Unseen nocturnal and mental forces would make every attempt to tear Tymon away from his shallow, yet blissful sleep, initially to very little effect as there simply was not enough conscious thought present in his mind to allow it. Those forces would however make him toss and turn in vain attempts to regain the prior comforts that allowed him to stay asleep and eventually, one such effort proved too harsh, kicking the stirring hornet's nest that his stomach had apparently become. Finally he was pushed into consciousness, sweating profusely out of every orifice and turning any crevice in his skin slick. Thoughts appeared, eyes opened and his stomach growled, much like the evening prior but with it, was a host of stabbing pains and discomforts that would absolutely refuse to leave no matter what he did.

"Frack" He muttered under his breath, staring up at the destroyed prospector 3 ceiling with a furrowed brow. The sun was already ever so slightly illuminating the horizon, letting a dark blue hue creep across the sky, visible only courtesy of the new holes in the makeshift structures' ceiling. Some part of him held up hope however;

Perhaps the persistent pains and sweats were only some incomplete bodily process interrupted by his physical discomfort, not the symptoms of some indigenous illness that had found its way into his system. He would maintain this hope however and make every attempt to return to sleep, but it would not embrace him again this dawn. What instead resulted was an array of attempts to close his eyes, shield his face or curl up into a ball to somehow soothe his stomach ache, attempts that continued for little more than an hour before he simply accepted defeat and laid there, eyes upwards and irritatingly alert as the sky turned from its dark navy blue hue to the friendlier daylight he was becoming familiar with.

Soon enough, Kae-lith'a stirred as the morning light nudged her to consciousness as well, although her wake up would appear far more graceful than the clearly illness ridden demands made by his body to solve a problem he had hoped would solve itself. After a brief stretch, she would turn to Tymon who while wide awake, had his face ever so slightly contorted in anger. Every other morning had seen Kae-lith'a wake up first, but this one was apparently different and she took notice;

"Tymon?" She asked, confused to see him awake, albeit a little worse for wear.

"Yep…" Tymon's reply was immediate and clearly as irritated as the feelings he so clearly wore on his face and stomach.

"You are wake?" She continued, still stealing back her consciousness from her own far more blissful sleep. Another, nearly identical "Yep" was spat out of Tymon's lips in reply. She kept staring for a moment and Tymon either not noticing or caring, simply did not budge. With ease she pulled her eyes away from the apparently lazy human and set about getting herself ready to start the day, still wearing much of the armour she had greeted Tymon with;

"We need to ready up" She muttered, stealing the phrase she had heard a number of times on imperial military radio frequencies. Only now did Tymon stir, finally starting to command his body into motion albeit slowly; "Mhmm…"

It took Kae-lith'a at most a minute or two to get all of her essential equipment together; chainsword, shuriken pistol, munition, hydrator and pellet dispenser, fitting every item either magnetically to her belt, back, or simply carrying them and in that time, Tymon had done a grand total of one thing.

"Tymon!" She shouted, the man wasn't even sitting upright. Sure his head was up from the bed but he may as well have still been lying down while one hand of his rested upon the stomach that defiantly kept him awake this dusk and morning.

"Mm?" His focus was more on the apparent fact that he was sick.

"You are still resting!" She pointed out, impatience palpable. It finally coaxed a reply;

"Knife ear my stom-" 'Knife ear' knew that he knew her real name.

"Kae-lith'a" She corrected.

"Sorry.. Kae-lith'a… My stomach feels like gakk.." Finally his sluggish, yet awake gaze met her fully functioning equivalent while his sentence trailed off; "I think I might be sick.." He picked up.

It was certainly plausible? A few years of carefully curated academia aboard Alaitoc had taught her of her species' less evolved past, of times where microbes, viruses, parasites, bacteria and other unseen creatures wrought havoc on their bodies, sometimes even killing Aeldari altogether.

