Last month, I compiled a poll of story ideas brainstormed by yours truly. Here's the premise my patrons voted for on my Patreon:

“A sequel to ‘Outpredding the Predators of the Jungle Fortress’: Andy the huge, buff werefox enters the heart of the fortress, where the deathclaw Clove guards a stash of legendary, magical artifacts. Alas for Andy, using magic makes Clove grow bigger and buffer. Both become kaijus. Prevailing, Andy eats him.”

Patrons featured in this story:

Andy ©  drewbermeister

Clove ©  Kobuld

And thumbnail art by  Chillbats, one of the artists who illustrates my patron stories! Go check him out~

If you're interested, here's the prequel.

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Outpredding Preds II: Chamber Brawl and Clan God

Let them come, Clove thought. Let them feed me their magic and themselves.

Upper body anchored down with thorny, gravid formations of brawn, the grey-and-wafer, 14-foot-tall beast known as a deathclaw had long ago deemed himself the superior predator of the Clan of the Elements. When the fox intruder landed his first blow with the Staff of Spoils, Clove had seen his White Wolf comrade falter with one of many artifacts from the chamber treasure pile, the Grounds Mirror. He could have rushed to Wane’s aid, aye. And even if he wended the whole way, surely he would have reached the dragons in time to rescue them from the fox. But why spend all that precious energy, he had asked himself, when you could watch a mere outsider beat up all your rivals and rip them of their size?

Enjoy your artifacts while they still serve you. Enjoy your doppelganger and your size buffs, just as I’m going to enjoy stripping it all away from you and stomping the two of you into your great ancestors’ level of the earth before I pick you off my sole and pop you down my throat like walnut and cashew.

An artifact called the Harvester Horn-Ring gleamed on one of his forward-curling ram horns. He flicked the Grounds Mirror into the treasure cache of the gold-bound chest full to the brim, for he would have no need of more than the Horn-Ring to crucify these arrogant clumps of excess fur. As soon as they stepped into the chamber, any time they would use their magic artifacts, it would only make him bigger.

“So, Andy,” Andy said to himself, “whaddya think about the taste of dragon?”

The doppelganger walking abreast looked at him with those surreally identical eyes of honeycomb irises. He looked forward again, fondled shaggy tufts of chin fur with thumb and claw. “Kind of like macadamia? I wish we had shrunk them a little less so we could taste them more. Or did yours taste different?”

“No, I agree. Whoever’s guarding the final chamber should be plenty filling, though.”

Doppel-Andy smirked and barged into the other 25-foot-tall werefox with a hulking shoulder that was thicker than any spaulder you could strap to it. Thicker, even, than the shoulder of someone double his height would be, unless they were built like hunters of the Clan. “Filling for you or for me? Who do you think would win in a contest between us?”

“Heh.” Andy shoved right back into himself, bared his fangs as a tease. “Being eaten by myself is not something I’m planning on.”

“Nor I.”

“We’ll decide on a civil way to divvy up the hunt when the time comes, I’m sure.”

“Sure.”

Torchlight of an august gold painted the rock furrows ringing the exit. The uneven stone that had been beneath their soles surrendered to a rich loam when they stepped into an expansive chamber that seemed to proclaim both Cavern and Cathedral at once. Magically hewn architecture of rock and towering, petrified trees overlooked a half-dozen steep, mossy tiers encircling the earthen bottom floor, each tier wide enough for a few elephants to pace laps around abreast. From huge clerestorey windows poured a sort of graceful and charitable firefly light with a sagely viridity inherited from lush canopy that served as the chamber’s ceiling. A couple of hunters of the clan kept watch on the upper branches to deal with any climber or flyer who tried to intrude; so the only thing that could intrude was rain, which showered down to nourish the trees and shrooms, both of which secreted enough magic to keep the artifacts of the cache supercharged. As for the light from the windows, they revealed the resulting orb-sprites of magic flowing about, though most of the magic was cloistered at a crude, gazebo-like structure centering the ground level. Even though the structure was twenty feet tall, it seemed infantile in size among the surroundings.

“There’s our plunder,” Andy sing-songed.

“And our lunch in hiding, most likely.”

They were coming down a tumbledown series of steps when the roof of the gazebo cracked into fragments that bulged and shivered. Suddenly, the roof ruptured, and an orgasmic roar hurled shockwaves, fissuring the earth a few yards each way. From the rubble rose a deathclaw.

