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The forest parts for her as she runs. It knows better than to get in her way when she is on the Hunt.
She runs on two legs, on four, her body shifting smoothly to whatever it needs to be. All that remains constant is her lean hunger, the howling void in the pit of her stomach, and the blood and divinity singing through her veins.
Dimly she hears the crashing footsteps of the hunters in whose shadow she runs, and grits her sharp teeth scornfully. They are clumsy. Slow and loud and liable to warn off every scrap of prey for miles around, never mind their actual quarry. Their hunt will be successful only because of her passing whim.
It was not the hunters’ prayer she answered, but the one who sent them. There was nothing special about the prayer, just a mother chasing her runaway whelp. The lips that spat it out held no reverence for the one invoked. A demand far more than a plea. But it was loud, and the Hunter was hungry when she heard it, so she answered.
She chose her chase well. The quarry is clever; she will eat well today.
Impatience wins out, and she leaves the human hunters behind. Ahead of her, the quarry keeps to the shadows as it flees. Her teeth sharpen with every near miss, every wrong turn and false trail. Clever it may be, but anything this skilled in fleeing deserves nothing but her contempt.
She nearly catches it before it slips into the scant shelter of a thicket. The sight of it sends her hunger roaring to her throat: dark hair and rangy limbs, paler skin than hers, flesh marked with bruises and black ink. The latter smells of its own faint divinity, nearly buried beneath the sweet aroma of blood laced with terror; the quarry marked itself with wards against gods.
Clever, clever thing. She almost laughs. There’s no ward or sigil that can hide his scent from her.
Her fangs snap shut like the jaws of a trap, and she is rewarded by a cry of pain and a trickle of blood on her tongue. It escapes her into shadow and thorns and undergrowth, but it matters little. She has tasted its blood. It can never hide from her again.
The promise of the catch makes her bestial. She stalks on four legs, ears swiveling for the sounds carried on the breeze, as her hunger screams its emptiness into her pounding heart. She will have her fill with a pounce, with fangs in the dark. The hunters can do as they like with the flesh; the chase and catch will fill her yawning belly. Once she has tasted the blood of her prey; no mortal trick can turn her from its trail.
And yet, the blood is her undoing.
She hears it first—the harsh gasp of exhausted breath, and the snap of brittle underbrush beneath uneven, wounded footsteps. Her prey is desperate and injured and on the run. She howls her joy and triumph and gives chase.
Perhaps, without the prey-blood on her tongue, without her own blood pounding in her ears and filling her eyes, she might have noticed. The familiar voice behind the breath, the familiar scrambling steps, the sound and scent of a heart that pounds ichor through the veins, not blood.
But she notices none of this. She savors the final chase, matches her steps to the drumbeat in her soul, and closes the distance with a leap.
She realizes her mistake the moment she touches him. The catch fills her empty belly as she brings him down, soured by disappointment and rage.
The body beneath her is scrawny, but lean and quick when it should be lanky. The hair is dark, but shot through with gray. The eyes that stare up at her from the churned-up earth are a rabbit’s eyes, too dark, too large, blank with terror despite the mouth beneath them, set with defiance and the triumph of one who is about to die again.
His skin is marked not with ink, but by her own claws in chases past. His throat is more scar tissue than flesh.
“Hello, Daisy,” says the Hunted.
Daisy is not the name that mortals pray to. But her first hunt ended in daisies, and the sight of red blood on white petals is not one she ever wants to forget.
“You.” In that moment she hates him, hates the fullness in her belly, hates her missed quarry for squealing out like a coward in the end. “I was answering a prayer, you shit.”
“So was I,” the Hunted retorts. His voice is thin with pain. Already her claws are digging in. “Since when do you care about prayers?”
“I was hungry.”
“And now you’re not.”
She snarls deep in her throat, and the way he flinches from her soothes an itch that she cannot reach.
“And you?” she growls. “Look at you. Every time I see you, you’re running away, or hiding in a hole, or dead on the forest floor. That’s all you are.” Her lip curls with contempt. “Unless you think that one’ll build you a fucking temple?”