"Sick as in… Well… Sick…" She knew the words this time, but had not truly considered the prospect of either of them contracting some illness on this world. Sure there was the argument the pair had at the mouth of the lake near her camp, where Tymon had mentioned something about parasites, but…

Kae-lith'a cursed a short string of expletives in her mind. Was this about to happen to her?

No.. She had bathed there before and so far, nothing had happened. Perhaps her physiology and immune system was more effective than his? She quickly put the question to the side however; they would have to head out as a pair and work together, the planet's rather aggressive wildlife demanded it considering how narrowly the pair escaped the previous encounter.

"We still need to look for uh.." Tymon interjected;

"I know, give me a moment" He fought the stomach ache and finally sat up properly; "I'll be ready to leave soon" Intent on keeping his word, he got his gear and equipment together; re-affixing his survival kit, donning his flak vest and hanging a water bottle off of his survival kit from a carabiner, all while being careful not to provoke his injuries under the skin-seal into a nerve-fraying frenzy that would certainly trump his stomachs' more ambient equivalent. Unlike Kae-lith'a, a daily breakfast was also a necessity so, stretching his singular ration brick as far as it would go, he took another approximate sixth of the nutritious yet poor tasting excuse for food and chowed down, much to Kae-lith'a's more muted disgust. It prompted her to check her own food reserves, the little that remained of them; quickly she opened the cartridge and saw a grand total of 4 food pellets left which ordinarily would last her twelve days further, twenty if she really pushed it. Kae-lith'a would go hungry another day at least though; She had taken her last one three days prior, there was at least another two days during which she could stretch it before having to take another. Tymon however, in addition to his food had taken a pill of his own, a bowel movement regulator;

It was known to soothe most if not all pains related to the gut and digestive system by forcing the bowels to act as usual, neutralising any attempt by the body to induce vomit or diarrhoea while allowing the immune system to continue fighting whatever it was that kept him awake throughout the night. Their downside however, the symptomatic period of his illness would be extended; the immune system would have to work twice as hard to keep up, so too would the homeostatic system when the body inevitably demanded further weapons with which to fight the pathogen. It resulted in Tymons stomach aches rapidly receding as he got ready while his temperature rose and, while it still left him with a headache, it was easier to tolerate than a stomach that threatened to regurgitate every cubic millimetre of his breakfast.

Soon enough, Tymon was up and ready to leave for their next objective; brandishing his dataslate and revealing the last known position of the first of the two prospector teams.

"Right.." He turned around so the impatient eldar could see the screen, finally giving her something to do besides stand and wait for her cohort. "Do you know where this is?" he asked, pointing at the icon on the screen. It depicted the silhouette of an eye with a cross over it. Prospector 3's location was in the bottom left corner of the screen relative to the survey team's last known position.

"Where~ um…" The screen, while written in a language largely alien to her, was easy to interpret. Pointing down at the black point labelled 'Pros3', she asked; "We are here?"

"Mhm" Tymon repeatedly tapped a button on the right of the slate, giving Kae-lith'a more of a landscape to work with, then she looked up from the display and armed with this knowledge, the natural eidetic memory every eldar was privy to helped her plot their next course;

"We have to come here" accompanying the announcement was her confidently pointing in the direction they were to be 'coming to'.

"You mean, go there?" Tymon corrected, answering the ever confident Eldar. She turned around, greeting Tymon with a mildly confused set of eyes and a quiet little 'hm?'. Noticing how vague his correction was, he verbally stumbled into continuing the already finished sentence.

"As in.. Go in that direction to… uhhh.." He paused, mentally improvising the rest of the awkward sentence; "to get to the umm.. Survey team" The stunted explanation of his correction did nothing for Kae-lith'a's stunted understanding of the language to begin with, but she quickly figured that he was trying to correct her. Eventually she implemented his correction;

"So.. we have to.. Go there?"

"Yeah, uhm.. That's how you say it" Tymon affirmed, pleasantly surprised that no further explanation was required.

"Okay, we go there" Kae-lith'a stated, sans the confidence she had initially, but still with her prior certainty and so, she led the way.

