze. Ffeldy managed to rip through some of the softer shoots, but the remaining vines thickened, their stems growing wooden and tough. He'd need a machete now if he stood any chance of survival. He'd lost his weapons in his fall, and the sharpest tool in his belt—which he couldn't reach anyway—was the same screwdriver he'd used to fray the airship line earlier. Hadn't it been in his hand when he fell? He'd probably lost that too. But what about his wrench? No, he'd thrown that at his corrupted captain's head. Anything else? A box of nails had exploded on impact with the ground…he could feel their tiny sharp points under his back, like he lay on an acupuncture mat. Magnet? He glimpsed the Thunderbreaker's ripped-off fin lodged in a tree-branch above him. His magnet was still stuck to the support rod, and well out of reach. That left…a prybar.

Ffeldy inhaled as much oxygen as he could, straining his chest against the constricting vines to afford himself the slightest breathing room. Yes, he could feel the cold shaft of the prybar against his hip, still holstered in his belt. But there was no way he could reach it without cutting through the vines in the first place. It was a conundrum of the highest level.

I'm an engineer, Ffeldy thought. He'd gotten himself into this mess, and so he'd get himself out using the only tool left at his disposal: his brain. So far, all his tool-related attempts at freeing himself involved cutting the vines. What if the vines were responsive to something else, something nonviolent like a logical debate? Or an emotional plea? A song? Reason at all?

Ffeldy calmed his heartrate as best he could. Then he opened his eyes and smiled. "Hello, Mordremoth," he said in his most charming voice. "Umm, I'm not sure I'm clear on what this 'submitting' thing entails. For one, I'm not exactly flora." He'd seen with his own eyes that the sylvari were vulnerable to corruption, but humans…he didn't exactly want to find out first-hand. "I'd be pretty useless as a mere husk—I nearly failed Seraph training, I'm no fighter. But I have other talents probably—"

A vine pulled savagely at his airway, cutting him off.

FFeldy slapped his palms on the ground, trying to tap out. But Mordremoth was no Seraph trainer and didn't have much of a sense of humor, either.

SUBMIT TO MORDREMOTH! I WILL BREAK YOU!

So much for diplomacy. Ffeldy couldn't speak, or even breathe through the strangulating vines. Sparks of light crackled before his eyes. His brain couldn't function without oxygen, and with his last few woozy seconds of consciousness he summoned his own message for the jungle dragon via force of will alone.

Over my lifeless corpse!

He arched his back and dug his heels into the soft earth. Vines encircled his face, masked his eyes, and blocked out the light.


"Over here! I've found another one."

Distant, muffled voices swirled through Ffeldy's dim awareness. He heard a repetitive thwacking, and his whole body shuddered.

"I don't understand why we don't just let my servant do it, dear. You might rip your gown on that enormous blade."

"Oh, do shut up, Merula." There was a sawing sound, then a light glowed behind Ffeldy's eyelids. "Look, this one's got the Pact insignia on his lapels."

"He looks perfectly dead to me."

A hand stroked Ffeldy's forehead, then he felt the pressure of a thumb against his aching throat. He tried and failed to open his eyes.

"There's a faint pulse. And see there, his eyelids fluttered. He's on Grenth's doorstep, but I think we can extract him. No, no, we'll be fine, but why don't you go inform the Commander that we've found one of her soldiers? We could use some backup."

Ffeldy felt the soothing tingle of healing magic flow through him and gasped reflexively. The constricting pressure of vines on his ribcage eased for a moment, and human hands grasped his wrists, trying to pull him free. Then the injured vines began their hissing, creeping retaliation. Ffeldy opened his eyes just in time for a thorny vine-branch to whip him in the face.

Ffeldy twisted to the side. His rescuer had hacked the vines away from his arms and face, but the rest of him was still caught in a massive tangle of stems and roots. The healing magic—along with that slap to the face—revived him enough to snap back into full consciousness. He reached for the prybar holstered on his hip and dug his gloved fingers into the mass of writhing vines that still held him fast.

"Stand aside, Baroness," said a deeper, wry voice. "You've done an admirable job with those topiary shears, but it's time to bring out the weedwhacker."

Ffeldy's recent encounters with jungle foliage had not been on amiable terms. When a green flurry of leaf-like limbs and thorny weapons whirled toward him, his reaction was more instinctual than reasoned.

"Not today, Mordremoth!"