Blood trickles from where her claws prick his skin. Tears gather in his eyes—pain or fear, it’s all saltwater to her.
"No,” he whispers. “They never do.”
She’s seen hers before. Shrines and altars hastily constructed in the woods. Rough-hewn things, with pelts and bones from first kills left as offerings. It’s the one thing he can never take from her, no matter how fast he runs or how many of her hunts he foils. She has temples. The things that pray to him can’t even leave him a cairn in a ditch. The closest he’ll ever have to a shrine are the corpses that his short-lived worshippers leave behind, bones picked clean by carrion birds.
“And they never will,” she snarls, and buries her fangs in his throat.
He dies again with a strangled cry that sends the little animals scampering into their holes or shrieking into the sky. She leaves his body with the taste of ichor in her teeth.
It is only out of curiosity that she follows the trail—the real trail, tinged with mortal blood and fear. The Hunted diverted her so thoroughly that even the clumsy trackers have left her behind. The smell of blood grows stronger as she follows their trail.
She finds them at the bottom of a ravine. The hunters are dead; one fell and broke his neck, the other merely broke his leg. Their quarry crouches in a scant shelter of earth, clutching a knife still bloody from finishing off the latter.
It—he raises his head at the sound of her footsteps, and meets her eyes.
His eyes are different, human and blue, but they still look at her the way the Hunted always does. Wide, liquid, and empty with terror.
She could still answer the prayer. Seize him in her teeth, drag him back to whoever wants him. But she is the Hunter goddess, not the delivery goddess, and the one who prayed for this one’s capture held no reverence or respect for what she invoked.
And more importantly, her belly is full.
Daisy licks the ichor from her lips, yawns, and leaves her former quarry behind.
It is winter when Daisy receives a visitor.
The season is still young. In midwinter, in the late months, her hunger is at its sharpest. This early, both the cold and hunger lack teeth. There is room in her belly for another chase, but the longing for blood does not consume her.
And so, when the god with smiling silver eyes steps out of his city and into her forest, she answers his request for a meeting with wary curiosity.
She knows of the god of conquest, though she has paid him little mind until now. He is not an old god, not like those that dwell in mountains and rivers. She thinks he might be younger than her, but given how little she cares for what goes on beyond her forests, she could be wrong. He has the appearance of an older man, with lines in his pale skin that speak of experience. Perhaps he was the god of something else, once; even divinity has a way of changing over time.
Experience of what, she doesn’t know and doesn’t particularly care to. The only calluses on his hands are from writing, not drawing a bow or wielding a knife or spear.
Her lip curls at the sight of him, at the smell of him. The least he could do was meet her at the border, and not bring his city-stink into her lovely woods. At least the snow has a way of muffling things; usually she curses it for dampening the scents of her prey, but now it feels like its own blessing.
He stands tall and crisply dressed, barely a damp spot or hair out of place in sight. His hands are locked behind his back, and he smiles at her in a disarming way that sets her teeth on edge. Daisy, for her part, doesn’t bother changing her stance or turning her paws back into hands. She can meet his eyes perfectly well on four legs.
“The fuck do you want,” she grunts out.
“Merely the chance to talk,” the god of conquest replies. “Daisy, wasn’t it?”
A growl rumbles in the back of her throat, like the quiet threat of distant thunder. Daisy is the name other gods use for her. Mortals don’t know it. Mortals don’t need it. They’re perfectly capable of coming up with their own.
She doesn’t like the way it sits on the Conqueror’s tongue.
“You may call me Elias,” the Conqueror continues, and the name slips out of his mouth like oil. It feels like a lie, like stolen coins slipped to her as payment.
“Didn’t ask,” she replies. “What. Do. You. Want.”
“To do business with you,” Elias replies. “Even hunters in the woods have to buy and sell from time to time, do they not?”
Human hunters, maybe. And as proud as she is of temples and makeshift altars, Daisy likes the wolves better on the day to day. They don’t tend to make things any more complicated than they need to be.
