Yuri saw the spaceship land. It came down a little wobbly and a bit too fast, but the landing seemed to be safe enough. From where his camp was in the jungle, it would take a bit of walking to reach the ship so Yuri gathered his equipment fast. He took his rifle and a few extra bullets, strapped on the chest piece and the shoulder parts of the imperial armor he had managed to get his hands on, filled his water bottle and stuffed a tin of biscuits into his pocket in case the salvaging would take long and he would get peckish. Then he took his empty back bag, put a bit of rope into it and stepped out of his shed that he had disguised so well that if the door was closed you could stand right next to it and not see it. He shut the door, fixed a bit of the camouflage around it and went on his way. Yuri knew that technically “jungle” wasn't the correct term for the forest that covered large parts of this planet and any biologist would probably scoff with irritation when the lay people referred to it in such a boorish way, but familiar words stuck with humanity wherever the colonization had spread, even if the people born here had never seen a actual jungle in their lives. It was often hot and humid, the trees grew tall and in many instances walking through it was almost a complete impossibility and the forest floor was covered in small critters and big insects, each devouring one another in the glorious natural cruelty. Yuri had found himself as a part of that cycle, setting traps for the creatures that he could eat or sell their pelts or hard shells to the merchants of the cities. The jungle was full of resources, both natural and man-made, and this wasn't the first time that spaceships would crash into its endless green sea and Yuri could take his time and gut their insides, keeping for himself whatever he fancied and selling the rest of it to the junk traders. Even almost complete garbage would have value to the many poor villages who could find uses for it in the most ingenious ways: parts of the engine could be hooked up to a battery and so provide the central heating to a otherwise primitive bungalow and the communication equipment could be modified to capture the entertainment channels of the capital city. It was hard work but the jungle provided for Yuri as long as he wasn't stupid enough to end his days on the many perils it contained. But it was a relationship that both parties respected so Yuri couldn't complain.

He walked with a brisk pace, watching where he stepped in an experienced manner. Once a flying bug that was a size of a saucer buzzed towards his face, intrigued by the heat and the smell of sweat that radiated from Yuri towards it's delicate senses but without stopping Yuri just punched the pest out of the air with full force and he heard the comical squeak of the abused insect as it hit a nearby tree. After about half an hour Yuri knew that he was getting close and he took a swig of water, cocked his rifle and readied himself for the possible trouble that he could have from the passengers of the ship if they were still around. Carefully Yuri peeked from the midst of the trees.

It wasn't much of a ship but more of an escape pod, which still wasn't a bad catch. It was in cruddy shape, which seemed to explain the troubled landing and why the whole thing was a bit on its side. Yuri could hear metallic thumping coming from it: the door was only ajar and not completely open and apparently the passenger – the pod was so small that Yuri was almost positive that there was only room for one person - was still inside, trying to get out. He heard muffled swearing and with each loud bang the door opened a bit more. Diligently the passenger did his best and he was succeeding, but every now and then the person needed to take a break and Yuri could hear his panting. Finally the door gave in and a young man in his late twenties fell out of the pod on his knees since he apparently had been shoulder checking the door. His face was pouring sweat and he stayed on the ground for a while, trying to catch his breath. The man had the black temple robes and the ceremonial sword strapped on his belt. In no way did he look like he was equipped to be in a place like this and was bound to have tough times ahead of him. Yuri decided to make his presence known since he didn't feel like the guy would be dangerous.

“Well now, I'm pretty sure that the ticket you bought wasn't supposed to bring you into this hellhole.” he said while he stepped out of his hiding place and the young monk lifted his head alarmed and looked at Yuri with an ice cold gaze. Before Yuri could say anything else he suddenly felt like his head was going to split and his limbs were starting to become numb, but Yuri instantly knew what was going on. He sprinted towards the monk and kicked him in the midsection with great strength and as the air left the monk's lungs the disturbing sensations Yuri had felt disappeared immediately. “Psionic bastard, so that's what they teach you at the temples!” Yuri shouted and out of irritation kicked the wheezing monk twice more who now could do nothing to protect himself. “Not the smartest move you could have pulled, no sir. There's more to come if that nonsense continues, you hear?” Yuri said as he started to tie his assailant's hands who now was gagging and puking from the kick. Grumbling, Yuri went inside the escape pod to see how much of it he could use or sell.

It was an old model and the engine had seen better days, it was no wonder that the pod had struggled with landing. The computers in these things were programmed to steer automatically towards the population centers as much as possible but either it was malfunctioning too or there just wasn't enough power for a longer trip so the pod had decided just to land anywhere possible. Or maybe the steering mechanism was at fault? Whatever it was, ending up in the middle of the wilderness like this obviously was a death sentence: the amount of equipment and know-how needed to make your way from here to a city was substantial and one glance at that jerk of a passenger was enough to tell that he had none of it. Yuri peeked out from the pod every now and then to check how the idiot was doing: he had stopped puking and was sweaty mess sitting there, arms and legs tied, spit lines hanging from his chin, but despite his obvious exhaustion the monk's eyes were still attentive and Yuri knew that the young lad was watching his every move. Yuri would have given the monk some water right from the start but he was still irked about the sudden assault he had withstood. The monk could be dehydrated for all he cared, at least the man would be easier to handle if he was weak.

