[i]The midday sun barely managed to sneak through the dense, juicy foliage above, yet still did it feel like a sweaty oven. Through lichen-saturated vines and bottomless swamps, past flickering shadows and the blood-crusted gumbo limbo from which dread nightmares not yet discovered may hide, lay a vast apocalyptic city. Ruins as old as mankind itself, shrouded in moist greenery and assailed by the maddening drone of insects. The structures ascended high into the sky in towering, twisting, meaningless staircases and dipped down beneath the ground, delving deep into the forbidden depths of the earth to form countless unlit and unknown chambers. Though surely one may believe that no bipedal creature would dare reside within the hoary confines of this labrynthian Hell, the trail of smoke ascending up past the canopy would claim otherwise. A fire. Circling around the plume of smoke, a great vulture glided lazily about.[/i]