Ffeldy ripped the prybar free with a burst of shredded stems and swung it at his assailant's head. He might have landed the blow, too, if he'd been on his feet and had one fewer concussions to his skull. Instead he whiffed at thin air while his leafy attacker sidestepped neatly with a chuckle.

"Ah, an incorruptible human. The least interesting kind." A strong grip caught Ffeldy's sleeve and stopped his arm mid-swing. "I wasn't trying to kill you, but if you are going to be this insistent about running yourself through on my blade, I can't guarantee I'll be able to prevent an accident."

"I'm sorry. I…" For a moment, Ffeldy saw Captain Diarmid whirling toward him with her double blades. He shoved the memory firmly back into its mental compartment and nailed on the lid. He blinked, then focused on the sylvari who stood over him. "I'm Pact Engineer Von Ffeldy. And you are…?"

"I am resisting Mordremoth, and doing a slightly better job of it than you. Despite certain...inherent disadvantages."

"Just cut him free already, Canach," said a woman in a mud-spattered satin gown. Baroness Jasmina. "Save the snark for camp. I think we've all had a rough time of it, these past few days."

"Days?" Ffeldy lay still as the sylvari sliced his vine bonds with a single well-aimed sword-stroke. "But the airship crash…the fleet…"

"The fleet was destroyed three days ago." The baroness sent another surge of healing magic through Ffeldy's limbs and helped him to his feet. "The Pact Commander, along with Canach here plus a few other allies, just made contact with us this morning. We've been trying to rescue other survivors. I'm afraid you're the first Pact soldier we've located. All the other survivors in this area have been nobility, passengers on Faren's Flyer."

"Well…that's a story you'll have to tell me when I'm sitting down." Ffeldy's head spun. "Preferably with a strong drink in hand."

With the baroness supporting one shoulder and Canach the other, Ffeldy took one painful step, then another. "Next you'll tell me it's an uphill trudge to camp," he said wryly. "Oh, wait. My gear. It's got to be around here somewhere…"

Ffeldy dropped to his knees to search the overgrown foliage with his bare hands. He pricked his fingers on a handful of nails, and stuffed them back in his toolbelt pouch. His pistol, shield, wrench and screwdriver were nowhere to be found. They could have fallen anywhere across several acres of jungle, or lodged themselves in a tree branch on their way down. He'd probably never see them again.

"Is this yours?" Baroness Jasmina held up a single brass eye-piece on a leather strap. His panascopic monocle.

"Thank the gods, yes." Ffeldy took it and fitted it around his head. The single lens flickered, then lit up his vision with indicators, arrows and targeting crosshairs. His portable heads-up display was still fully functional, at least. Too bad it was mostly useless without weapons.

As a last resort, Ffeldy hopped painfully up and down and failed his arms in the direction of Thunderbreaker's fin piece, which was lodged in the tree above him, but it—along with his magnet, still stuck to the metal rod—was well out of reach.

"Here," said Canach, thrusting a twisted rod of scrap metal into Ffeldy's hands. "You just need to bash things. Let's not worry about fixing them right this second." He waved a hand at the jungle around them. Skeletal airship wreckage formed an almost cathedral-like dome overhead, and small fires still burned pockets of fuel. "Let's get a move on. You were right before, Engineer. It is an uphill hike back the noble's camp. But I can tell the baroness would love to fill you in as we go. The commander will want to interview you as well, I'm sure."

Once again Ffeldy found himself wedged between the pair of them, and he limped forward on unsteady legs.

"So. Faren's Flyer, eh?" said Ffeldy in a not-quite neutral tone. "I could be wrong, but I don't think that's a battleship exactly."

"Oh, well." The baroness pulled her shoulders back and adopted a dignified tone. "We were so proud of the Pact, after you defeated Zhaitan on that airship. Emotions have run high, and we nobles wanted just to cheer on the troops. Lord Faren arranged for our airship to rendezvous with the fleet. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I mean, what else were we going to do, sit at home in Divinity's Reach and twiddle our thumbs?"

"Nothing is stopping you from joining the Pact yourselves, you know," said Ffeldy, a shade more cynical than he'd intended. As a poor Claypool farm lad once upon a time, he'd not had much choice himself. "Though I suppose our choice of onboard cocktails on Thunderbreaker wouldn't have been to your standards. I'm a rubbish bartender."

