Dusk was marked at the already dim forest floor by a sudden drop in temperature. Sitting within the nature cultist's wooden, fort-like burial enclosure Tiger noted how much more pronounced the chill was on the ground than up in the canopy at aged colony that he had called home for the past few years. He had just wrapped and buried the body of the frail woman named Aden as best he could under a pile of bones and was rummaging through his backpack for something to protect him from the oncoming cold. He pulled out a foil blanket and the small packet of pills that his friend Pachy had given him. He popped a pill in his mouth and took a swig of water from an aluminium flask. The pills he noticed made him feel warmer as they had an immediate effect on his body and while this dose was earlier than scheduled, he didn't think it would hurt. As he put the flask back in the bag, he remembered the other gift that he found with a note, which read, "Hold the cube behind your ear where your cortex controller has been deactivated. It will be reactivated". Also in the message was the cryptic promise that "When they kick you out of the village, he will find you." Tiger wondered who 'he' was.

He had been heisitating the act of re-enabling his internal implants that would essentially reconnect him to the Galaxy. If he did so he would still never again be able to return to the Colony and information about the outside would with be a useless torure for him. What made the idea even less attractive was the fact that, if caught with the implanted tech that most people in the galaxy took for granted there would be no second chances -- the druids would kill him on the spot. But, on the plus side, being able to access the open Skyean repositories for details like maps might give him the edge he needed to survive. Also,  thinking of the 'he will find you' note, he guessed that his finder would need to communicate with him via his interface. Yes, Tiger decided,  it was time to activate the device.

He found the small cube in a pocket on this backpack where he had placed it and took extra care not to drop it with his clumsy old fingers fearing that if it fell now, with the failing light, he would be unlikely find it again on the bone-scattered dirt ground of the enclosure. Inspecting the item, he found a button on one side. Well, here goes nothing, he said to himself as his placed it behind his right ear and pressed. The flash of light blinded him for an instant and vibrations in his inner ears made him spin with dizziness. Fortunately, the process of turning his implants on again was not as painful as the procedure of decommissioning them (a procedure that he had been told at the time was permanent). When he regained his senses, the first thing he noticed was his long-lost personal interface hovering at his peripheral. But he instinctively knew that now was not the time to catch up on years of lost connection with the outside world. He was in a hostile place and needed to focus on making it through the night; he figured that there was just enough dusk left for him to secure himself.

He wrapped the foil blanket around his shoulders, fastening it like a cloak with the provided clasp and moved off to gather bones from the piles around so that he might make a barrier around one of the far corners of the enclosure. He hoped that would be enough to hide when the beasts arrived (he was sure that they would come) after Cian had fully set and he was left with nothing other than the moonless, pitch back of night.

Not five minutes later the light had vanished and Tiger couldn't even see his hands. He settled as still as he could be into a spot in the corner of the burial fort. There he hoped he would not be of interest to the animals.

A mist drifted in and an exhausted Tiger was alone with his thoughts and what must have been a thousand tasks flashing for attention on his newly instanced interface. But he was too tired to rejoin a society that forgotten about him and, lulled by the stir of the night forest and buzz from the drugs drifted into sleep.

He awoke in a hot sweat to the sound of something crunching on bone. Blinded by night he had to use all of his concentration to stop from shivering so that he could focus on the noise which, he guessed, was a smaller animal likely breaking fingers or toes, rather than a massive beast cracking a femur with its molars.

For a second he forgot he was in a ninety-six-year-old body and tried to move like when he was a young man, but his shoulder popped and a shot of pain ran down his left side. He let out a hiss, and the unseen animal stopped chewing. There was a rustle on the bones, like a creature scampering.

There was no chance of sleep for the rest of the night as the direction of the mist changed it now  carried with it the smell of blood, and he figured that if he could smell blood, then the animals could too. He was right as the next animal to enter the enclosure was large and an apex beast. He could tell this because he could hear its heavy breathing climbing the ramp to the area and any creature that feared predation would not project its presence in such a way. He could hear it moving closer followed by ripping and thudding that must have been the dead body near the centre of the yard being tossed and pulled apart with deep contented growls.

After a short while, the creature paused, and Tiger could hear it sniff the air. The next sound of movement was closer in Tiger's direction, and he considered without a doubt that the end was finally upon him.

The last thing that Tiger was expecting was the green flash of a local opcode in his peripheral interface: MESSAGE_REQUEST from someone he did not know called Reiko. He quickly threw ACCEPT in return.

"I am close. When I make distraction do not move." The thread, words as clearer than if heared by is own old ears, had been sent to his auditory cortext. The tread terminated abruptly and Tiger became alert, like in the old days as if tonight he was back in any of the countless skirmishes of his youth. Then, he heard the same deep voice of the man, but this time, through his ears. The series of events that followed was a blur.

A torch lobbed into the enclosure over the high timber wall from behind the corner where Tiger was hiding landing between him and a mountain of black fur, a baar! Agitated by the light, the horned bear-like monster stood on its back legs to its full height and roared. Tiger's heart sank when he saw behind the baar, in the diffuse torchlight, another even larger baar enter the enclosure. But, to his relief, this new figure was no baar stepping in from the shadows. It was a man; a giant. Tiger's heart raced even faster.

"Baar!" the figure boomed, "Come, meet Ugly Boy!"

The baar let out another terrible roar as it moved to attack the newcomer. With a shambling upright gait, it ran to the man who Tiger could now see was wielding a massive hammer. Tiger was no newcomer to battle, and this giant was not the first of his kind he had seen in the flesh. His rescuer was one of the Nephilim, a special group of genie juggernauts; human-tanks bred by the Church to be front-line mech warriors. The last thing Tiger would have expected was to be rescued by a Neph, but he was not complaining as the muscle-bound man swung his hammer over his head in an arc burying it deep into the skull of the beast that dropped dead in a heap at the big man's feet. His chest heaving, the rescuer looked over to Tiger, "It will make a good coat. We will skin it in the morning."