Sadly the survival kit did not yield anything remotely resembling a gun. Indeed, Rene could hardly make sense of most of the artifacts he found. He made a catalogue of those which he could recognize: a collapsible tent made of the same wondrous fibers as the jumpsuit, a portable stove, a package of brown lumps he suspected to be fire starters, a mess tin with a full set of folding utensils, a water flask, a wristwatch with attached compass (both of which possessed no hands but showed the time and magnetic reading through glowing lights) and a pouch full of white cubes that smelled like cinnamon.

As for the rest of the kit, that was a total mystery to him. Among them were a gauntlet fused to an underslung pipe, a hollow sphere, a folding tripod that held up some sort of bowl or dish with a great big spike sticking out of its center (perhaps it was meant for cooking stew in), and a lacquered obsidian slate marked with lines like a checkerboard.

He decided to fiddle around with them later. Reconnaissance came first. Before he left, Rene rolled up one dirty sleeve and located his artery with his fingertips. He took out the syringe containing the antifungal drug and winced as the needle tip dimpled his skin, drawing a tiny bead of blood. He stowed the syringe away with the two extra doses then carefully packed his belongings inside the case, taking the extra time to arrange the stuff as compactly as possible.

A soldier’s rucksack contained everything he could depend on out in the field. One of the first lesson’s he’d learned as a footslogger was to maximize the use of its space to cram in as much useful gear as possible. There was no telling which of these artefacts would wind up saving his life out here, and Rene had a gut feeling that he would need every single one of them before this ordeal was over.

With the sheathed sword in one hand and the handle of the survival kit in the other, Rene went looking for water.

#

It was deep in the night, and Zildiz felt her children nibbling at her again. Hungry, always hungry. Aa faint smile graced her hard features. It was true what her mother had told her once: we are all of us slaves to our stomachs. But tonight she had nothing left to give. The stores of fat and predigested protein in the larder were all gone, eaten up during the lean dry season. Zildiz herself was completely spent, exhausted after a long day of futile hunting. What little she had caught had barely kept her in the air.

“Go to sleep, my little waifs,” she whispered tenderly, “Mother is tired.”

A cold draft swept across the paper floor of her nest, stirring up the dust and pieces of molted exomorph. The three of them were growing far too quickly for her liking. If only they would stay this tiny for another cycle or so, just so she could enjoy their company. That wide-eyed innocence and total dependency of pupae—to her that was the essence of motherhood. All the sacrifices of time and energy and affection, made in exchange for satiating an emotional compulsion more powerful than anything she’d felt in her maiden years.

And for what, she had to wonder. What did she stand to gain from this crooked bargain? They were helpless without her, all three of them, plump little blobs of soft flesh. What could they do for her that could even begin to repay her for her efforts?

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Yes, through them she could pass on her likeness and traits to the succeeding generations of Gallivants ad infinitum. But did that truly matter? In time her descendants’ blood would mingle with that of the greater whole, and everything that made her, Zildiz, unique would be diluted to the point of obliteration. In time none of her descendants would resemble her in the slightest. If that was the immortality promised by the Vitalus, then she wasn’t interested.

Why then did she endure this pointless slavery and toil, waiting hand and foot on these…these parasites? Yes, that was what they were in the strictest sense of the word. Like ticks they had latched onto her, taking and taking until she had nothing left for herself.

And yet for some reason Zildiz was pleased with her role. More than that, she was happy to do it.

“For you, everything,’ she told them fiercely, “Everything.”

She drew the silk-spun cocoon around them and held them tight to her chest. They whimpered and shivered against the chill, and she felt her heart breaking. How would they survive the next dry spell? What if the rains never came back? There was only one choice that remained to her.

“Everything,” she swore to them again, “Take all that I am.”

And so her children began to eat the only thing she had left to offer up: herself. Though the pain was indescribable she let them do it, and felt the strength in her body slowly draining away.

“There you go,” she said, biting back the tears, “It doesn’t matter. Whatever happens, the four of you must live on.”

Four? No, that couldn’t be right. She only had three children. There was amber-eyed Polux, eldest and strongest. There too was dainty Sinestra who had grown right out of her first exomorph in a matter of days and was flying in a matter of weeks unassisted. Arvin was the youngest, born with a crooked leg and a cunning mind that more than made up for it.

But then why could she feel another presence in the room with her? Growing wild with hysteria, Zildiz pulled off the blanket and reached for her children. And there, curled up among its bawling siblings a desiccated husk with empty, rotting eyes staring back at her in accusation.

“No,” Zildiz wailed, “Oh, please no!”

Her screams rang out into the night, echoing across the treetops. But for all her grief and rage her cries could not wake the dead, and she was left drowning in her tears.

#

It was at this point that Zildiz woke up and found that she was drowning in the literal sense as well. Choking and screaming, she came bursting up out of the river, spewing a geyser of water from her mouth as she dragged herself up the riverbank, retching and gasping for breath.

Her lungs and throat felt raw from swallowing too much river water. Her body felt like it was being stabbed with a hundred pins and needles. Looking down at her chest she found that she was covered in hideous, fat leeches that were feasting on what they had mistaken for a corpse. Hissing in annoyance she tore them off and stuffed them into her jaws, blood spurting from the corners of her mouth. She needed all food she could get in order to heal her wounds properly. Besides, most of what she was eating had been hers to begin with anyway.

Zildiz got up and assessed her injuries. The deep and insistent ache in her back meant that one of her forewings had been torn off at the socket. That was going to set her back a few cycles to regrow. She had it lucky, all things considered. The grey behemoth could have burnt her to a crisp like the others. Remembering its trail of destruction, Zildiz looked around in panic and found to her relief that the monster was nowhere in sight. But that didn’t mean she was in the clear just yet; this was the river Sybil, deep in the heart of hostile territory. The Leapers ruled this biome, and they did not suffer incursions from their aerial cousins lightly. She needed to get out of here as quickly as possible.

Licking her fingers clean, Zildiz waded up out of the shallows and into the steaming jungle.