Tymon looked miserable; pale, sweaty, still having his lasgun slung over his injured shoulder with a look so lifeless that he may as well have had a puppet master take the past dozen steps for him, yet he kept moving, slogging through the presently ankle deep mud that threatened to grow deeper or shallower at random with every step. It made sense, they were fighting for their survival, for the possibility of escaping this world by…

She had not thought that far ahead yet. Initially her plan was to use the imperial forces to escape this world; sneak aboard one of their transports, hide in the walls and in the dead of the ships' night, launch an escape pod and broadcast an Asuryani distress signal. But now the chances of a more permanent stay on this world grew ever more likely once again and like before, the prospect terrified her. Thankfully she was not alone, sure all she had for company was this small minded, short lived little creature whose government her people had waged war on for centuries, but it was better than the split-jaws and the canoptek who, by now had all but vanished, apparently retreating into whatever holes and catacombs they had crawled out of.

Her mind went silent… And slowly, Kae-lith'a found herself disagreeing with the profile her people had given the mon'keigh, sure he was a short-lived creature if the biology was to be believed but he was resourceful; sure he lacked in combat skills, perhaps intelligence and equipment, but he knew his arsenal well and by now the pair owed each other their lives once over.

"We are here" Kae-lith'a announced, her path-finding however beset them on all sides with little more than the planet's usual terrain and plantlife, although it seemed to be a few shades brighter than prospector three's surrounding landscape. They were even granted the occasional company of a few glowing winged insects, dancing the same irregular patterns as those above Kae-lith'a's lake for a few split seconds before losing interest and darting off but there did not appear to be any obvious signs of the survey team, at least initially. Seconds passed before Tymon identified the first corpse by its khaki coloured flak-vest floating slightly atop what seemed to be a deeper area of their muddied terrain.

"There.."

Sluggishly he moved towards it while Kae-lith'a's eyes followed momentarily, before continuing to inspect their surroundings and finding another corpse in imperial uniform;

"Here also" She called out, moving towards it while Tymon with his uninjured arm, tried to overturn the corpse he found initially. It took some effort and painful assistance from his other arm, but eventually he was granted a view of the guardsmans covered, but almost collapsed torso.

"Frack me…" His flak armour had bent and fractured inwards, an odd pattern where a panel had warped before snapping inwards into his chest had exposed and ripped into the skin beneath. Stealing himself from the sight he had uncovered, he moved down towards the fallen soldiers' hip, found his survival bag and opened it, revealing a cracked dataslate and whatever survival gear he had been assigned in a state that would have certainly landed him in the brig.

"Tymon, I… I find something" Tymon's inspection was interrupted, her voice was slightly further away and when he turned to look, she was by the side of a tree, crouching by what could only be another corpse. He got to his feet and joined her in the discovery of the muddied corpse of a survey specialist, and his bergen, apparently laden to the brim.

They set the corpse upright and opened the bag up before rummaging around and taking items out one by one and to his enormous relief, three nutrient bricks and an advanced field medkit making its appearance known by the signature red cross emblazoned upon the white case. A smile spread on Tymons face as he lifted it out of the bag;

"Nice one Kae-lith'a!" He glanced at the eldar who in turn, returned the infectious smile before he set it down and opened it up; skin stapler, bio-analysis kit, a dozen skin seals at least and an array of medications so apparently vast he had no idea what many of them truly did, recognising only the ones his survival kit came equipped with and a few that his basic medical training covered. Closing the box, he pulled out the three nutrient bricks and set them down upon the lid;

"They've even got food" he held one up in front of Kae-lith'a who quickly shot back;

"It is still like gakk" The retort inadvertently wrestled forth a brief chuckle out of Tymon;

"You're not wrong" Putting the cabbage smelling brick down, he could not help but remember the rare occasions his parents would have the opportunity to get ahold of the higher quality varieties of synthmeat, the stuff that higher ranking government officials would typically be able to afford; his position within his worlds PD intelligence department as a data-scribe would on occasion, earn his family this privilege and it was his mother who turned what typically was a cube of pseudo-meat into something that would not offend the senses, unlike those nutrient bricks. He set the thought aside however, in favour of searching through the rest of the bag. With some of its contents already outside, it made finding the battery and thermal blanket also hidden within much easier, despite it being surrounded by survey equipment that he, like all other guardsmen, simply knew as 'science stuff'. Pulling the battery out, he placed it on the box beside the nutrient bricks and comments;

"Here's our power" There was much less enthusiasm behind this statement however and Kae-lith'a noticed; she picked the item up and inspected it.