“You lookin’ to buy or sell?” she asks flatly. Apparently it’s the right answer, or the right question, because Elias’s face lights up.
“A bit of both, perhaps,” he says. “I believe we can help each other, you see. Come to a mutually beneficial agreement.”
And the thing is—
Daisy’s made deals before. Every prayer she answers is a deal, of sorts. But more than that she’s made proper deals with other, proper gods before. It can be useful, depending on the god. Even pleasant, in some cases.
This one won’t be pleasant. But conquest is a tool she’s never worked with. And Daisy wouldn’t be half the hunter she is if she didn’t have an eye for opportunity. If he really does have something to offer her, then she may as well hear it.
“What do you want from me?” she asks, a third time, with less impatience and more curiosity.
“A few things. Safe passage through your forest, to start. Lovely place,” he adds, though the crooked set of his face gives away his disgust. Daisy almost laughs. Conquest is a step away from war, and this little god doesn’t like getting his trouser hems dirty. “A guide, on occasion. And, of course, your tracking skills.”
It’s a tall order. Her forest and her hunting are the two things that make up all of her. Daisy is not a pack hunter; she never learned to share.
“What’s in it for me, then?”
The Conqueror spreads his hands wide. “Fame, of course, Notoriety. The mere mention of your name would send thousands running. I hear you like a good chase.”
Disdain curls her lip back again. “Don’t want fame.”
Elias’s eyes spark with something like irritation. “Everyone likes temples.”
“I’m the Hunter,” she reminds him. “I need shadows.”
Elias sighs, as if she’s asked something ridiculous and unreasonable of him. That in itself is ridiculous, since he’s been doing all the asking while she does the listening. And so far, she hasn’t heard a single thing that interested her.
Pity. This really was a waste of time.
“There’s nothing you can offer me that I can’t already have,” she tells him, bored. She feels restless. She wants to run until the wind whips his city-stink out of her fur. “Want me to chase something for you, you know where to find me.”
She turns away, and the jaws of the trap close around her leg.
Daisy is already struggling against it by the time it starts to hurt. The stench of it reaches her nostrils—it reeks of fire and scorched earth and industry, and it weighs her down as if the earth itself is swallowing her, one limb at a time.
Except there is no earth to sink into. The ground is dry and hard-packed, foul-smelling stone that does not break beneath her claws.
“I will have you,” the Conqueror says, and his fingers run idly through her bristling fur. He sounds bored. Smug. Like he’s already won. He sounds the way Daisy feels when she stands over the corpse of an easy kill. “I don’t see why you’re so against it. You’re already a weapon to be aimed. It’s the only reason you exist.”
With a roar, Daisy rips herself free. Pain lances through her leg, but she barely feels it. Her jaws snap shut where Elias’s throat should be, but she bites down on nothing but air. The Conqueror’s smiling gray-eyed face is gone, but his infection remains in the earth beneath her, filling her senses until she cannot even smell the blood in his veins.
“Show yourself!” she snarls, nostrils flaring for something, anything, any hint of a trail to follow. The smell of mortal blood reaches her a moment too late.
Another trap, a heavy iron chain, whips around her neck and drags. There are men on the other end of it, pulling her toward the ground. She thrashes, wrenches it out of their hands, but its heavy weight stays. In moments she is upon them, ripping out throats in search of their master, but the only divinity she can smell is her own.
She kills the mortals who chained her, and more pour from the trees to take their place. Some of their hands reach for the chain. Others ready more of them.
She runs—not away, never away. But with blood and city-stinking humans clogging her senses, without a proper trail to follow, she may as well be blind. She needs a clear head, clear air. She runs from no man nor beast nor god, but there is a chain around her neck and an invasion in her woods and she must find a place where there is neither.
Behind her, she hears the pounding of footsteps and the snap of cold beaten metal, like jaws hungry for her flesh. The chain weighs her down, and the earth beneath her feet only barely begins to soften and smell of soil again. She feels eyes on her, burning into her back, watching her every struggling step with bottomless greed. The shadows cannot hide her. Her forest does not feel like her forest any longer.