“Aurgh yeah, that’s more like it …”

Flexing inward, Clove admired his transformation. On top of enlarging his overall size by growing him to the height of each werefox, it had chiefly beefed up his chest and arms, packing on an extra third of muscle for him to proudly lug on his pecs and abdomen and bis. A bull-person of the same size would look as though they had been deprived of animal products in their diet for a full week compared with him, and would probably blanch at the thought of an arm-wrestle.

Little did the Andys know, so long as Doppel-Andy existed, Andy would technically be using a magical artifact and triggering the effect of Clove’s Horn-Ring, which would grow the deathclaw bigger for every minute that the doppelganger remained in the chamber. The clock was ticking.

Although neither Andy knew for sure why Clove had grown, they shared one thing in common: a strong intuition. Both wanted to immobilize their foe, assert dominance and devour him sooner than later, for they both knew how volatile body sizes could be around here.

Andy muttered, “Be ready for a close-up,” and gestured at his amber ring, the Portswitch. The double nodded, saw him tap the gemstone. Light flashed in two places. Andy disappeared, reappeared where Clove had been; and Clove stood right next to the double.

Quick as a nine-tailed fox, Doppel-Andy dropped his staff—lunged to swallow his prey.

Sure, far more convenient to shrink him down first, but he could gobble down bigger guys if haste bade.

Great, curled, gnarled talons lashed out, attached to great, gladiator hands which were in turn attached to shaggy, muscle-corded wrists as thick as vambraces. A terrible, controlled force clashed with Doppel-Andy, breaking his momentum. Clove grinned with a pair of orcish fangs jabbing up from his lower jaw, for he had curled his hands around the werefox’s wrists. Taking a firm step, he collapsed the double onto one knee. The cords of muscle on the brutish ’claw’s shoulders and biceps bulged rhythmically, like snakes engorging on prey. His rugged globes and slabs of thorned muscle budged down, masses of power which refused to move for the werefox. The deathclaw’s maw of tyrannical teeth yawned open, venting a white-hot gust of ghoulish breath.

Andy gulped. Seeing someone else grow bigger may have given his hasty pride the upper paw against his reason. He spun, and a frost-bullet arced from his tail as a deadly snowball en route to the deathclaw’s side; but Clove saw the bullet in his periphery. He also realized that the double was rising to reverse the tides while he was distracted, and realized that was exactly what he wanted the double to do, for the double was oblivious to the projectile!

A wave of strength brewed, rose up and thrust Clove backward—and the deathclaw let go of the werefox, grinning wickedly as he stumbled back. The double widened his eyes. Biting cold grenaded his side. The moment next, he howled out. His arms stiffened and turned a foggy matte blue. Or, rather, the jagged ice that gnawed its way up his form did. Presently, it tinged his whole body that hue. Only his agape snout, his twitching claw-tips and most of his tail stayed unfrozen.

The deathclaw hefted up the ice block, which then chipped and cracked beneath his dislocating jaws. Andy watched with a wave of vertigo. Watching yourself be swallowed can be shell shocking. He chucked another bullet, but Clove knifed up the leg that had been the target, withdrawing up the entry steps. He finished his meal with a gulp worthy of a wince. Eating a sharp, solid object seemed painful, yet he appeared wholly satisfied as he groped under the snaggy bulge of his tumid belly, the size and shape of a boulder. What was less boulder-like was a stick-like protrusion of the bulge. It jabbed, retracted, then relocated for another jab again and again.

On his descent, Doppel-Andy had curled his tail around the staff and brought it into the cramped stomach prison with him. Steam curled under the roof of rancid flesh, for the ice-block was thawing in a swamp of enzymes. “Think again if you thought I’d go down easy,” he grumped. “You’re in for one hell of an indigestion.”

Jab, jab, jab.

Huge systems of vein-like cracks scarred the block, for the werefox within bulged bigger with each thrust of the staff. Its emerald gem head burned bright with the blessing of the Shapechanger god. He grunted in cathartic rage. His frame burgeoned with size and muscles worth an entire clan of hunters. Throbbing as if ready to detonate, his cluster of back muscles mutated, growing unnervingly huge. The sharp edges of the stomach’s bulge softened with speed from both the enzymes and the heat of the prey’s changes. In a few heartbeats, the bulge softened and revealed dynamic contours of bubbles brewing. The werefox’s shape grew discernible. He reaped five whole feet of height from the predator. Holding his gut, Clove buckled at the knees and grunted. He dwindled to two-thirds of the fox’s size. Yet, he seemed least of all displeased.