"How much?"

"If we're lucky, another few days" Tymon knew there was no way of knowing until he replaced their depleted one however. When the final inspection of the bag revealed nothing further of use, he simply started stashing everything back into the bag, arranging the contents back into the order in which he found them.

"Pass the battery back, we've got~" Kae-lith'a interrupted him, shushing briefly while clutching his arm and pointing to their left.

"What the" Quickly his eyes set themselves on what she was trying to show him, a small creature, smaller even than the bag he was inspecting, some kind of ape perhaps? Its fur was a strange shade of green, not dissimilar from the hanging leaves of the trees all around them, long spindly arms reached down and clutched the arm of a fallen imperial soldier as its small fuzzy head feasted on food fresher than anything he had ever had the opportunity to eat. It seemed not to notice them, or simply not to care if it did and there was absolutely no telling how long it had been in their presence.
So there is other wildlife

Tymon's opportunistic instincts kicked in, this creature was docile and had yet to identify them as a threat, if the planet, or even just this particular biome had an abundance of these creatures, they may have just found their assurance for continued survival on this world. Slowly Tymon brandished his Lasgun, gritting his teeth anytime the weapon grazed his injured shoulder, but eventually he managed to prime the weapon, resting it on the shoulder of the propped up corpse in front of them to ease the pain to his shoulder. Kae-lith'a's eyes widened and she turned to Tymon, scared for the creature now within his sights;

"Tymon, what are you doing?!" She spoke loud enough to get the creature's attention momentarily, Tymon's also, but it swiftly lost interest while Tymon's attention remained. Trying keep his voice low, he replied;

"Something to cook and eat perhaps?" his voice was a low hiss;

"eat?! But you have more~.." she gestured at the bag after cringing physically and emotionally at the thought of burning the creature over a fire.

"That's only gonna last so long" slowly Tymon pointed his weapon at the creature again and readied to pull the trigger, Kae-lith'a would stop him a second time however, shoving the weapon off the corpses shoulder with a loud, but stunted attempt at a rebuttal.

"You don't need to shoot the… the creature!" Finally, her limited low gothic vocabulary did not completely fail her as she augmented her own knowledge of the language with learned words from Tymon's comparative dictionary, but all it did was leave Tymon both confused and annoyed at the fact that she had managed to alert the creature to their presence once again.

"Shhh!" He hissed, Kae-lith'a listened and slowly the creature turned its attention back to the dead guardsmans' arm.

"Look, eventually we're gonna run out of food, so we're gonna have to find another food source" he reasoned, quiet as before. Kae-lith'a had another rebuttal queued up however, one thankfully at a volume that did not scare or startle the creature a second time.

"Sometimes there are…" And she locked up, stumbling into words that her limited vocabulary did not include, she knew the combined Aeldari words and gestures to describe fruits that would grow on trees, but not the comparatively simple low gothic equivalent. Cogs turned, gears clicked and quickly she exhausted every word available to her and resorted to crudely gesturing up at the trees, hoping context would do the rest of the syntactical heavy lifting;

"Food on the…" She pointed above her, at the branches.

"You mean fruit?" Tymon filled in, she did not know the word; "Food that grows on trees.."

"Growing fruits! Yes!" Enthusiasm made itself known in her voice again when she was able to convey her point to Tymon.

"Right.. Uhm.." He looked around him, up at the branches and he observed a strangely distinct lack of fruit, seed pods, or anything of the like before turning back to Kae-lith'a.