But it is still a forest, and the further she leads them from the tree line, the thicker and darker it becomes. If she can lose them in the shadows of the deep woods—
She realizes her folly not long after she plunges into where the woods are thickest. Elias’s mortals may not be hunters, but they have ears. The chain rattles with every step she takes. The underbrush crashes around her.
And the chain catches.
She falls to the ground, choking. The links of the chain are impossibly tangled, and if she pulls any harder, she may break her own neck. Daisy tears at the ground with her claws and fights for breath, listening to the low thunder of running footsteps. As they draw near, she falls still and quiet.
Her last defense is that they did not see her fall. They do not know where she is, yet.
Their steps slow. They call to each other in rough voices. It reminds her, in a twisted way, of the hunting parties she has run with in the past.
But these are not hunters. They are soldiers. They want to chain her, not hunt with her.
You’re a weapon to be aimed, Elias had told her. He’d touched her, patted her fur, like she was—like she was a dog. A beast to be tamed.
If they catch her, they will take her to him. The chain around her neck will stay. She will run on a leash, never choosing her hunts again.
Not that, she thinks, desperate and bloodthirsty as the men search for her. No chains. No collars. No masters. She will tear out her own belly before she accepts any of them.
If they catch her, she will never be free again, and she may as well be dead.
I do not want to be caught, the thought slips through as her mind becomes a storm of blood and anger and panic. Stay away, don’t find me, don’t catch me—
In the distance, something crashes in the brush. Running footsteps, two or four, she cannot tell the difference.
Neither, it seems, can the mortals searching for her. Barked orders ring out, and they chase after the sound and take their chains with them.
For a few moments, Daisy lies still and does her best to breathe. Her struggles have pulled the chain taut around her neck, and the metal bites deep. The undergrowth around her traps her even as it hides her, tangling the chain so thoroughly that she can’t rise from the soil and escape.
The forest is quiet, the only sound her thin, rasping breaths.
And then, she is not alone.
The cold metal and her blood-encrusted muzzle still drown out most other scents. But she would know his smell anywhere, even if he weren’t crouched beside her in the thick brush, as calm and still as if he had been there from the beginning.
“Stubborn fool,” the Hunted remarks.
Daisy does her best to growl at him with her throat half-closed.
“If I could move,” she snarls, “You would be dead.” She tastes blood—no, not mortal blood, but her own ichor. She is wounded; she may have killed many of the Conqueror’s mortals, but they were armed and surrounding her.
The Hunted sits just out of reach of her claws, and his eyes glint with his usual dull-eyed defiance. “What’s stopping you?”
She thrashes furiously, twigs and branches and thorns snapping against her body. She doesn’t stop until the chain is pulled so tight she can’t breathe at all. When she finally falls still, strangled by cold metal, she hears voices in the distance drawing near again.
“Do you want them to catch you?” the Hunted asks, and Daisy’s throat may be squeezed shut, but every part of her screams out in protest. “Do you think you can fight them with a broken neck?”
Daisy chokes, spitting blood.
The Hunted sighs, short and impatient. “You need to run.”
She doesn’t run away, it’s not her nature, and even if it was, she can’t run, she’s stuck, she’s hanging by her neck, throttled by the Conqueror’s chains.
The Hunted darts past her bloody face, inches away from her bared teeth. He’s smaller, a scrap of a thing, barely a mouthful to what she is now. His eyes, now dark and beady, flash at her in a challenge.
Not all hunters are wolves and men.
In an instant Daisy is small, too, her body long and sinuous and built for chasing prey into their holes. In an instant she can breathe again, as she slips through the strangling chain as easily as she would the mouth of a burrow.
The men are at her heels, crashing blindly through the woods in search of her. The idea of running from them chafes at her as sharply as the metal, but she is injured and exhausted, and with the Hunted leading the way, it doesn’t feel like fleeing. It feels like another Hunt.
She lets him lead her through the tangled woods, beneath the sight of their pursuers. These men are not hunters, not even clumsy hunters. They are soldiers, city men, and they have no place in the wild.