The deathclaw trumpeted, “Yes—unleash everything you’ve got! Watch as your efforts only nourish me!”

Pecs beefed up, their circumference multiplying and nipples hardening. Tough, dark patches of hide travelling the cleft of them thickened, as did the entirety of his torso. Each time the Staff of Spoils activated its magic, his own Horn-Ring pumped him up with more size. To top it off, another minute had passed, and so the doppelganger’s magical existence forwarded a bonus gift of size.

Andy growled, bade his time for an opening. The monster now measured more than double his height. The werefox stood at eye level with the shredded thighs of the minor giant, though standing on the stairs probably boosted the deathclaw hunk up a little as well. What the ’claw had said echoed through Andy’s mind: Your efforts only NOURISH me.

I’ve got a bad feeling about us using these staves, he thought. Does he have a natural ability to grow from our hits, or does he have an artie like us? And then a star of shine gleamed on the deathclaw’s Horn-Ring. Andy’s smirk hooked upward a little.

Only one way to find out. But if the ring did what he suspected it did, he wanted his twin to be able to send a dash of karma Clove’s way too. Can he stay cool in that stomach for long enough? Yet another thing he meant to determine.

Okay. Save Doppel-Andy first. Nab the Ring second.

Andy started with a dash, but backpedalled when he saw how huge the deathclaw had grown during his mere reverie. Clove’s musclebound frame creaked and groaned to the end of its growth spurt. “Spotless cheetahs,” Andy mumbled. The deathclaw had bulked up into a paragon of brawn. His mere knees now towered over the werefox. The growth spurts had ceased when the doppelganger connected the transforming to the striking a bit too past due.

The original whirled around, fled toward the rubble. Chasing him came a series of cacophonous booms that could have made the march of a tyrannosaurus feel like the frolic of a tyke. During his run, he would cyclone around and pelt one of the massive, bulging calves with a frost-bullet a couple of times. Clove ignored them. Mere bee stings to an elephant.

Huge, callused hands snatched Andy’s midriff. Clove splayed his maw to eat him, scalding hot drool dripping down. Andy flicked his tail to his front and wrenched off the Frost Scorpion. He chucked it over his shoulder and then heard the deathclaw gag. Both hands released him.

Andy landed, saw the hands curled around the deathclaw’s throat, which heaved and rasped. The werefox dropped his staff. Didn’t waste a moment of Clove’s vulnerability. He tackled the beast’s calf, feeling his biceps flex and jump with the husky embrace. The leg wobbled. For a second he feared a recovery. But then he felt the lean and tumble. He had never been so relieved to feel himself falling.

His own fall ended up being far lighter than his foe’s.

A groan of rancor pealed out ahead. Andy heard the quake of earth being packed deeper and deeper beneath the trench of the fallen titan. Aftershocks of the fall buzzed through his jaw. When he realized how incapacitated Clove was, time slowed down. Adrenaline flooded him. His fur stood up as though electrified. All of his fatigue from the impact melted. Only the glint of gold ahead mattered.

He burst upright, didn’t bother winding around Clove. He used what looked like the bulges of his twin’s back muscles as footsteps—vaulted off the bulge, which was relatively critter-sized compared with Clove … and yet, still bigger than Andy. He heard a muffled grunt from his prey-self. Opened his mouth to apologize … but he would amend that soon enough.

The ball of his foot was lifting from the cleft of the ’claw’s pecs when what felt like a sonic boom of air erupted behind him. The deathclaw had clapped his hands together to catch him, missed. Andy landed behind his head. He lunged for the adorned horn right as Clove leaned up and twisted on his side to get up.

“Not so—fast!” Andy yelled.

And then became a thief.

The monster roared as though he’d been gutted, swiped around his horns delayedly. Andy teetered back; the sheer weight of the upscaled artifact caught him off guard. He fell onto his rump right before what had been bigger than a girdle shrank to the size of one of his wrists. The Horn-Ring adjusted for the proportions of its new possessor.