"I can't see anything growing on these trees that we can actually eat and we may be here a while so…"

He sets his eyes back on the creature which by now, had moved on to the corpses' other arm;

"I think we should take any opportunity given to us" he began to ready his weapon again, before Kae-lith'a placed her hand along its roof.

"Tymon please, not yet.." There was a gentle pleading look in her eyes and for once, she had actually asked him instead of commanding him to follow some order. He considered disregarding her request entirely, taking his agency in his hands and using it while stubbornly 'sticking it' to his co-survivor, but she had asked for the same respect he was asking for and apparently, this issue seemed to affect her on a different level. Eventually he used his agency to spare this creatures life;

"Fine" She did not seem to display any appreciation, remaining entirely silent. Meanwhile, Tymon set about removing the backpack from the corpse, once again appearing to warrant the assistance of Kae-lith'a and while they both fumbled the dead survey specialists' arms off and away from the backpack, he spoke once again;

"You had no problems killing the hounds earlier" the comment was deadpan, but he knew the simple moral nuance between attacking an aggressive pack of predators as opposed to a singular, seemingly harmless creature, it was a nuance that he and his brothers in arms had long since been taught to ignore.

"They attacked" the shaken sounding Kae-lith'a rightfully pointed out while Tymon mounted the bergen carefully to his back, avoiding the now loosening patch of skin-seal on his shoulder. Kae-lith'a in the meantime had opted to search for other corpses. Some instinctive and reflexive part of him prepared to make a sarcastic comment, something about weakness or not being able to do what was necessary to survive, but he saw no reason to this time, being above killing helpless creatures was not something that caused either of them any issues so far, but moral correctness had rarely achieved anything morally correct in the past. Another needless train of thought however, he put an end to it, his head was already aching enough. All the while, the creature was still nearby, having transitioned this time to absentmindedly chewing on one of the lower hanging leaves on a nearby tree.

Some minutes later, Tymon had the bag precariously secured over the loosening skin-seal before taking a sip of water and subconsciously declaring the trip over. The pair had scored the well equipped backpack of a survey team member and in doing so, they gave themselves room to breathe on the front of finding a more permanent solution to their initial food problems, Kae-lith'a however appeared to have other ideas, discovering another imperial corpse only to haphazardly pat him down before suddenly starting to fish something out of another deeper pit of sludge. The sight confused him for a moment until he realised what she had found;

"Frack! Where'd you find that?" She held a weapon, awkwardly by its front mounted handle;

"Here! It's uh~" Tymon interjected;

"A grenade launcher…" Confused, he made his way over to Kae-lith'a who by now, was holding the clunky weapon correctly, pointing the barrel downwards. "Pass it over" Wordlessly she did so and Tymon, still with some difficulty handling the weapon, cycled the revolving munitions drum and counted the how many shots remained;

"It's been fired.." Three of its six chambers were empty. "They were trying to fight off the necrons…"

"No…" Kae-lith'a answered, weary but confident in her answer; "It's not canoptek" she finished.

"How'd you know?"

"This… isn't canoptek… uhm… I don't know the words" Her answer even after again scrounging together what little low gothic vocabulary she was armed with, still left more to be explained, but she managed to continue;

"You fight different to me"

"Yeah?" He understood quickly where she was going;

"Canoptek does not fight… like this…" She finished her answer by briefly gesturing about at the scattered corpses, the caved in chest of the first imperial soldier came to mind.

"Okay… So… what did this then?" His eyes left Kae-lith'a and returned to the corpses with worried eyes. A deep thud quietly resonated, gently it grabbed Tymon's attention, so too did a quiet yet deep exhalation coming from behind him.

"I don't know.." Ignoring her reply he turned around and was greeted by its source;
"K~Kae-lith'a?.." He stammered, readying his weapon, opting instead to prepare to hipfire. Kae-lith'a, confused, turned around and saw the same;

It was hunched forwards, standing upon two legs as wide and tall as Tymon himself with a torso much like a common biped albeit clad in its own natural and presumably chitinous armour. Two equally huge arms hung from the shoulders of this hunched over creature while a slightly longer mouth protruded out of the head resting stoutly upon its massive torso. A deep growl emerged from its lips as soon as the pair locked eyes with two of its own four. While the other two eyes glanced in different directions entirely, idly scanning its surroundings. Or were they fake eyes?

