"I might as well be swimming in here" It was the first thought I had vocalized in the past hour and a half. My mind needed an escape from the incessant drone of bugs and squelch of soft earth beneath my tread. Perhaps if the air smelled a bit more pleasant I could pretend I was scarfing down some of Mama Yneida's stew, instead I was struggling to breath in this humidity. With each inhalation I understood the staggering density of amphibians in this place.

My toe caught something uncharacteristically hard and angular yanking me from my gloomy reverie. "A flagstone?" It was almost more unnerving to find signs of civilization here than to believe it was just endless tropical boscage. My gaze drifted upwards from my throbbing toe to a corroded monolith seemingly held together by its hatchwork vine façade. 

The stones at my feet now had a purpose, an ancient path to an ancient...something. Myriad mosses and lichens patterned the stone archways, a tapestry of time since abandonment. Causeways radiated from three central spires each short, squat, and crowned in a cascade of leaves. Maybe the fog was clouding my senses, but this place felt cloaked and I was an interloper to its forgotten tranquility.

Wayward feet brought me this far and the entrance was no place to lose initiative. Academy dogma would preach caution in the face of doubt, but I wasn't at the Academy now was I? With each step I felt reassured, each echoed off weathered reliefs of conflicts and triumphs so obviously salient to a lost culture. I was discovering the past lives of a proud people etched in stone so that others might marvel, or cower.

No time had passed since I set my first intrepid step through the crumbled gate. I had passed through columned walkways, overgrown gardens, sunken pools, and not once did I recall ascending.  Yet when I swiveled to view the entrance, it was a descending stairway staring back at me, the base of which stood two statues. They were stock still, frozen in place and purpose, weren't they?

I stumbled to the edge of the large circular platform I found myself on, the domed dais was open to the jungle beyond, perfect to retrace my steps. I sucked in another breath only to find the air staler than the dank forest floor. Roofs, terraces, towers, all fading into the distance, the canopy a distant mirage at the edge of this reclaimed cityscape. "That can't be right" I mumbled rubbing my dewy brow in frustration, "I just came in for a quick look around!"

My legs were leaden, my muscles waterlogged in fatigue from climbing hundreds? Thousands of steps? What was I atop? My blurry vision scanned the horizon, I seemed to be sat at the zenith of this ziggurat. I couldn't fathom the strength to descend back into the shrouding mist below me and so I collapsed onto my back, chest heaving desperately for oxygen.

It felt as though my consciousness was slipping from me, being pulled down by an unseen psychic weight. A soft scrape was enough to stave off my heavy lids, though I did not wish to see whatever it was. At the fading light of my senses came into view a coiled serpent, perched atop my chest its tongue darting rapidly. I let my feeble grasp on lucidity go just as I grasped at some semblance of meaning. 

"It was never abandoned." came the whispered reply.