Clove rolled closer, and a hand bigger than Andy’s torso swooped for him. Blanching a bit, Andy found his hand squeezing hard around his amber ring, the Portswitch. Light flashed in two places. He reappeared on his side planting his palm down on one of the deathclaw’s giant thighs. It sure beat having his ribcage wadded into a ball.

Relief bolted into him … as well as his twin.

Doppel-Andy was surviving: dancing drunkenly atop shards of sea ice which floated atop the raging, rolling, roiling waves of enzymes. Thus far he had kept his fur dry, save for a few burned patches, thanks to the Frozen Scorpion Andy had lent him. He had been bulleting the shards, thickening them, fusing some of them together so that he always had at least a couple of platforms to stand on.

“Told ya it would take more than a little acid to take me down,” he shouted, snugly butting his snout into the flesh ceiling that bore down on his head.

“Heh.” Andy grinned at Clove. “Sounds like you can’t even beat a fox with your metabolism. How do you hope to beat a fox who has your favorite toy?”

“Why, you—”

Leaping away from a clumsy lunge onto the ground, Andy cupped his hands. “Hey Andy, whatever you did in there that made him huge, do it again!” He thrust the Horn-Ring onto his wrist in lieu of a horn.

Apparently, Doppel-Andy trusted himself enough to obey. The staff volleyed the deathclaw’s internals with jabs and swings. Andy staggered from side to side with a surge of rapturous expansion, his body growing and hulking up from various centers at once.

He had been right! Whenever the staff struck someone, the wearer of the Horn-Ring would have a growth spurt.

When his twin struck high, Andy would jolt upright or bounce a step with a surge of gains to his upper body. Groaning muscle pumped up both deltoids even larger. His shoulders spread wider. Hooks of muscle deepened between each bend between those knolls and the expanding, remonstrating biceps. Traps bulged and bulged and broadened. Latissimus dorsi harrumphed outward. Lumbar muscles mimicked the expansion of the rest. The clusters of his back bulking up cut a magnificent trench down the center, priming him with the sweet, heavy burden of power.

“Graah!” He flexed out from his hulking chest, the powerful roar galing out from his lungs. He could feel the burn of innumerable crunches, deadlifts, presses and curls sculpting his body into the monolith he needed to become to pin down his game.

When his twin struck lower, wondrous burns of change likewise coursed through his lower body. Fire ran through his quadriceps, each of which throbbed and throbbed. They bulked up to proportions beyond lycanthropic. Fat burned away on his glutes, and his tail swished as they toned up, helping him become a bigger, stronger breed!

Andy hunched over and breathed hard, sore from the onset of changes and yet brimming with energy, as though he had finished a productive exercise routine. His head bowed over his fortress of flashing trap muscles, like a sadomasochist who had been beaten raw. When he looked down, he gave a brusque snort of glee. Clove still measured a couple minikaiju-hands taller than both of them, but Doppel-Andy had leeched enough size for the deathclaw’s stomach bulge to be round and gravid again. And Andy had tripled his height, the three predators now the size of godly titans.

Just by lifting a heel and planting it down, Andy felt a BTHOOOM which packed down the earth around his kingly sole and made all the torches flicker. Crumbles of stone whispered from the walls. This power, he thought wistfully. Already more than I know what to do with … and I’m only gonna gain more once I do the same thing to this guy that my paw did to the ground … But first, he would free his twin. Now that he could wad steel into a ball of rubble with a curled fist, he could likely convince the deathclaw’s belly to give up custody.

Both rival kaijus started. Clove had seen the staff Andy had let go of lying next to him—curled his fingers around it. It measured no longer than a hardback book, and it wouldn’t resize to match his own height until after a blow to the gut winded him. Nausea rushed upward. Acid taste curdled up his throat, and then his lower jaw dumped a tide of bile. He blinked with a drained look and saw the double roll into the chamber.

Doppel-Andy rose, and then the werefox duo bumped shoulders with toothy grins. The deathclaw rather misliked their humors.

Clove braced himself for the hardest attacks from Doppel-Andy—but then, the staff jumped across his vision, and the original caught it. Clove only had time to block it with his own turned oblique before his breast, and the fangs of his grit underbite tremored.

Growling, feeling the blow slide his braced legs through breaking earth, he spat at Andy, “How dare you defile this chamber!” Bouncing back, he feigned imbalance; permitted the fox to blitz toward him. He sidestepped the rush. He swung to bash him on the small of the back. A force crashed into his staff midlength—skewed his swing, steeply bowed the gem head to his navel level.