It did not matter, this creature was seeing them either as a threat, or was sizing up its next meal, regardless it was baring its teeth;

"Slowly… Go… Backwards…" He enunciated each word at Kae-lith'a, who listened before the pair simultaneously started stepping backwards, only for the creature to growl loudly and close the gap enough to maintain its proximity. It left Kae-lith'a startled for a moment, forcing fear to dance across her face and eyes but as quickly as said dance began, it was thwarted by the orchestra that was Kae-lith'a's disciplined mind; all fear departed and she suddenly brandished her chainsword, albeit slowly and stared the creature down.

"Tymon, the launcher" She hissed, he considered it and replied;

"Too close range… The blast would catch us…" He was equally quiet. There was no way out of this situation, if they backed off, the creature advanced, if they approached, it would likely see this as an aggressive act and respond in kind to a probably devastating effectiveness, judging by how big the thing was. Running would also achieve nothing because it would almost certainly catch up with them.

"Kae-lith'a" He hissed, there was only one option and he was holding it.

"Get ready to fire" Her mind, now donning the war-mask, readying her for swifter combat decisions, immediately saw the flaw in the plan that involved just attacking the creature with their weapons and if a whole group of imperial soldiers could not kill this creature, then they would certainly fare no better. She saw no alternative strategy however;

"We fire together" She agreed,

"Three…" Tymon's weapon was propped against his hip, aiming as directly as he could at the creature, setting at fully automatic,

"Two…" Kae-lith'a's shuriken pistol was primed, aimed and pre-spinning a small hand-sized bladed disk to launch into its target.

"One…" Instincts geared up, all four eyes met the prey and their tools, expecting the fight to be as its first encounter with the other ones.

Click

A dozen pencil thin red lasbolts cut through the air with unseeable speed, connecting with the exposed or chitinous skin of the creature, searing and burning it wherever the bolts make contact, simultaneously three shurikens screech through the air, embedding themselves in the creatures flesh, one lucky strike impacting the joint between its arm and its torso. The predator screamed out in pain, or anger, or something, clutching the injured top right half of its torso while Kae-lith'a and Tymon opportunistically continued riddling the creature in las bolts and shurikens, earning Tymon a lucky hit of his own as one bolt fried an eye on its left side. The weapons could suppress the creature no longer however, swiftly it grew used to the pain it's believed prey inflicted upon it and struck its small boulder of a three fingered fist into the ground towards Tymon. He Ignored every painful instinct in his arm as he dove out the way, splashing both weapons into the ground before scrambling to grab his lasgun again. Kae-lith'a had also been stunned, briefly she stumbled back as the creature waved that same hand towards her, tripping her sideways and forcing her to drop her weapons despite an attempt to strike her adversary with them. Then it went to grab her, picking her up by the leg; she screamed, beating the appendage with her fists but it almost effortlessly lifted her up, clutching her armour, bringing it to its buckling point and forcing her to shout out in pain. Tymon finally had his weapon back in his hand, and scrambled to get to his feet, but the creature was on its way out, departing as the arm Kae-lith'a had hit grew slower. The other still had her firmly in its grasp however and Tymon, seeing the opportunity, contemplated firing before realising how quickly the creature was moving. He couldn't hit the target that far away, not with his injury, not without risking a stray shot at Kae-lith'a.

AUTHORS NOTES;
Cliff-hanger time! I'm rather proud of how this one went, from what I can tell a healthy dose of the pair getting to know eachother (where they finally stop outright yelling at eachother) while also having them get to know the world around them. Some part of me things this chapter is a little short though.

Regardless, apologies for taking a while here, any and all constructive criticism is appreciated! Glad you're all enjoying!