Frowning, Hasa took another look at the oncoming mokusinga. The closest was a hovering head-sized ball of glistening winged cilia. Near the front he could make out a semblance of a face buried within: several eyes, a dark round spot that might be a mouth, nothing resembling nostrils. Half a dozen wings kept each of the unlikely and somewhat preposterous-looking quintet aloft. They flew slowly, picking a careful path through the trees, weighed down by the constant rain.
“Don’t look like much to me.” Drawing his pistol, he raised the muzzle and took aim at the nearest flyer. At the same time, something wrapped several times around his ankles and brought him crashing to the surface of the log. Rolling fast, he aimed his weapon at the source of the upset.
Jemunu-jah gazed unflinchingly down the barrel as he withdrew his tongue from the human’s legs. “Stay there and die, then.” With that, Jemunu-jah ducked down under the surface. All that was visible was the single reed through which he was respirating and, nearby, a motionless Deyzaran breathing trunk.
Idiot aborigine, Hasa thought as he sat up. He was used to defending himself, not hiding in the muck. As he started to rise, he caught sight of the tree directly behind him. In addition to its own lower branches it now sported perhaps fifty finger-length shimmering spines. Embedded firmly in the wood, they sparkled like spines shaved from a crystalline cactus. Whirling, half crouching on the log, he confronted the approaching mokusinga. They continued to advance slowly. They didn’t have to move fast, he saw, because they weren’t covered with cilia. They were covered with needles.