Page 8 of My Tiny Giant

Agan had a point. Except that now, I risked getting stranded in the hostile territory with a useless suit with no power.

“What would you suggest?” I asked him.

“We’ll proceed on foot until the nightfall. You’ll re-charge in the morning.” Agan yanked a folded paper out of his boot.

I stared over his shoulder with curiosity as he laid the paper map on the ground. It amazed me how the Ravils had led a full-on warfare against fescods for over two decades now, while only having such primitive means at their disposal.

“According to the map,” Agan traced a line on the paper with his finger, “If we head out now, we should be there tomorrow around noon, with a few hours of sleep during the night.”

I pulled up the map on the screen inside my helmet, layering the visual over his drawing. There were a few dissimilarities between his map and mine. I couldn’t determine whether those were because of the Ravils’ lack of modern technology or because of the advantage of their in-person reconnaissance over our satellite surveillance.

However, the discrepancies weren’t major. The main route that Agan indicated as the one to travel matched on both maps.

“We may not need to walk the entire distance,” I suggested. “Once I re-charge in the morning and we get far enough from yirzi , we can fly.”

“Good point.” Agan slapped my shoulder once again. Vibration and hollow sound reverberated through the suit.

I staggered back from the force of his slap, before regaining my balance.

“You really have to stop doing that,” I muttered, annoyed.

“Come on, Eleven.” He waved me off with a grin. “Don’t pretend to be a weakling, now. I’ve seen you take bigger punches than that.”

He slapped my back this time, sending another wave of vibration through the suit. Being inside the armor now felt very much like sitting inside a church bell while it was ringing.

Spending the next day and a half in this guy’s company already seemed like torture.

“All right then.” I straightened. “The sooner we head out, the sooner we get there.”

The sooner I’d be free of Agan, too.

Chapter 3

“D O YOU SEE ANY HOSTILE elements in the area?” Agan asked, after we had trudged through the jungle for about an hour.

Aside from some blood-thirsty fish in the river, the area we were hiking through had very few predatory animals. Fescods and yirzi presented the biggest danger on this part of the planet. However, it appeared we’d left them both behind by now.

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