The chain is gone. She can smell the blood and feel the earth beneath her, and the forest is hers.
They have left the soldiers far behind when she makes her final leap. The Hunted falls beneath her without a sound, and after a brief struggle he finally goes still. Her hand is wrapped around his scarred throat, neither tight enough to choke nor sharp enough to break skin. He breathes deeply and easily, and stares up at her with less defiance than curiosity. He’s waiting to see what she will do.
Daisy finds, for the first time, that she isn’t sure.
“What happens now?” she growls. He tilts his head to the side as if confused by the question, as if she could make it any clearer. “You run away all the time. What happens when it’s done?”
He blinks up at her, still curious. He looks amused, now. She isn’t sure she likes that. “It isn’t.”
Daisy snarls at him. “It is. We left them behind, stupid things. So what now?”
The Hunted smiles up at her grimly. “You sleep,” he says. “Eat, if you can. And tomorrow, they find you again, and you run until you lose them.”
Her fingers twitch around his neck. “What?”
“You were lucky today, Daisy,” the Hunted tells her. “You’ll have to be lucky again tomorrow, and every day after that. They only have to be lucky once.”
She should kill him for that. She’s killed him for less. Part of her wants to kill him now, but she finds, for the first time, that there is someone she wants to kill more. She releases him with a short growl.
“You’re wrong.”
He slowly sits up, watching her warily. “Perhaps I am. You’re not like most who call out to me.”
“I didn’t call out—”
“You did. I wouldn’t have come, if you hadn’t.”
“Well I didn’t mean it,” she snaps. “I didn’t want you there. I didn’t want to run away, I wanted to rip his throat out.”
The Hunted shrugs, less like he agrees and more like he doesn’t care enough to argue with her. “Fair enough. Maybe you can do that instead of running again tomorrow. It’s up to you.” His hand goes to his own throat, as if thinking of all the times he’s felt Daisy’s teeth and claws.
“Why help me at all?” she demands. “I don’t answer every measly prayer, and neither do you.” She bares her teeth. “Would’ve thought you’d be happy to see me in chains.”
He looks at her, considering. “No,” he says after a moment. “I don’t think I would. Not if Elias is the one holding them.”
It surprises her a little that he knows the name. She wouldn’t have thought the Conqueror would bother with such a small god. “What do you mean?”
“The Conqueror doesn’t like the forest as it is,” the Hunted says with a shrug. “He wants to take it, and make it more like him. I think he wants to take the whole world and do the same. He doesn’t like it wild. He likes when he can see it all, and know it all, and hold it all in his hands.”
“What difference does it make to you?”
“I don’t like being watched,” he replies. “I need shadows, too.”
She growls at the sound of her stolen words, and is annoyed when he barely flinches.
“And maybe you’ll do it,” he continues. “Rip his throat out. I’d rather run from you than him any day.”
“Why?” she demands. “I’ve killed you! I’ve eaten the things that pray to you!” She lunges at him again, not to pounce and kill, just to break that infuriating calm in his eyes. “Nothing matters to me but the chase. I don’t care who I hunt, or why.”
“You hunt when you’re hungry,” he says.
“When I’m hungry,” she replies. “I don’t care for anything or anyone else.”
“And then your belly is full,” the Hunted says. “And the chase stops. And we’re safe until tomorrow.”
She stares at him.
“The Conqueror’s hunger is endless,” the Hunted tells her. “It doesn’t rest, and neither does he. He’ll never be satisfied until he’s eaten the world.” He gets to his feet slowly. “So. Rip his throat out, if you can. If nothing else, it should make it more difficult for him to swallow.”
He has never walked away from her instead of running before. Today is a day for firsts, it seems.
"And if I can’t?” she calls after him.
He laughs. It’s a quiet thing. He might not have meant for her to hear it at all.
“Jon,” she says. It is not the name in his prayers; his prayers have no name. Perhaps, one day, she will ask him where he found it.
“Then he’ll be lucky to escape you, until you chase him again,” Jon replies, before he vanishes into the tangle of their forest.
“And you’ll only need to be lucky once.”