The double had grabbed it—was doing his best to wrench it out of his grasp.

That sticky-fingered—

“Rruur-rah!”

He wrenched the staff away, sending the double doubling ahead. The staff whirled and caught the thief on the dome. Size—power—rewarded the deathclaw. He groaned, relishing the rumble of size he reaped from the thief: Karma had never smiled so kindly on him. He surged in size to stand almost higher than one of the werefoxes would stand if they stood on the shoulders of the other.

And then blunt force drove into the center of his ribs.

It was tempestuous: dopamine flooding into him from his growth, the need to retch again creeping up meanwhile. His tail whished the ground with the apprehension of the cocksure. Dust wheezed over him, obscured whatever lay more than a couple armspans ahead. Then, Andy burst through the smog, arrowing headlong at him.

The titans traded blows. Bashed each other into tree boles. Shards of bark shred their backs open in several places. An incalculable time in the dust-dance passed, and with each bruise lain and body flung, one or the other swelled bigger. But Clove knew his artifact disadvantage, fought like a hellion to compensate. Hard, savage blows escaped him—pecked chin and chest, thwacked arm and belly. Andy’s fixation with time distracted him. He stalled whenever he could, relying on the Horn-Ring to grant him another growth spurt with each passing minute.

BOOM BOOM BOOM—THWOOOD.

THOOM THROOHHM BRWOODSH.

Finally, another growth spurt brought Andy to Clove’s level, but he had wisened. It means nothing. You’ll lose unless you remember yourself. His brows slumped sternly. He remembered bow and target, remembered the words of his old teacher: Void all but what your arrow needs fell. He fell into a trance in which each following swing of his opponent slid by him, his aura as slippery as butter.

There.

An opening begat by the other’s frustration.

Andy twisted his staff into the deathclaw’s chest. The other folded. Tree boughs snapped. Roots jerked, crumbled, pleaded. Clerestorey windows shattered from his impact with the facade. He had been launched off the ground into the heights! And now the wall wept into the chamber … Now came Andy vaulting up the steep tiers with the startling speed of determination—

“ROAR!”

His paws released his staff, and his paws whomped Clove’s pectorals. All the courtesy of armed combat had been seared out of his amber eyes, replaced by the blaze of a hunter. His breath washed over his prey, jowls waggled and drooled in the momentum—

The whole chamber snored. Or sounded like it did. The facade collapsed—expelled a grating, thundering hullabaloo. Stone and tree and glass and gargantuan titan all burst onto a dirt thoroughfare flanked by huts home to hunters of the Clan. Andy’s chest swelled as he flew—as he watched the deathclaw tumble beneath him. The werefox’s claws bunched into the pecs. His tongue swiped his lips.

Clove appeared dumbstruck by the thunder and collapse of the place he had protected for so many a year; by the pounce that so clearly proclaimed his defeat; by the muscles jumping on the colossal menace’s husky back, ridiculing his own.

A trail of rubble scorned the thoroughfare—buried more than a dozen homes. The hunters buried with them were of no more importance to Andy than lizards and beetles. He had grown over 300 feet tall.

And now lay atop the other giant.

One of his breaths, slower than the last, rumbled. The rumble shuffled and broke the earth underfoot of a few dozen hunters who had escaped the ruination. Some of them dropped to their knees; others simply goggled. One of them released the bead necklace of good luck around their neck.

How could they believe in luck now, when it came from the gods? How could they dare to believe in the gods, when crouched over the protector of the clan heirlooms loomed a monstrous, musclebound fox so much more massive than their interpretations of the deities?

Doppel-Andy stepped into the threshold of the bulldozed chamber. He stood only the size of a small dog in relation to the original werefox now, but he smiled. He had no more parts to play here, and that was alright. He only needs enjoy the show.

Prizing the second staff from Clove, Andy growled into his ear:

“Guess that makes me king~ King of Hunters …”

The discarded staff dropped like a fallen redwood. It measured about as long as Clove was tall, only two-thirds Andy’s new height. Yet, that two-thirds was enough for the clan members to scatter wailing from the rolling, slowing monolith. It shrank back to a humble size fit for the average person, the same way Andy meant to shrink Clove’s ego.

