Zildiz dashed down the length of the narrow branch, balancing effortlessly on the tips of her toes as she built up speed right up until the very end when she leapt boldly into the vacant space, struggling mightily to keep herself airborne. Her smaller hindwings were her only working pair, and as expected, they could not hold her weight for long. The most she could manage was a sustained hover only ten wingspans off the ground. She gave it up before she strained herself and alighted on the stem of a foxpalm tree.

This was going to be difficult. Escaping the rainforest would mean a long walk home. She would need to make a shelter for the night and hide it well. Zildiz found a hollow place among the siltstone boulders by the riverbank and began gathering dead branches and wide fronds. She stacked the latter into a tepee within the hollow and folded the fronds over them to form a roof. Zildiz took a step back and examined her work with a critical eye.

Her nest-making had never been the prettiest, and the resulting structure was noticeably dilapidated, with far too many holes in the roof for her liking. But the All-In-One looked kindly upon her just then, and she turned up a useful bit of flotsam washed up on the side of the river, partially buried by the mud.

It appeared to be some sort of enormous leaf or petal, perhaps torn off one of the megaflora by a strong wind. Thick black vines were attached to its edges, all tangled up like a glistening ball of snakes. Zildiz fished it out of the river and felt at it with her hands. The fibers of the leaf were amazingly tough and flexible, while the vines were as big as her wrist and stronger than any woven rope.

She couldn’t have asked for a better material to fix her roof. Soon she had a cozy lair cunningly concealed right on the water’s edge. Zildiz squatted in the shade and rested her eyes, trying her best to fall asleep. But not to dream. No, never that.

Soon she drifted away, and her nightmares found her anyway.

#

Rene found the river in less than an hour. Approximating the direction from the bird’s eye view he’d glimpsed of the area during his time in the plummeting safety pod, he kept himself moving downhill, knowing his chances of finding water improved with decreasing elevation. To keep from getting lost he marked his path back to the pod by carving arrows on the bark of the trees. In no time at all his efforts were rewarded by him hearing the muffled roar of the current.

For the first time that day, Rene allowed himself a smile. He had always had a knack for navigating the surface world, a rare talent in a species which spent nearly all of its time underground. Most downsiders had attacks of agoraphobia and started hyperventilating the first time they were brought out of the mounds. Not so in Rene’s case. He had squinted a bit at the brightness of the twin suns, that was all. When he wasn’t busy fighting for his life at every turn, walking topside had always filled him with an incurable sense of curiosity. For a place so feared and reviled by the chaplains, the surface was a far sight prettier than the dripping caves and dark abysses of mankind’s natural habitat.

Rene crouched low as he approached the river, keeping hidden among the ferns. It was getting dark now and the birds and cicadas were trilling their ceaseless songs. Not a creature stirred. As far as he could tell, he was alone here on this stretch of the bank.

Not for the first time Rene wondered if this was truly worth the risk, waddling all the way out here with the sodden weight in his trousers shifting uncomfortably with each step. But at the thought of spending another day covered in his own filth Rene grew decisive and ventured out into the open, reaching the river’s edge.

He would have to make it quick. Already he could barely see his hands in front of his face. Rene stripped off the gasmask and his soiled clothes and began washing himself off. Hopefully the antifungal dose in his immune system would protect him against untreated water sources. Rene scooped up some mud and gravel from the river bottom and used it as soap, applying it thickly and scrubbing himself clean.

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“Ahh,” Rene sighed contentedly. Remarkable, the wonders a good bath did for one’s morale. After this he would make camp somewhere nearby—something told him it would be safer to make his encampment with his back to these deep currents. His spirits soaring, Rene began to whistle as he cheerfully rinsed his armpits.

It was at that moment that he heard a roar that froze his blood solid. It came from on high, shattering the evening stillness and reverberating through the hills and vales. Rene sank below the water up to the whites of his eyes, looking up at the skies in terror, certain that the blade-limbed harpy creatures had found him at last.

But the thing which came tearing across the treetops were stranger by far. It was shaped like a bird, yet its wings were fixed in place and never flapped even once. In fact Rene thought it were merely gliding right up until it put on a murderous burst of acceleration, moving so swiftly that the troposphere visibly folded in its wake. Like a balloon by a firm fingertip, the film of air which traced its leading edge bulged beneath the immense pressure, until finally it gave way in a rippling tear in the sky.

Krrboom!

A sonic explosion rocked the heavens seconds later. Gobsmacked, Rene could only gape after it as it sped out of sight.

“A machine!” Rene exclaimed, standing up, “A flying machine!”

The Aeronautical Division had blimps and zeppelins, of course. There had even been rumors of the Fleet engineers testing heavier-than-air prototypes, something which Rene had always dismissed as pure science fiction. But nothing in the Fleet’s arsenal could even begin to match what he had just witnessed. Such speed! Such raw power!

That’s funny, Rene thought, his excitement put on hold by a sudden realization. The flying machine had been heading in the exact opposite direction in which he had been travelling. Rene scratched his chin and frowned. Then his eyes shot open and he shouted:

“The safety pod!”

Hurriedly rinsing off the mud and drying himself with fistfuls of dead leaves, Rene threw on the white jumpsuit and breathing mask. Snatching up the sword and the kit, he went sprinting back the way he came, crashing heedlessly through the undergrowth, his heavy boots gouging up the mud underfoot.

The spirit of the pod had spoken true! Someone had been sent to rescue him! Salvation was at hand!

Thoughts burst into his mind one after another: who was manning those awesome flying machines? Were there in fact ancestor-gods who had survived up until the present day? Was he about to meet his makers?

Everything made sense now, Rene told himself, making a fantastical leap of logic. The ancestor-gods had manipulated events such that he, Rene Louvoture, could uncover the dormant Divine Engine and use it to destroy the enemies of his people. It had all been ordained right from the start.

It was hard to relocate the landmarks he had carved into the trees, but he kept after the roaring sound of the flying machine. It was hovering in place now, slowly circling the crash site. Powerful searchlights mounted on its snout bathed the land in beams of hard light. Rene stumbled on, lungs wheezing as the extreme exertions of the past days finally caught up to him. The flying machine was descending below the treetops now, the glare of its lights filtering through the foliage in spears of brilliance.

“Wait!” he yelled and waved, still kilometers away, “I’m here! I’m coming!”

The flying machine rose back up into his vision, the safety pod now fitted and attached to its belly.

“Don’t leave me,” Rene begged, “I’m right here. Please?”

Utterly defeated, Rene sank onto his knees and watched as the machine swung up and away, vanishing into the night. Now he was alone in the darkening land with no hope of rescue.

No, not quite alone. Strange howls echoed through the jungle at odd intervals and set him on edge, his overactive imagination placing bogeymen within every nook and crevice. Bioluminescent lichens sprouting on the peeling bark and the faint light of the moon combined to give the place an eerie glow. It was brighter here at night than he’d expected it to be. That was a problem in itself if he meant to stay hidden.

He took out the collapsible tent and found that it hadn’t come with any tent pegs or ropes. There was no time to figure out this particular puzzle. Besides, he was too depressed to even try. Too much had happened these past few days, altogether too much.

Rene picked up a palm leaf off the forest floor and crawled to the base of a tree. There he curled up between its roots and covered himself up, with the survival kit case as his pillow and the sword of the ancients close at hand. And though the ground felt moist and cold he was soon fast asleep.