Anele stared at the dead mandrill, and the pale light leaking out of its belly. She dropped to a knee, bracing a fist against the dark clay earth to steady herself. A deep gash had opened her shoulder, and the wind flared the venom in it like a breath to embers. The mandrill's meat would be no good then. Even in death, its claws glistened an odd green tint in the sunlight, and the tongue that lolled out of its long snout was coloured the same. Anele would sooner drink saltwater than test that meat out.

But...

Panting, she opened her stoneiris a little wider, and the light in the mandrill's belly brightened.

"Hunter shall eat no equal hunter," Anele said to the glowing corpse. "Friend told me that."

Her body refused to rise but she dragged it upright anyway. The horizon rolled its shoulder and she staggered a step to the side before regaining her balance. Her left eye was almost swollen shut, and a gash in her brow was pouring blood into the other one. The wind ruffled her feather skirt.

"Friend used to eat elephants in one gulp, though. You'd have been a treat on their way to better food. Us? It was four on one at some point. I don't know if that makes you better or lesser, but we're not equals and I'm starving, friend."

Her dagger lay forgotten beside her foot. Anele flicked it up with a toe and reached out. Exhausted, she fumbled it and it fell to the ground again. To hell with that, then. She scooped up a fist of soul clay and packed it over her heart hand.

"Besides, we had a deal."

Shutting her stoneiris, Anele dropped down by the mandrill's hip and shoved her heart hand into its belly. She grabbed its slippery soul and crushed it. It was like holding a piece of wilderness, kneaded and knotted up until it was small enough to fit under a liver. Small but packed with life and sharp scents. The moss of a distant jungle. The strangeness of the dry desert air. Fear when there was iron on the wind...

She'd been wondering what would have forced a troop of mandrills out of the jungles that bordered the desert, and now she knew.

"I suppose you were better off running into me than him."

Her own soul might have carried a sniff of the Pettygod's iron stench if the fight had fallen the other way. In fact, come to think of it...

Anele looked up at a distant dune. Nothing. It was just sand, rolling over like slow waves. She cracked her stoneiris open and there he was, staring at her with a face that bore no eyes or mouth.

She'd have to leave the mandrill's soul. It was larger and more vital than the earthpig's had been -- stay and feast on that. That would be the only way to escape him. Give up the kill and live another day. But he'd followed her effortlessly, and he was a Pettygod. It wasn't like she could outrun--

He dashed forward. It took five strides, that was all. He'd been at least a hundred paces away and then a couple of heartbeats happened and here he was, standing over her, the iron scent of his body like a cold weight in the air. After half a heartbeat, the sand in his wake exploded as the air rushed to fill the space he had just dashed through. Airweaving, a speed technique worthy of a Pettygod-level mage.

The sun was behind his head, casting his featureless face in shadow, but Anele felt his hunger ripple against her.

No, there would be no outrunning him.

The Pettygod knelt on the other side of the mandrill. Anele reflexively abandoned the soul, pulling back her hearthand as the Pettygod slide metal fingers into the gash. He ripped the soul and liver out with a gentle tug, and raised them to the ridge of iron where his mouth should be.

Anele grabbed his wrist. He broke her grip with a subtle flick of his hand, and almost broke her thumb in the process. She grabbed his forearm with her right hand, and pushed the full weight of her soul into her gaze.

"Not your kill."

He returned his own gaze, little more than a casual sideglance, and it knocked her on her back. Anele had been run over by an elephant before, and that memory came back as sharp as the pain in her ribs as she struggled to a sitting position. The Pettygod tossed the liver aside and examined the mandrill's soul as if she wasn't there.

Oh thank the wilderness, there it was, that anger in her that churned panic to power and whittled pain into a sharp point of focus. Anele's last memory of civilisation had been at eight-years-old. Maybe a decade and a bit had passed since then, and in all that time she had raised herself in a wild where dreadlions skulked the valleys and monarch vultures large enough to hide a village in their wingspan had circled overhead.