*GUULLLP~*

No longer a small, svelte archer, Andy flexed jaws vaster than the primitive stone homes in which the hunters lived, swallowing the rest of Clove’s head. Clove bunched claws into his back, and even palmed some of the bark shrapnel deeper into it, but Andy didn’t yield to that. Hardly even winced. Dopamine numbed him to the pain.

His tongue rolled over the tough speckled cleft of the rival’s pectorals, and his fur puffed up. The deathclaw tasted like smoked oysters, or steak doused with mushrooms. He rumbled in content. He propped his elbows on the earth and groped over the taut, twisting bulges of the monster’s chest and corded biceps. Packing down all that protein only inflamed the oozing pleasure of his predatory drive. The beast punching into his throaty lining … that only fueled him. Every boom of the frantic shuffling beneath him, every billow of dust which rose around him as the beast’s rump slid forward under his swelling, roundening abdomen … all of it pumped his ego and encouraged him to put the beta predator in his place once and for all.

Clove kneed his belly. Tried to curl his tail around him. One gulp of the werefox unraveled the tail from its pathetic constriction.

Doppel-Andy balled his fists and grinned wider, leaning forward more and more as Andy rocked back and forth in that feral pose, feeding on the ’claw’s hind and tail. Through the jungle resounded a string of ravenous gulps interlaced with snarls and gleeful snorts. The werefox’s tail swished, thumping and shaking the adjacent trees, gusting the land, showering the rubble with leafage. At last, the floundering tail of the deathclaw descended his maw and became entrenched in the rings of slime and muscle.

His enemy filled him, squirmed within him, chilled his spine. His belly roundened, cramped, gurgled and droned. The curt, boorish squirms of its bulge felt delicious—seemed like an unintended congratulation.

One last swallow erected Andy on his knees. With a sigh he flopped against a grand tree. The tail of his meal flung against his esophagus with a demon’s temper all the way down. Andy groaned, shivering a bit at the generous pounding: the failed attempts of his prey to bruise his lubricated internals.

Those hunters who lived to see the godly werefox pack the deathclaw away into that gurgling globe of fluff either flocked off—and never dared to return to the clan grounds again—or drew out of hiding and chose to submit.

Andy cocked his head, watched the hunters gather around his splayed legs before they prostrated in unison and uttered a chant incomprehensible to him.

“A wise choice to not make a foe of me,” he rumbled—and he tried to hide how much his deepened voice surprised him. Sure, he had spoken during the feeding, but only now could he relish in the way these hunters recoiled at the power of his speech; at the way each sibilant smack of his syllables twitched their tails and perked their ears. The bass of his voice tasted on his tongue like a rich and mature cacao.

And the tune of digestion complemented it well. The roll and churn, the muffled howl and whine and complaint of enzymes marauding valleys of muscle through which to seep. Acids marring and melting, making the other monster his.

Likewise, the Clan of the Elements would be his.

Heartily his tail thumped the earth. “Ahem. Mmm, now that I have all of your attention … why chant, when there are plenty of other more paws-on ways to serve your …”

He trailed off—saw how much they awed and feared him. And then, he saw more than what was before him. Saw the power they had surrendered to him. Saw that anything he said next would be regarded as true. His own ambitions grew from seedlings to great Soufsaheesan trees in the space between a breath.

“ … Your new god?”

The phrase trembled them, and the light of the divine flashed in their eyes: awesome, terrible, paranormal. A cloudburst may as well have clapped the nearby mountain range. They could not move or speak until he spoke his name; and then, their bodies shuddered, for the Old Gods left them and this new god entered them, obfuscating their futures.

Again the fox-god spoke, and they obeyed.

Some clambered up his giant’s foot-paws, situated themselves between the toes and kneaded into the pads. Others climbed onto his belly and rubbed into the softening bulge, the thickening pudge, the burbling slopes of a formerly revered hunter. Andy hummed, elbows overhead, palms used to cushion his head.

A following of a few dozen hunter-worshipers …

Massages for his paws and stomach …

A doppelganger to watch his back …

And a mound of treasure awaiting his exploration.

Andy’s initial plan had merely been to storm the jungle fortress, grab some game and grow bigger from the rumored artifacts. Not only had he accomplished what he came for; he had found a following and ascended to godhood. No longer was he a mere mortal whose appetite demanded other hunters. His appetite demanded sacrifices.

And so long as rivalling clans and gods remained, that demand could be met.

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