Yuri had been picking apart the escape pod for quite a while now, and for some parts of it he would need some tools he didn't have on him right now. It didn't matter though, the operation would take several days anyway and he had all the time in the world. He would need to make a couple of trips to get the valuables to his shed, clean some of it up and then he would be off to different dealers in the cities and trading posts. This process would take weeks since nothing was close and Yuri knew that some places accepted different items than others or they at least offered better or worse prices. Yuri didn't mind the walking so he often would carry the same junk all across the region just for a few credits more. He was happy with what the pod could offer him and even an old clunker like this would be a horn of plenty for his meager needs, but the monk posed a problem. Often the passengers in faulty landings were dead on arrival and Yuri had needed to take the bodies out and carry them further away from the crash site, then clean up the messes they had left so that he could work without fear of contamination or finding the ship full of insects or predatory animals feeding on the carcasses when he came back. It often wasn't too bad, since he just could take out the pieces of floor, wall or furniture where the bodies had been and toss them out. A couple of times there had been people still clinging to life but so badly hurt that there was no way that they could make it, so Yuri had delivered the coup de grâce. He didn't quite know what would have been the right etiquette in these situations: the bodies were just meat to him and he had no problem just dumping them into whatever hole he could find and call it a day, not bothering himself with digging a grave of any sorts. The jungle would eat up any organic matter that was there in no time flat anyway so any sentimentality was short-lived. Here the crushing power of life overwhelmed over death: it's endless hunger was crawling on and devouring anything dying and decaying almost instantly, growing stronger on those who could no longer keep up in the race and through every death life gained ever more vigor and vibrancy that could be seen and sensed in all it's intensity in all the facets of the jungle, through its sights, sounds and smells. The collective entity absorbed the weak and through this cycle even you could be assimilated into its endless splendor.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Still, nobody asked you if you wanted to be part of it or not. Watching someone struggle for breath and spew blood under the rubble of the destroyed spaceship was heart wrenching. In witnessing the last agonies of these victims of bad fortune Yuri always wondered if he should say something, that he was sorry and it would be over soon before he did what had to be done, or maybe utter a prayer before or after. But he knew few holy words and they felt flimsy when somebody was facing the immediate abyss so after he became completely sure that nothing could be done he only aimed at a swift end, and he struck like an assassin of the night, without warning and without the poor bastard suspecting a thing. To an outsider it most definitely would have looked like a cold-blooded murder and a sick one at that, first pretending to help and then snatching the fleeting life with extreme prejudice. But what else was there to do? Tell that the jig was up and while the other falls into complete despair prepare for the final strike as he or she watches and panics and pleads? That wasn't good for anybody. Probably the worst experience in Yuri's life was once finding a child in this situation, a small girl of nine or ten, her parents dead and she bleeding profusely. He couldn't bring himself to do it, no matter how right it could have been, so he just held her hand as she cried and begged for the pain to stop. When it was all over and the strength in her grip waned away, Yuri prayed genuinely for the first time in his life. He didn't know to whom or to what or even what about, but the sheer suffering and tragedy of the moment was just too much to bear. Through his prayer he had grasped and reached into the vast nothingness, the echo of his agony expanding into the quiet infinite without ever hitting anything, only underlining the loneliness and meaninglessness of the human experience. This time Yuri took great care in burying her: he dug a grave and placed the floor panels where her blood was on top of it, the bloody side down, and he made a small totem of sorts as a gravestone. He would have wanted so much for that totem to have some sort of meaning, have it contain mystical power that would prove to the world that she had once existed and that would serve as a link for her to the great beyond from this awful and sad world, but he didn't know how to do it or if any such thing was even possible. The incident came up to his mind from time to time and on the practical level he was ashamed of his weakness in not being able to shorten her misery and in the greater sense he didn't know what to think, only that the feelings around his unformed thoughts were thick and oppressing and cruel.

Thankfully it always wasn't like that. Several times Yuri had helped the passengers that had survived back to civilization and they had been able to contact their embassies. It usually wasn't simple or easy since often the soldiers, police officers and minor officials of the cities were as corrupt as they come. Once Yuri had just helped someone to a military checkpoint that was nearby and the soldiers had just robbed the poor guy and were even going to push him into the lines of a forced labor unit, an absolute death sentence. Yuri had managed to save the man once he had heard the shouting and had gone back to see what was going on. He had dashed into the middle of it and beaten the three soldiers senseless, then he and the guy he had now saved twice had run back into the jungle. After that Yuri didn't leave the people he was escorting before they entered the doors of their embassies.