"There's no call for that, Pact Engineer. Clearly we got what we deserved." She squeezed his shoulder, not unkindly.

"I'm sorry. None of us deserved this."

"Hold on just a moment," said Canach, stopping short so that Ffeldy stumbled against him. "Did you say you were crew on Thunderbreaker?" The wheels in his head—or whatever flora-specific machine sylvari had instead of wheels—clearly turned.

Fffeldy found himself backed against the nearest tree trunk. The powerful sylvari gripped him a little too enthusiastically by the lapels. Ffeldy was having difficulty reading Canach, and couldn't tell when he was being sarcastic or vicious. He was certainly fired up about something.

"I'm Thunderbreaker's chief engineer," said Ffeldy. "Or…I was. She was a good ship." His voice faltered. He still couldn't think straight. The weight of raw, unprocessed emotions threatened to swallow him whole like…like a dragon. His eye began to twitch, and Ffeldy held his composure for all he was worth.

"What happened to her captain?" Canach tightened his grip on Ffeldy's collar and leaned in so their noses almost touched.

"Captain Diarmid?" Ffeldy said weakly. A rush of memories came back to him at once, things he didn't want to remember at all. "I—she—I can't—"

"That's quite enough for the moment, Canach," cut in Baroness Jasmina, pushing the two of them apart. "The poor man's gone completely pale. This is no place for interrogations. The Pact Commander will want to hear everything first-hand in camp. Better let him recover until then."

Once again Canach and Jasmina supported Ffeldy on either side. They continued further up the hill, following a plant-free trail that Ffeldy realized was actually a gouge on the side of the ridge, left by a skidding piece of airship wreckage. As they gained altitude, the underbrush cleared and he was able to get a sense of the scope of the battle. Not battle, massacre. It was hard to tell where the jungle ended and the graveyard of dead airships began. The wreckage formed trellises and spires that rose above the trees for as far as he could see, like some apocalyptic cityscape. How many of his fellow Pact members must have perished here?

"I'm sorry if I didn't say it before," Ffeldy said to his two rescuers. "But thank you. Thanks for saving my life." His injured legs failed him then, and he sank to his knees on the rocky outcropping that overlooked a broad swath of burning jungle. Hot tears streaked his cheeks and spattered the bare ground in front of him. He churned them into the gravel with gloved fingers.

Jasmina crouched down next to him and wrapped him in a firm one-armed hug. Canach even placed a thorny hand on his head.

No one spoke. Around them the jungle birds chattered, getting ready to roost for the night.

"Oh, hello! Yoohoo! The camp's up this way, dear! We thought you'd gotten lost."

Baroness Jasmina released Ffeldy, cursing under her breath. "Leave it to Minister Merula to ruin the moment."

Merula bustled down the path. She had pulled her skirts to her knees and knotted he hem of her satin gown into her belt to keep it from snagging on the underbrush.

"Do hurry up! My Gertrude is cooking up some cassava pudding. And we scrounged up some cocoa powder and Ascalonian whiskey from the scattered airship cargo. Hot toddy, anyone? The Commander is very busy, let's not keep her waiting."

Canach turned on his heel. "You were supposed to go fetch the Commander," he said dryly. "Not hostess her to death. This is not Divinity's Reach, in case you hadn't noticed."

Ffeldy pushed himself up on one knee, testing the strength of his legs. Movement caught his eye, and he glanced down the trail in the direction they'd come. Dusk was falling, casing long shadows that flickered and danced in the scattered flames. The underbrush was…moving.

"Uhh…Canach?" Ffeldy nudged the sylvari's leg. "You know I hate assuming all sentient plants are trying to kill me—"

"What of it?" Canach snarled down at him. So could Canach take a joke or not? Or perhaps Ffeldy had just said something massively insulting without realizing.

Ffeldy grimaced and pressed on anyway. "Look down there." He pointed down the hill. "I'll let you do the interpreting for me."

Both Canach and Jasmina looked. Then Canach grasped Ffeldy's arm in both hands and hauled him to his feet.

"Have you still got your iron smasher, engineer? Let's go fix some mordrem, shall we? Though I'd prefer if you stand way over there. I don't trust you to be able to tell a bladderwort from a bromeliad, if you catch my meaning."

[Authors note: I should point out that, while I do usually write all my own lyrics, this chapter header comes by way of a massive apology to Guns n Roses. I was going to adapt it but it's already perfect as-is. It won't happen again, I promise.]