There was no fear in being a weak hunter among monsters, because there was no shame in acknowledging greater strength. But a monarch vulture would stalk any hunter, great or small, stealing its kills because it knew it could. Even when it had strength of its own. Hunters were to be respected, but scavengers...

Anele tightened the leather band on her feather skirt.

They still stood in the circle of soul clay. A patch she had poured most of her soul into making. Inside it, she certainly felt stronger, more alert. Anele touched her bleeding shoulder with her heart hand, smearing the clay over the wound. It cooled and closed. Her flesh stitching itself together in three heartbeats doubled the pain and squeezed her spine until she thought it would pop, then it dulled and her focus returned.

The clay was just a thin layer on shoulder, barely thicker than a coat of paint, but when Anele infused it with some of the last dregs of her soul, she felt it grow heavier. Tougher. She picked up her dagger.

The Pettygod still eyed the mandrill's soul, as if trying to figure out the best way to eat it.

Anele pushed a sliver of her soul through her feet and commanded the soul clay to take her. The world disappeared to pure black as she sank into its heart. When she came up again, she was fully covered, a shadow holding a white knife.

At last, the Pettygod raised the soul to the ridge of iron where his mouth should have been. Anele kindled the last bit of her soul, infusing her painted body with power and pushed off. She closed the distance between her and the Pettygod in lightning steps, and drove her heel into his wrist. It was like slapping a tree. He didn't even nudge off balance. But the soul flew out of his grip.

She let her momentum carry her past him, and she had to stumble outside of the clay circle to catch the mandrill's soul. When her feet touched the desert sand, her soul weakened slightly and the true pains of the mandrill fight warmed beneath the skin. Her shoulder fizzled with venom.

Again, that slow churning in her bones, a deep reserve of power keeping her upright.

Slowly, the Pettygod rose, like a dark puppet pulled upright. A smooth face regarded her, and the weight of his gaze leaned on her shoulders.

Anele crushed the soul in her heart hand, and concentrated all its power in her fist. "Go on then."

The Pettygod charged. No, its calf twitched and then suddenly it was barrelling down towards her, a metallic blur that filled her vision. With her stoneiris open, Anele traced his movements. She waited until it was too late to dodge.

Her soul-powered clay sharpened her reactions just enough. Just. She drove her glass dagger through the Pettygod's gut with her right hand, and slapped the hilt with her heart hand. The mandrill's spirit lanced through the dagger and into the Pettygod's soul. He still crashed into Anele with enough force to rattle her skull, but it was momentum more than anything else. She scrambled away from the limp iron body in the sand and started filling the three pots on her hip with soul clay.

The Pettygod lay face down in the sand. No hope in getting her dagger back, not when he was still very much alive. It would have taken her a solid morning to digest the mandrill's soul, so she didn't put much hope in a Pettygod being out for long, even with the spirit injected right into his soul.

Enough time to run, that's all she had. Maybe even to hide until he found a new target. She'd gambled and lost everything but her life. That'd be enough.

No it wouldn't. She was starving and her soul was depleted. And there was no way to replenish--

Something flashed in the distance. It had the unmistakable tremor of a powerful soul dying but... even at this distance, a soul like that should have ripped a crater in the dunes.

Anele cracked her stoneiris open, seeing further than her eyes ever could. The light shone like the pearlmoon in her spiritual sight, receding slowly. So much energy, life. It rippled through the desert and she knew. A Judge had died. Anele knew two things in that moment. One, she wanted nothing to do with anything that could kill a Judge.

"Like a Pettygod?" She spat at the bounty of soul clay she'd have to abandon, then grimaced against the pain in her shoulder. She'd have no more power to spare for the clay's healing properties.

The second thing she knew, however, is that powerful souls left a wealth of shrapnel laying around when they exploded. She wouldn't have to go too deep into trouble, just pick around the edges for enough spiritual energy to heal.

Like a scavenger.

Anele frowned, then limped away from the Pettygod, towards the dying light of a Judge.