Now, in the present moment, Yuri went to the monk who was glaring at him from the ground, took out his canteen, took a swig himself and then poured a bunch of it on the monk's head and face, then let him drink from it as he held it. Greedily the monk drank and after many big gulps Yuri pulled the canteen away and looked at the young man in silence. He looked back with calm anticipation. “This is a spirited one.” Yuri thought to himself. “And a devious one.” He cleared his throat. “Hrr-hrrm, so, you have anything to say after the stunt you pulled? I'm not here to rob you or sell you to slavery. I take from these clunkers what I can...” Yuri knocked the pod with his knuckles, “... and if there are passengers alive I've helped them back to civilization. You're not the first and most definitely won't be the last. In this jungle you won't survive without professional help, that's a fact. I'll have to visit the cities anyway so I haven't minded going slower with amateurs hanging on my coat tails, it's no skin off my back.” There was a short silence and the monk was clearly waiting for the “But...” part of Yuri's speech. It wasn't exactly like that, Yuri wasn't expecting any payment, but now he felt that he needed to explain that too. “If you try anything like that nonsense again, I'll give you a hiding of your life and leave you where you stand. I'm your only ticket out of here, so play nice. Are we clear?” The monk was clearly not believing that anybody would do such things out of common decency or kindness of their hearts. “I saw a man in rag-tag imperial armor walking towards me with a rifle in his hand. How do you expect I would react? What do you think bandits look like? On top of that I'm woozy from the heat and thirst and the impact, my faculties aren't as clear as they could be.” the monk said in a down to earth tone. Yuri couldn't argue against these statements. The monk looked around into the vast jungle that spread around him as far as the eye could see. “So where the hell am I? How far is Anegend?”

Now Yuri frowned. This was becoming really shady. “You were supposed to go to... Anegend? Why?” The monk was tormented by some flying bugs and he tried his best to fend them off with his arms tied behind his back. “Yeah, I know I didn’t exactly hit the mark. Could you please take this bind off, these vermin are eating me alive? I'm sorry about before and I won't do anything rash anymore, please!'' Absent-mindedly Yuri released the monk who immediately started slapping the insects and stood up and shook his robes to get the invaders out of his clothes. Anegend was a somewhat larger frontier city deep in the jungle that had become especially infested with different criminal organizations because of its remote nature and because it was so close to several mines and plantations that delivered their raw materials straight to the city. Some of it was processed there in various and numerous sweatshops and shoddy factories in miserable conditions. All the passengers Yuri had ever rescued from the jungle had naturally wanted to get in touch with their families and representatives from their own parts of the empire. Even the regular citizens had their rights and if you were wealthy enough to travel around the galaxy you most likely were above that basic social level. There were no embassies, imperial banks or anything else that would fill the needs of a desperate shipwreck. Yuri started to doubt that this monk probably wasn't a monk at all. He very rarely went to Anegend and hadn't really made any decent contacts with any of the junk dealers there, plus the fact that it was basically in the opposite direction of the many other places he visited more often made the place pretty irrelevant to him. Other than those practical reasons he found the city drab and dirty. Other cities looked at least partly like places where human beings could live. Right now the suspect young monk looked goofy since after Yuri had taken off his leg bindings the man was doing his best to repel his insectoid tormentors in a way that looked like interpretive dance, but Yuri didn't want to judge the book by its cover. The situation was peculiar. “In all honesty, I really have no desire to go to Anegend. There are not that many possibilities for me to conduct my business there and rarely go to the place, it's not worth my time or effort. Venturis is closer and I would be going there anyway at some point, so if you want to tag along you're welcome to. You can try to get to Anegend from there.” The monk had stopped his dance and he looked at Yuri thoughtfully. “What if I made it worthwhile?” he said. Yuri frowned again. “How much? What can you offer? I don't think that you can withdraw money just like that in that armpit of the world.” The monk didn't seem discouraged at all. “How does five thousand credits sound? I have resources, that is not a problem.” he said. Yuri remained indecisive: that was good money, very good money for someone like himself, but Yuri really doubted if he was not just being used in a desperate situation and the young master here had zero intentions in paying him anything. His eyes wandered to the ceremonial sword that was in its scabbard on the monk's waist. “Let me see that.” Yuri said. The monk hesitated for a second before he handed it over and Yuri pulled the blade out of its sheath and inspected it. It was a real deal alright: a blade like this was insanely sharp and durable, very much fit for actual use even though they were meant for symbolic purposes only. “I get the five thousand credits when we arrive and I get the sword now.” Yuri said. The monk thought about this for a brief moment. “Deal.” he said. “Alright then.” Yuri answered and tossed the canteen to the dubious monk who fumbled the catch, picked it from the ground and drank greedily once more.